The Spider Swing (you know, like when you were a kid... sort of)

Climb on top, swing one leg over each of her hips... thighs squeezing her waist tight.  I wonder what the weight of me feels like for an instant, but instead try to focus on what is under me and what it feels like to NOT have the weight of anything ON me.  For once, I'm the "top spider" when usually I've been the "bottom spider" on the swing.  Oh the delight in being able to be versatile on the swing. 

Leaning back to go higher, and pushing forward to come down... rocking, pumping, grinding, pulsing, pushing ... we swing higher and higher.  Neither of us fearful of what lies below us, both of us aware that the possibility of falling exists.

Leaning, pushing, rocking, pumping, grinding, pulsing... trusting.

As high as we get, we each know that is as hard as we may fall... so we trust.  We must.  Right?

The swing stops, we catch our breath, and I ask to become the "bottom spider" again...

Loving Women

I work with women everyday.  I'm an obstetrics nurse and all of my coworkers are women.  Outside of the security guards and maintenance men that may stop to visit the unit on occasion, my job consists of all women all the time.  Next, are my patients.  Beautiful, large, filled pregnant patients.  Women.  My shifts are complete with women - and their partners.  Partners are interesting to me - but that's for a different blog, different day.  This space is for women, today.

I think I've always loved women.  I've always wanted women to love me. 

During my years I spent married - pretending - lying - acting - I would form close friendships with women, lots of women.  I needed to be close to women.  I wanted to go dress shopping with close friends just so I could share a dressing room and be able to admire their bodies.  I would want to find ways to be physically close to my friends also, but not physically intimate - I'm not sure if that makes sense.  Probably only to anyone else that had to keep a secret like I did for so long.

My mother's group all so much as banished me when I left my husband and came out.  Three of the 7 other women in our group even blocked me on Facebook.  BLOCKED me.  During the years we were friends though, we truly shared so much of ourselves.  I was able to get the closeness and the intimacy that I could never attain in my marriage; however, I could never really get close enough.

I can't remember what I learned about first: the female anatomy, the process of birth, or midwifery.  Probably the female anatomy, but what came next I'm not sure of.  I just know that my love for women, all women of all kinds, has led me to midwifery.

Some don't realize that midwives aren't "just like doctors." We are quite the contrary actually.  Some don't realize that we don't just "deliver babies in homes."  Midwives are primary care providers... we care for all women in many age groups, any socioeconomic group, healthy and sometimes not.  I love healthcare; I love birth; and I love women.

I've also learned to love me, as a woman, and to accept myself, as a woman.  I worried for a while, that living (and lying) as a straight woman for so long would inhibit myself in finding love from another woman or in loving myself.  I'm on my path though.  I love myself as I am and in doing so I can love another for who she is.

It feels good to be me, today.  We'll see what tomorrow brings though.

A Picture Says a Thousand Words (or so they say, right?)

Things are going well with S... it seems....

The 1,534,234,001 Why I Got Divorced (and the ONE reason why I might have gotten married)

This morning I was woken by my cell phone ringing at the ungodly hour of 0844.  No one that knows me would call that fucking early.  My case in point, I had to divorce him.  We were married for a little over 12 years and he barely “knew” me.  I listened to his voicemail and he sounded irate, maybe even a little psychotic.

Here’s what’s up:  a financial fucking crisis.  A bill went into collection today that has his name on it.  A MEDICAL bill, for our children family from when we were married, that we were supposed to split after the divorce.  He didn’t worry when we were married enough to have insurance for the children, or to pay the bill then.  But now, it’s a fucking financial crisis… because… I didn’t can’t pay my half and it went into collection.

So the voicemail was a delight to wake up to.

I called him back and it went like this:

Him:  Aren’t you working?  Isn’t anyone spitting out babies?

Me:  I can only show up when I’m scheduled.  I can’t just “work more” because I’m broke.

Him:  All you have is your reputation… blah blah… you’re gonna wanna buy a house someday… blah blah… the kids are always dirty and hungry when I pick them up… blah blah…. you can’t do this to me you know… blah blah… you have to pay this bill…. blah blah…. (bored yet?)

Me:  Why haven’t they called me?  I will make arrangements for payment … it’s all I can do… blah blah

(I believe I’m crying at this point in reference to the kids being dirty and hungry every time he picks them up.)

END SCENE.

