36 Weeks

I haven't written anything all week. I've been fighting off my super ugly self critic now and then, but honestly I'm so damn exhausted its hard to hold onto linear and intelligent thoughts throughout the day. I'm finding creative comfort in making a baby mobile for Maddox and painting portraits of bananas all over my apartment, yep, bananas. Painting and sewing are extremely relaxing and helping me to feel as if I have accomplished something, even if the only thing I did all day was lay on the couch sewing doilies on a stuffed elephant.

The last weeks/days of pregnancy have descended upon me, and man are they ugly. At 34 weeks I made fun of the pregnant women with their tiny bumps at the park waddling along the trails as me and my massive baby-belly gracefully and easily made the 3 mile walk. A few days later I found out my baby girl was already a whooping 6 1/2 lbs. And a few days after that I suddenly woke up feeling like I, quite literally, had a bowling ball in between my legs. I tried to walk my 5 month old puppy around the block last night, and I shit you not, I had to stop and sit down on the curb 3 times to catch my breath. Reminded me that I really need to wait before patting myself on the back or just stop doing it all together.

I'm floating through these days with not to much of a thought on my mind. Strangers enthusiasm about my soon to be ending pregnancy irritate me. Good hearted birthing advice from strangers and friends irritate me and other pregnant ladies complaints about their pregnancies irritate me. So I'm accepting I'm just plain irritable these days.  A cashier today, bright eyed and with a bright smiled, exclaimed how excited I must be with my daughter's arrival fast approaching. I told her I was to physically miserable to be excited, and she seemed taken aback by my response. I should wear a shirt with some kind of warning on it for good hearted strangers and friends. And don't you worry Dont worry cashier, I'll be a good mom, I swear.

I'm giving myself a massive break these days and it helps. No self imposed fake smiles or upbeat conversations. Women do this every day all over the world, they probably do it better and have it a lot worse. But I'm giving them a break too. Not forcing myself to go anywhere I don't want to go (other than work which I must), answer any phone calls I don't want to answer, and engage in any mindless conversations I don't want to. I'm aiming towards being politely absentminded, and cleaning up whatever messes I make along the way. Afterall, as much as it may feel good at the time to yell at whatever co-worker doesn't re-stock the beer fridge at night, I still have to work with them tomorrow and after Maddox is born. So take out the frustration in the doilies and in my new found obsession with painting bananas.

I started going into labor at 35 1/2 weeks. I was 1cm dilated and having weak, but regular contractions. They gave me a couple shots of something to relax my uterus and an ambien and sent me home. I'm taking it real easy now, she needs to stay in here for at least 1 more week, when she will be considered full term. The early labor scare made me realize how not ready I really am. In all honesty, I'm as ready as one can be, but you never really feel ready for this kind of thing. I've been extremely impatient about her arrival for the past 35 weeks but after last weeks scare I'm trying to savor every lone moment I have left. Enjoying the uninterrupted painting sessions I still can have and enjoying the uninterrupted mornings were I can still wail and play the guitar (although her kicks do already control how loudly I can play).

I dream about her almost every night, she is a different form in every dream, but my love is overflowing every time I meet her in my dreams. This is the biggest test of patience I've ever been given. Just take it a moment at a time and I'm a bit closer to meeting her than I was yesterday.  

I can't control my dreams. They are whatever they want to be. I know there is a slew of theories that surround dreams and I haven't read a damn thing about them. The only thing I've ever heard that seems to hold true to me is that they are manifestation of your subconscious hopes and fears and a manipulated continuation of your waking life (even though isn't that life, afterall?)

I remember being extremely depressed as a child and looking forward to my dreams, looking forward to these newly created friends I would be surrounded by once my head hit my pillow. They were a necessity in order to escape the reality of my parents arguments and financial poverty. And so when not dreaming I strived to continue creating this fantasy world in my waking life. I was known in grade school as the girl who always had her nose in a book. In early elementary school my morning routine was to go outside and sing to birds, pretending like I was a character in any fairytale, pretending like whatever creatures stirred around understood my song. My dad then swiftly had me tested for a list of mental illnesses because he believed their was obviously something abnormal about this child.

Years later I continued having amazingly colorful dreams, especially in the moment right before actual sleep took. Beautiful images would fill my head and I would wake up in a creative panic, feeling like I was unable to write every detail down fast enough, feeling as if I took a breath then an eraser would wipe out these creative inspirations given to me by my subconscious. This was the time in my life when I lived for art. I felt fueled by creating, creating anything. Whatever medium it manifested through, art was like breath.

