The other thing I didn't really know about being pregnant is how vulnerable it would make me. Or maybe I am always this vulnerable, but better at steeling myself to the world.

That doesn't make any sense.

All I know is this: shit that didn't bother me 7 months ago now hurts my feelings. And I thought I had the whole hurt feelings thing under control. I think it's this: being pregnant means I need help. I can't do everything by myself. For fuck's sake. I started crying outside of the grocery store last month because the big bag of cat food I brought to the register was open so the checkout person told me to get another one and then some other worker guy took my grocery cart to take that broken bag away and so there I was having to go get another hulking bag of cat food and then carry it back up to the checkout person and then I had to go get another cart to put all my damned groceries in and it was all. too. much.

I've also been on a feminist tear--I've been rereading feminist theory for comfort. I know. But when you have this other creature sharing your body, a girl needs to reflect on the body politic, yo. And everybody has a damned opinion about how you should be when you're pregnant. About how you look and your hair and your skin and your size and suddenly you're PUBLIC PREGNANT LADY instead of just plain Molly like you always were.

And since I'm getting everything off of my chest: We went out with Penny (who is the head of the pig foster organization from whence we got our delightful pig friends) last week. That was really cool but also made me sad. Because I wished I weren't pregnant so I could be out late and drinking and smoking and running up to the front of the stage with her to try to catch her future husband's eye (one of the Avett Brothers who we saw in Raliegh and they were great and Penny has a major crush on one of em). Meaning: here was this great cool awesome woman who is my age, who is wicked smart and likes to smoke and drink hard liquor and who is in a PhD program for animal nutrition and who has two pigs, two dogs, and five cats in her downtown Raleigh house. And I want to be friends. I want friends, damn it, but I'm too tired every damned night to do anything and then there will be the kid and god knows I won't be able to hang out then and she lives over an hour away and I'm lonesome. Now. I've been hanging more with Blythe this summer, which has been good. We're going to see her and Bill in a couple of weeks. But I still want to have a friend who I can hang out with where nobody has to sleep over at the end of the hanging out time. I mean, I love sleepovers, but the planning involved. Plus it makes friend-time outside of real-life time and I just want real-life friends. The kind you see a time or two a week. The kind you talk to almost every day. I miss that. I want my friend to be a girl. Also.

I've been feeling strangely distant with Jeff too--well, not distant. But like there are actually things in the world I can't tell him because they aren't tellable, really. I've had my first shaky moments where I imagine a life sans him. Which goes back to that vulnerability thing--because I am frightened at how much I am depending on him to make this work. I have to know that I can do all of this all by myself (I have to remember that I don't need him) but that has created this distant feeling. I planned out a whole other life. I'd buy a house nearby here (work) and raise my baby by myself and it would be ok. Maybe I'd try to get a job near Blythe. I figured out how much I'd need to live and realized my job would cover it. Me and the baby (and the dogs and the cats) we'd be all right.

That ain't happening, thank god. It's a comfort (and a curse) to know I could do it alone. But I can't help feeling like I have created this horrible imaginary life without Jeff in it, just wrote him clean off, and now there is no turning back. I started thinking about this, too, because I think Jeff is freaking out a little bit about impending changes (no more tree business, full-time parenthood) and I've got so many insecurities I'm juggling right now that I got no room for his and so they send me right straight into full on panic. Plus he accidently did something this morning, which I cannot talk about here, and I can't get it out of my head and I just, honestly, I don't want to go home. I don't want to reassure him it was ok, that I know he didn't mean it, that I know it was an accident. Sigh. I always want to go home.

I have a midwife appointment today. I also have hemorrhoids and poison ivy and a yeast infection and an aching back and pelvic bones that seem to be disintegrating. I want to let go of all this worry and woe.

Adieu.