Feel like giving up

by Eve, in Parenting (3 Comments)

Earlier this year my husband was overseas for a week. Despite common assumption, I’d been looking forward to it. I appreciate him being around so much as he works from home — it comes with many conveniences like being able to leave Timmy at home sleeping while I rush out to the post office — but it makes being the only adult in the house a rather unusual novelty for me.

Months before it was to happen, I’d tried to imagine all that I could do, in his absence. I’d planned to play lots of loud music. (Husband prefers to work in silence.) I’d planned to not cook a single meal. I’d open the bedroom curtains as soon as I was awake. I’d put our son in the little All Black outfit his father doesn’t like. He may be Australian, but Timmy’s kiwi-born so has every entitlement to that outfit… I just thought I’d try it when Husband wasn’t here to catch me in the act.

Of course, I hadn’t expected to be in the grip of First Trimester horrors in that week, so it didn’t go quite as I’d expected. I managed to get Timmy in his All Black outfit, and only cooked a real dinner once, but the experience was largely thwarted by my feeling sick all the time. And with Husband gone, I had no one to get whatever food I craved at the time because I couldn’t face leaving the foetal position to get it myself.

I spent the whole time counting the days until his return, and I was immensely relieved when it happened. (I feel I should point out that I missed him for more than his food-fetching usefulness!)

I haven’t been able to cook many more meals since that week, either. I just feel too ghastly. Sometimes I’d make one during the day, and just freeze it in several portions for Husband to draw from at dinner times. They’d inevitably run out though, and having the same meal three or four nights in a row isn’t appealing for anybody. A few times we’ve gratefully received rescue from friends and family who’ve provided a meal. Even if I’m too sick to eat mine, and Husband eats it the next day, it’s still a treat for me — I don’t feel the pressure to provide something.

And still the chronic nausea goes on, and I’m starting to feel defeat.

It makes me think of when Timmy was being born. (I won’t get graphic here, I promise.) Everything just went on, and on, and on…until I couldn’t see an end. There was no end to look forward to. I was in a time loop that would repeat forever. All that existed in my world was the wall clock I was staring at unblinkingly, and the muted voices around me I couldn’t understand, because I’d come to believe it wasn’t going to end. The pain wasn’t going to stop, the breathless effort wasn’t going to stop, and I was just too tired to live with it anymore. So I lapsed backward, and gave up. If the pain and toil was always going to be there, I wouldn’t fight it, or even think about it. It was only happening to my body. I could let my mind disconnect and rest, while nature did whatever it wanted to the body I wasn’t part of anymore…

That’s what the process felt like, at the time. The process of giving up. (Photos support the idea, too. They’re all ruined. I look like a dead body that nobody thought to close the eyes of.)

It’s what I’m starting to feel now.

I feel nauseated, all the time. Sometimes it’s less acute, but it’s always there. I would plan the things I would do around the house the next time it was in a mild stage, and I’d try to amass things I could eat without gagging. I’d plan things around it, and despite it.

But I’ve had enough. I want to lapse backward, and give up. I don’t want to leave the house. I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to take Timmy to playgroup. I don’t want to grocery shop. I don’t want to make meals. I don’t want to eat meals. I just lie on the couch and wait for the day to end, so I can get to the next day, so I can just lie on the couch and wait for the day to end…

But it seems this feeling isn’t going to end. The nausea isn’t going to stop, and I’m just too tired to live with it anymore.

My only consolation is that last time I gave up, Timmy was born soon after. I finally reached the end. I can only hope that, now I’m so close to giving up again, that means this may be almost over, too.

…Unless I have to stop believing that, first.