Fast forward to a couple years and my dreams completely ceased. For almost 2 years I could not remember one dream. I thought it had to do with traveling. Sleeping in unfriendly fields and abandoned houses. Afterall, the porch of a grainer did not exactly bring on deep sleep.

Looking back now its interesting that the darkest times in my life held no dreams. Traveling began as an urge to explore and ended as a means to escape. I detested stability yet yearned for something that resembled it at the same time.  I created nothing for over two years. I felt dried up. Every intricate part of me that made me unique was traded in for a forty and a dirty sleeping bag. Funny how there were no dreams.

And now, nightly, my dreams are like uncontrolled fireworks. Some nights I wake up gasping for air so terrified of the nightmare that I was just engulfed in, some nights I wake up laughing and some mornings I wake up so inspired by what had just taken place that I immediately begin painting. There is no on or off switch and no filter. I have dreams filled with tears and my babies father and his new girlfriend. I have dreams where I am surfing while my daughter watches me giggling with excitement and pride.  I have dreams where my friends have opened art galleries and restaurants and I look on with admiration and inspiration. I even had a dream I gave birth to a 70 year old man. I no longer have to live for my dreams or run away from them. There are ones I don't enjoy and ones I would rather not live without. They leave me grateful and inspired and with a sense of knowing that whatever spark had died within me is now alive. I'm awake again, finally, you can turn back.

I dreaded all the childbirth classes I signed up for once me and my ex broke up. I had yet to realize how much I had internalized society's ideal of the two parent family model until I was struck with stomach wrenching nerves walking into the class. Why do I have to have tattoos and look young and be single, I thought to myself last night. I don't want all these cute older couples to judge me, judge my baby, judge my tattoos... Look at them, their nice clothes, their white smiles and manicured nails. I bet that lady is looking at my chipped black nail polish. Look how carefully that dad swaddles his baby doll...

On and on it went. I'm struck with how deeply I've allowed my own self to believe that  there lies real safety and real stability in raising a child within the model of a nuclear family/two parent household. Even despite being bombarded daily with the reality of that ideal only being a broken delusion, I'm still fighting and judging myself, having to remind myself often that single mom's do it and do it well.

My deluded beliefs on child rearing are revealing themselves to me in extremely subtle ways. In my fear of facing the other parents at the birthing class, in the way I divert looking fully into the eyes of the well-to-do parents I serve at the wine bar I work at. Don't get me wrong, most days I do walk with great pride in being single, pregnant and extremely independent. I dance in it, feeling lit up and inspired by my newly blossoming future. But the nights of judgement are there- and what really hurts when I find myself swept up in this wave of judgment is not the judgment itself but how hard I am on myself afterwards for feeling poorly. I'm realizing I've been holding myself to an extremely unrealistic standard. A standard that says I should only walk around empowered and inspired for my soon to be arriving daughter and for myself. Very, very, very unrealistic.  

So today I'm learning I really just need to be gentle with myself. I need to allow myself the room to grow and fall and slip into this new and uncomfortable role as a soon-to-be single mama. A radical single mama. A radical single mama with naked ladies tattooed on her arms and chipped black nail polish.

I assumed the moment that 2nd pink line appeared on the EPT stick that naturally so would a slew of radical feminist parenting ideals. I mean c'mon, it has taken me years to even begin to grasp the reality of sexism and its massive detrimental impact on my life as a young woman.Then even more time to find what being a feminist really meant to me, a meaning that went further than just a label but became an actual way of life. As Bell Hooks states about feminism, "[it is] a movement to end all sexist oppression."

 I was not born into a world that cradles young women and men and teaches them the beauty of their own self. I was not born into a world that teaches little girls and boys that they are not their gender stereotype. I did not wake up with feminist ideals, and I have yet to wake up with parenting ideals. It took years, and a severe case of bulimia, to find a place to grow into as an Anarcho-Feminist. And now I begin this new process of becoming a mother. A sometimes empowered, sometimes liberated, but a lot of the time extremely scared and nervous mama.

What will this mean to me? To my daughter? To our tiny yet beautiful family?

We'll just have to wait in see. But in the meantime I'm reading a lot of Ariel Gore.

How Jawbreaker has not become the soundtrack to my summer

When I found out about my baby's father cheating I was so shielded by anger that for a day I was able to float through the moments of kicking him out and packing up his things without to much debilitating pain. I simply felt I was watching the events play out from above, simply watching my emotions flare and subside, not really feeling just watching.