So, here’s the thing bitches…  I don’t have a lot of money, but I feed my kids dinner every night I have them.  Sometimes “dinner” is popcorn at the movie theater.  It’s a LOT of calories.  No one can be hungry after that… and it’s not that often.  I digress… We also bathe, frequently, including oral hygiene (see Figure 1).  Sometimes the “bath” is a day at the pool.  No one comes home dirty from there though!  It’s good, clean fun.  I assure you.

 (Figure 1... This photo represents "Family."  Notice we are all different, but close nonetheless.)

He’s a hurtful ass bag who cannot take responsibility still.  It’s one of the many reasons I’m divorced.  You know, in addition to the whole lesbian thing… because really that’s like at the top of *my* list.

1033 phone rings

Him:  I paid the rest of the bill, your half.  Can you just make payments to me?  Whenever you can, when you get paid.

(One reason why I married him.)

Reflecting on National HIV Testing Day

I don't feel particularly close to my sister. Or at least I don't feel like I think I am supposed to feel in accordance to the Hallmark cards I've read and the Lifetime movies I will deny I have ever watched. It's ironic (pay attention Kevin... irony explained) because we are actually very close in age. Seventeen months apart were our births to be exact. So we grew up as "Irish twins" so to speak. I have horridly embarrassing Christmas photos from the early 80s to prove it.

When we were very young we were forced into having the "benefit" of being each other's built in playmate. I didn't think it was so bad. I'm the older sister. I used to watch her sleep. She had blond hair and big brown eyes... tan skin and the cutest little grin ever. I felt like the family outcast with my brown hair and glasses. We shared everything whether we liked it or not. Those nights that we shared our bedroom and a bed, I would lie awake and watch her sleep and just admire her perfectly cute button nose. One time I even bit it. Not too hard. I just had to have it in my mouth.

We are both adults now, and I don't bite her anymore.

Last summer my sister came to me, very upset because she had found out that someone she'd slept with was "sick." I think that's all she told me, just those words. I didn't say or ask anything. I just listened to her. Then I tried to make it explicitly clear that she wasn't a horrible person like she was insisting that she was. I took her to a health clinic the next day for a free HIV screen and afterwards held her while she cried in the parking lot from the relief of it all.

We talked about it a little... the choices she'd made and the future choices she wanted to make. I never feel comfortable talking to her like that. Even though I was born only seventeen months before her, sometimes it feels like it was seventeen years. Sometimes I feel like I'm mothering her. And I don't want her to feel that way. Maybe she does too. Maybe she wants to feel that way. I don't know... Writing about our mother is another blog, another day. Basically, why do I feel like I mother everyone... is what I want to know?!

The only other time I felt like she "came to me" and I was really there for her, was when she stood in my kitchen and told me she was pregnant, in a very unplanned manner. I just hugged her and said, "There's plenty of time to sort out how you feel and what you want to do." Or something like that. Eight some months later I was driving to the hospital because she "couldn't take it anymore" and I sat next to her during her cesarean section... a very unplanned birth to go along with her unplanned pregnancy.

My heart is tied so tightly to hers. She doesn't even know it. She sees us as being very different women, living very different lives. All I see is my beautiful baby sister with a button nose. I see such similarities in us I could never explain to her in words, but I can try here.

We've both fought, a lot, for what we have. I think she assumes things come "easy" to me, and perhaps certain things do. But I hope someday she will recognize and honor the struggles I've had to overcome as well. Though our struggles aren't the same, we are fighters nonetheless.

Our journeys into motherhood have been unplanned. It may look as if my perfect family was... well.. perfectly planned. I think now that as I've come out to my family, she may see things differently. Perhaps not. When I see her mothering her daughter, though, I know that we are truly more alike than different.

I'm proud of her.

My Darling...

Her birthday is Sunday.  I remember so clearly wondering if I would be able to do "it" again when I learned I was pregnant again.  It went like this:  I was "late"... not late for lunch, my period didn't show up.  I tested a ridiculous amount of times with several HPTs.  All negative.  I knew.  I was already a mother to a 3 year old little girl and a 6 month old teeny screamer of a thing.  Poor baby.  Wasn't really her fault... she just screamed constantly, and I really had given up on figuring out what she wanted.  So when I dragged my ass into my midife's office I was expecting to be told I was pregnant.  However, when the nurse looked at the dip stick and said, "Oh honey, you're gonna have a baby." I wanted to slap that shit eating grin off her face.  Instead I replied, "I already have a baby," and I picked up my teeny screamer and walked out of there.

