Sunday, February 26, 2012

Betrayal and Transitions

Your baby, and belly are growing and the pain that used to wrack your bones is lessening every day. Every bout of morning sickness, every hesitant sip of caffeinated beverages, and the swelling in your breasts reminds you constantly that you’re pregnant. Your Love, your Light, your Bliss seems to forget. It’s tough for him at first, he seems almost UPSET that you might actually live. You were supposed to be gone in a few months, he says. He hadn’t planned for any of this, he says. He’s sad that you won’t get an abortion, but you’ve never been one to believe in killing off family members just because it might seem to be more convenient at the time. You have a son who is four and can’t see how his life is any more real or worthy of continuing than the little life that’s blooming inside of you.

He flies clear across the country to clear his head where he ignores you for a week.  He comes back and says he thinks he can do it- he wants to try to be together. You ask him if he slept with anyone else when he was gone and he says no. You don’t even take time to process this and feel like you want to slap him for leaving and ignoring you during one of the most vulnerable and confusing times you’ve ever experienced. But he has that x-factor that you’ve never found in anyone else and because of that you look past it and try to move forward. Or maybe you really just have horrible self esteem and think, “well hey- at least he doesn’t hit me!”

The time comes for your first ultrasound and he goes with you, seemingly apathetic. You see the little coffee bean flickering on the screen and feel the beginnings of a burst of excitement, until you turn to see the blank, thoughtless expression on his face. He doesn’t care at all, you think. He feels no attachment. You feel crushed, but don’t say anything. At this point he still holds the belief that the baby is just a bundle of cells. He won’t even refer to the baby as a baby. Just a little blob.

He’s still getting drunk three times a week and getting high every day. The people he surrounds himself with are worse and about six years younger than he is,  always surrounded by ridiculous high-school style drama because they all keep sleeping with each other and lying about it, and getting fucked up on a regular basis. You even try to hang out with these few people a few times, but aside for a few of them, you just can’t deal with the slew of drunken idiots or the irritating little fat Trolltrolll that loves to drag her pudgy, sweaty fingers all over your belly and talk about just how pretty you are and laying it on way way way to thick. This is all some pathetic attempt to convince you that she doesn’t want your boyfriend. But you know better.

But he doesn’t know that all of these so called “friends”, especially the Troll, love to tell you and each other that he’s a loser who needs to grow up and that his drinking makes him pathetic. His friends. You can’t repeat that to him, because that would hurt his feelings but every time he chooses them over you you want to scream and tell him everything they’ve said. You don’t. You still haven’t. and you won’t.

He says he needs time to gradually stop drinking and smoking and to you this sounds like the sentiments of an idiotic high school boy, not a 26 year old grown man with a baby on the way. He can’t seem to understand why after being married to a raging alcoholic, and living with a pothead whose only motivation was getting more pot, your skeptical that he can change and extremely wary of even considering a relationship with someone who appears to have hit age 18 and stopped evolving.

Time passes and your belly grows even bigger, and your health has never been better. He seems to be growing an attachment to the little boy inside of you, he’s drinking less and you hope that this means he’s finally on the road to responsible parenthood. Things get better. He seems sweeter to you, like he might actually really love you, but you just can’t shake this feeling in the pit of your stomach like something isn’t right, and you randomly start massive fights with him, accusing him of cheating, and every possible way you ask he insists he never has. The issue gets dropped, comes up again, gets dropped and comes up again.

A few months pass and things seem to be going well. Better than they ever have you think. You’re waddling around everywhere, peeing every 15 minutes, and sleeping like a log. He’s  handling all of your ridiculous demands for lobster and chocolate like a pro, without even complaining.

Then one idle Tuesday you have this sick feeling in the pit of your stomach and you just know that he did something. Your face grows red and your hands are shaking so you know that this is an instinct that you can’t ignore. You confront him and sure enough, when he was in Washington he cheated on you with his psychotic whore of an ex girlfriend. He claims it was because he needed closure and apparently closure can’t be had imagewithout fucking around. He tries to convince you that you two weren’t even together then and you are so enraged and hurt that you puke. He seems like he doesn’t care less about what he did, he’s just sorry that you found out. He didn’t tell you because he didn’t want to hurt your feelings, he says. You know that he didn’t tell you because he’s a pussy. He knows you would’ve left as soon as he told you. What bothers you the most, is that you specifically asked him if he did anything when he was gone and he lied and said no. He lied. And now he’s trying to convince you that you weren’t even together when he did. He is no better than any other self serving, womanizing asshole that you’ve had the pleasure of meeting. And now you have the pleasure of giving this asshole, the same asshole who was so upset that you weren’t dying anymore, the greatest gift imaginable – a gift he doesn’t deserve- a beautiful baby. And you start to resent this baby because he will keep you tied to this asshole who hasn’t ever really cared about you and probably never will.

 

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