Day 2 began the tears. I cried, I screamed, I yelled. I made myself sick for days only to remind myself I needed to eat and try and stay calm for Max. I even tried making myself feel like I was being a bad mom by allowing such negative emotions run through my body while my little baby slept inside of me, in hopes, of course, that I'd snap out of it. The self-imposed mommy guilt got me nowhere and I quickly saw there was no 'snapping' out of this one.

Then there was the fear of falling apart. The fear of becoming a wreck, of laying on the floor for days with the lights dimmed, of Jawbreaker becoming the soundtrack of my upcoming months and years. So I kept the blinds open and listened to 30 Foot Fall.

And the anger. The never ending questions. The questions that will never have an answer. I realized that those questions would only grow with time if I continued to rely upon their empty answers for a relief. I realized there would be no quick relief and accepting that brought me peace.

I found this reserve of quiet strength I was able to tap into. I felt a weight released. This ball of anxiety fell from my chest. I felt pain in my heart, but I felt clarity everywhere else. I was angry and sad and extremely hurt, but I was able to see, like never before, that none of the pain came from missing him. Even while crying in the shower many a nights I knew I was crying for me and Max not crying because the man of my dreams had cheated on me. I was crying because the reality of my nuclear family was exposed.

I realized the fear of the apartment seeming empty and the bed seeming cold, the fear of creeping loneliness from falling asleep in a bed with to much room was just that, a fear. I found I could breath a little deeper at home without him there frantically scraping his bowl on the porch. I found that with my ever growing belly that extra room in the bed was much needed.

After day 3 I had this creeping feeling that I liked being alone. This is not how its supposed to work.

The anxiety that fell from this chaotic relationship, left me with peace and a drive to create. I picked up the guitar again after 6 months. I began painting again. I began to make my home my home. The safe space for me and my upcoming room-mate, my daughter Max. A place of refuge for her and me. And I was happy. A bit shaken up but happy. This is not how I'm supposed to be feeling, right?

I was taught to run from pain. Run from break-ups. Don't mention his name, don't act hurt, you never cared anyway, right? Definitely don't let the good memories in, those mean torture. Don't miss him, cause that means death. And don't let what he did to you sink in, shake it off, push it out of your head. Move on quickly or you'll look pathetic.

Funny thing is, although I thought that was the 'right way' to heal from break ups or pain that was also what left me drunkenly on the floor sobbing to Patsy Cline's 'Walking After Midnight' night after night. Or left me sitting in train yard after train yard, trying to get out of whatever state and mental state I was in.

So I changed things up a bit this time. When I felt sad I cried. And man, did I cry hard. I would sob so hard I had to catch my breath. If a memory would creep into my head, I wouldn't run from it in terror, I'd let it play out and after the memory died I would find myself still standing in the same spot, with some dignity and even a little bit of hope.

So after month 1 I'm finding that sadness doesn't equal death. That bad days don't mean bad weeks. That weakness isn't feeling. And that being alone isn't necessarily lonely. I'm finding that I'm quite proud of being single and pregnant and that I'm able to look a little longer into peoples eyes. I found that having my mom next to me during my birthing class wasn't depressing but quite fun and that I couldn't imagine this going any other way. I'm finding that I'll probably not end up a bitter spinster. And that I'm even still very much in love. An unshakable love for my daughter that makes almost nothing in my life seem pathetic. A love that makes every night exciting because I'm one day closer to meeting her. A love that makes me enjoy the sight of my ever-growing belly and ankles. A  love that left me not feeling insecure after this break-up but grateful for the gift he gave me and Max of leaving us in peace.

Today I want to celebrate

To having more room in bed, by being awakened by womb punches in the middle of the night, to friends who-despite how angry they get- never give up or let go, and to the fact that you can always rely on the familiar sound of summer in the early mornings or on the stable smell of pine needles.

To the days when there are not enough hours to create everything you dream and when you realize that your fantasies have become your reality.

To when ending a relationship ceases to be an end but becomes a beginning to the opportunity to fall in love again, pure, stomach-churning love.

To quiet, sober, not-so-lonely mornings and by being comforted by the sounds of laughter from complete strangers.

When the pure beauty of color is just enough, or to the days when the simple stroke of a line on a page is enough to make you feel whole.

And to being completely enamored with your future.



And, of course, to never taking yourself to seriously.

                        



I cried during a pampers commercial yesterday. Or how about this, I cried when Elizabeth Taylor died.