I came home and told my then husband.  He was delighted.  So, that was that.  The nurse was happy and my baby daddy.  I was all set.  The screaming gradually ended and so did the crying (my teeny's and mine).  I came to accept what (or who) lie ahead of me. 

The night she was born the contractions came on hard and fast... woke me from a dead sleep.  We had taken a long walk, he, the kids, and I earlier that night ... after dinner... in that moment right as the summer nighttime air comes alive with fireflies.  I must have instinctually known I needed rest to do real work later, because I went to bed before everyone else, straight away after our walk, maybe even before it was fully dark.

When she was born, it was only he, I, and a nurse in the room.  A special nurse that I have the pleasure of still working with on occasion today.  My labors are hard and fast, and my babies come quick and easy.  It is a trade I will take.

Everything about her was easy and beautiful and delightful. The way she lay in my arms and looked up at me, it was as if she knew she needed to be calm FOR ME.  And she was.  Very calm.  She suckled at my breast in the most gentle and knowing way I've ever known or have yet to encounter, and it was what I needed.  I didn't know how I was going to manage this.  But it was like she was telling me that it didn't matter... because it didn't need to be managed.

So I relaxed.  And I loved.  And I mothered... her and I mothered myself a little too.

Sunday she will be nine.  Our lives are much different now if you are on the outside looking in.  Yeah.  I bet so.  But, if you live inside of us, it's not any different.  Love still lives here, where ever we live, we still enjoy the fireflies, and I've learned that anything worthwile... takes a little labor.

And now some words of wisdom from my rockstar... "What's the big deal about boys kissing boys or girls kissing girls anyway?  People in France do it all the time."

Tonight she handed me her wish list for her birthday.  I thought I'd share:

1. a Nintendo D.S. game (Okay, this one makes sense.)

2. scatebourd helmet (I'm not going to correct her spelling... it's too cute.. oh and SAFETY FIRST)

3. germ kit (WTF is this?  Anyone!?  Does she want to grow germs...)

4. catipolte (omfg... I laughed so hard picturing her catipulting her brother.  See #2)

5. sling shot (Good god.  After she handed the list to me she said, "And not a cheesy one either.")

6. a hard guitur case (This is actually what I wanted to get her.)

7. nerf gun (We have a least 8 already. Maybe more ammo would be more appropriate.)

8. guitur cleaner (Ah.  Yes.  She is my daughter.)

Then she signed her FULL name. 

I am so in love with my daughter. 

Heart Starved

Everytime I meet S's friends for the first time it involves eating.  There was a brunch the first go around, and last night... a fucking buffet.  Which if you suffer from any sort of disordered styled eating is the actual worst environment to be in as far as I'm concerned.  Oh let's see... new people AND chosing what food to put on your plate... then walking with said plate of food to table... then trying to eat said food while talking to aforementioned new people.  My heart is racing just thinking about the possibility of doing it again.

I wanted to scream, "I'm better than this!  Let's go dancing!  Or let's go to a book store... or an anatomy lab... or hell a fucking park and swing!!"  I wanted to send telepathic messages that said, "Please don't judge me by what I'm putting into my mouth or not putting into my mouth, or how I'm putting it into my mouth..."

Here is the thing that the super duper smart Me knows:  They aren't judging me.  Because they aren't fucked up.  I am.

I am the one who cries in the dressing room because I feel less than a woman with no breasts.  I am the one who feels less than a woman when I know that others look past me or through me or can just see the surface me.  I am the one who doesn't ever feel heard...  so I often just don't really speak...

I asked once if anyone ever truly saw me or heard me.  None of them understood.  Except maybe a couple.  I meant do they SEE ME and do they HEAR ME... do they really know who the fuck I am and do they understand?  Do they care to?

I do okay eating with S, just her and I.  And Kevin and I really have fun eating... I've never had FUN eating.  I'm trying very hard to not make this about anything more than it needs to be.  But sometimes, you know, you just can't help it.  

I'll see S in a few days, for a few days.  And we'll spend time cooking for one another.  It's so healthy and for me, truly healing.  I need it.  I need to be in the kitchen with my heart.  Feeding it.  And her.  And me.