 I'm shocked by these tears, especially the ones that come from happiness. Is this a part of growing old or can I really just chalk it all up to pregnancy hormones? I don't think I want to define everything foreign I feel as hormonal, although sometimes the excuse is nice.

The tears from Elizabeth Taylor's death most literally came from nowhere, and I somehow managed to make them disappear just as they began- swallowing them out of sheer embarrassment. But I was alone during the pampers commercial and decided to let them escape. I felt so much joy and tenderness staring into this tiny infants face looking at me through my TV screen and before I knew it I felt tears rolling down my cheeks. The kind you have to physically feel to really know they're coming from you. I felt almost ashamed of them. I was embarrassed. I let it out. I uttered a couple of choked sobs, loud and broken enough to wake up my pup Roger.

Its how unfamiliar these feelings are that bring on the embarrassment. Its new territory for me. Its how intimate and gentle my emotions have become.

Tears of anger, of rage, of self pity are all much to familiar. I love to drunkenly cry over how someone wronged me. But crying because I'm filled with happiness, oh no, way to uncomfortable.

I remember how uneasy my mom's tears made me as a child. I still am today in certain vulnerable moments. But as a child they were enough to send me into a panic. She was a goddess to me, she was my best friend. She was tender and warm and strong. But even at a very young age I believed I had to protect her. In many ways it felt it was me and her against the world, creating our own manageable universe out of the detestable and broken circumstances we were left with and so because she protected me I knew I had to do the same. From my father, from their fights and from her tears.

We were sitting in the parking garage of my grandmothers work, this is one of those dark and fuzzy childhood memories. A memory that is starting to settle under a haze induced only by time. My grandfather surprises us, my mom shrieks and starts to cry as she runs to him. My heart drops, tears mean something is wrong and I can't allow her to be wronged any longer. I follow her and she explains she is crying because she is happy to see my grandfather, "Oh sweetie, nothings wrong, these are tears of joy."

Crying because of joy? It made no sense to me at the time. It was quite literally such a foreign concept I had to just categorize it under the 'something mothers do.'

So at 22, on a sunny weekday morning, while drinking tea, I meet these 'tears of joy' for the first time. I'm confronted by such a tender love for this human being I will soon meet, that I start to quietly sob. The mere thought of the love I have, the thought of holding Max for the first time and looking at her face made from sprinkled bits of me, exposes something so raw and foreign to me. Absolute unconditional love. Compassion. Pure joy. Whatever it was spawned from, I wont just chalk it up to pregnancy hormones or to something parents do, I just had to be pregnant with my first child to let it all in.

Where I'm coming from, far far away from.

SHAME

I know I'm not the only Anarcho-feminist (or punk or woman or lover or artist) who has stayed in an abusive relationship. I could give myself a million labels, but at the end of the day I'm just a damn human.

I know I'm not the only one, but that said its been an extremely isolating experience. My relationship has been very public, some of the abuse was very public. Throughout the past two years I would come up for air just to proclaim "I'm done! I'm finally through! No more for me." And then, with my tail in between my legs, I'd have to admit I'm back with him. My friends have been terrified for me, my ex lovers have been shocked and some people have even gone so far as to just tell me there "done with me." I literally escaped the state just so I could be with him and not feel those concerned glances, I turned my phone off for months so I wouldn't get any messages from my friends asking "where'd ya go Ashley?"

That's what happened. And its not happening today.

I refuse to allow the shame from this relationship dictate how I view myself. I've sat for days on end wondering "why me" "how me". C'mon, I'm a fucking feminist, I'm a fucking Anarchist, I've read Bell Hooks.

And you know what? Those questions get me nowhere. I'm not any less of an Anarchist or Feminist or women. I'm not weak because I did what I did, my politics do not mean less because I stayed in the relationship I did and I am most definitely not a defenseless victim.

Abuse is not singularly defined. It comes in many forms. The physical abuse ended a year ago, but even a year sans the really noteworthy and juicy events I was still in a very dry and sick relationship.

That's what I'm breaking free of today, I feel like I'm being lifted from a drunken stupor. I was terrified for 2 years of being without my ex. I thought I would be lonely, I thought I would never be loved again, I thought that I would loose the one man who really understood me. In all honesty I was severely hooked to this guy, addicted. And now that I've had a few weeks of withdrawal I finally feel like I've found myself again. I loved this man, we stayed with each other for way to long. And today its over. I'm not broken. I do have some work to do, some grieving to experience and some celebrating. I'm not going to fill this blog with the nasty stories or the self analyzing. But I want everyone reading this to know that it happens, shit happens, bad shit happens. Depression happens. Even to the best of us, even to the ones staffing those local infoshops and organizing protests. I talked and organized for years towards the ideals of creating a society from the broken one that lays. I made myself believe that I would appear weak if those around me really knew how much I was hurting. I thought it wouldn't be very "punk" to cry, it was easier to just say "fuck you" and run away. So I ran away from the community that I loved the most when I found myself unhappy and unable to connect with anyone. And I stayed away after I woke up and found myself as one of those "victims" we all read about. I never really was that 'victim' but social stigmas have an amazing way of infiltrating the deepest parts of our beings.

How can we build the society we dream of if at the end of the day were too scared to tell the ones constructing alongside us how we feel? What if we don't even know how we feel? Last summer I definitely did not, I was dissatisfied, I was a mess, but I was not ready to admit it. Were not robots. Society would love for us to be, but were not. We are intricate fucking creatures, with dreams and hopes and a lot of fear. Most of us are scared of each other. Most of us just want to be loved. Most of us just to want to safely love. And all of us make a lot of mistakes a long the way.

June 4th 2011

Today I'm not afraid of being a single mother. I've spent so long fighting life. Fighting my feelings, fighting other people's feelings, fighting against other peoples politics and fighting for my own, fighting society, fighting ex-lovers..

For once I'm letting go. I walk around in some moments looking at my life through her new eyes. Trying to imagine the kind of wonder Max will have peering at these strange creatures and scenes that create my life. Watching my beautiful friends strum instruments and sing while surrounded by color and art- and I realize how precious these moments are. How much Max may want to dance and sing, observe and grow in these moments. I realize how much I want to grow in these moments. I don't fight them anymore, I don't ignore them for tomorrow. I bring them closer.

I look at situations I've felt uneasy in and unfulfilled in, those moments I convinced myself to " just put up with it" and I finally find the power to disengage. I don't judge the person or the moment, I just see that I find no joy there and therefore want to be pried free.

I want to create for this child. I want her to be surrounded by art and beauty, and I'm finally finding the drive to make what I find doesn't exsist.
 

Intro

I want to write this blog for so many reasons. I want to write this to heal, I want to write this to connect to other women and men who have been in abusive relationships, I want to write this zine so my daughter can one day look back and see where her mother came from and know how she has truly been the greatest gift to my life. I also want to write this to celebrate. Celebrate life, celebrate change, celebrate FREEDOM and celebrate those mornings when you wake up finally knowing everything is going to be a-OK.

After realizing that I was to fall under the "young single mother" niche I began reading, reading furiously to connect with a voice that would resonate and make me feel more empowered not more confused. And although I have found a plethora of lit. that seemed to start to "go there" I was unable to find something to really hit the mark. That's also why I want to write this blog. I want to explore single parent-hood with a community, after all I've been shocked to discover how many "punks" and "anarchists" and "radicals" feel the want to marry once deciding to have children. I felt that urge. I remember lying to my ultra sound tech time and again, calling my ex my "husband" because I wanted to avoid her judgmental eyes. I found myself fantasizing about an actual white wedding in the shower one evening, That said, I am not judging the decision to marry. I stayed in a shitty relationship because I was wooed by the fantasy of the nuclear family. That is what I'm talking about. And I want to be able to freely and openly explore what it was within me that felt that because I wanted to keep my child and continue with my pregnancy that therefore I needed to stay with her father. I know I'm not alone in this decision and leaving him has been the most liberating step I've taken in years. Well besides deciding to journey into parenthood. And I want to create this blog to share this step and celebrate single pregnancy and parenthood (as I've yet to explore but am a month away from). 

My life has changed so drastically in a year. Exactly a year ago I was in jail in LA County for getting into a belligerent fight with my ex-boyfriend while riding trains. This year the stability that for years I have been running frantically away from has now swallowed me whole and, surprisingly, brought me the comfort and peace of mind that I thought I had lost for good. Not to mention I'm 7 1/2 months pregnant, I would have never imagined that one was coming. But what a gift this little girl already has become and I've yet to even  meet her.

"Our lives are intense, chaotic, excellent. We don't know too much about "settling down," but we are finding, after a long ramble, ways to mother soulfully in this world- the one we swore we would never bring children into, the one that spawned cynicism and the one that, ultimately, nurtures our hope."  -Ariel Gore from Breeder 'Real-Life Stories from the New Generation of Mothers'