Time

The first days have been unreal. And for the first time in a long time, I have been forced to be mindful, every second of every day. It's odd how time slips away so painlessly when you're too busy to notice, you'd think that would be when its passage would be felt more keenly, because time is presumably precious when the hours in the day to get everything done that you're meant to.

Yet during those first nights, spent in the hospital with GM sleeping and trying to recover by my side (he has, true to form, admitted in retrospect that he was maybe just a little bit terrified that something would go wrong with me or the baby, although my mother has mentioned several times how calm he sounded when they were on the phone), and even when we got home to our flat where the bedroom wall paint has barely had a chance to dry, I have never felt the passage of time so intimately, painfully almost.

Looking at this beautiful creature flailing its arms in my lap, how little she is, how perfectly formed, acting on instinct only and seeking comfort, feeding, sleep with admirable singularity, and knowing that when this second, minute, hour, night, has passed, it is gone forever. She will grow a little, become more sentient, that moment will never return, it will be lost. I try to savour these moments, etch them into my brain somehow, daring barely to blink in case I miss something.

Of course, remembering that level of detail is impossible, especially when one is getting by on 1.5 hrs of sleep at a time. But that feeling will stay with me. When they say parenthood changes you forever, I think to me, knowledge of that feeling is what is implied. Once it's tasted, it lingers and though it wanes, it hangs like a shadow in the back of my mind always, even in the daytime. Is it love? I'm not sure. But it's something bigger than myself, something outside the scope of just me, this baby, my lovely, amazing man. And it amplifies the sound of sand passing through the hour glass of my life, it echoes in my head drowning out everything else.

Birth

I've been so busy since Christmas I've not even had time to blog. And now she's here, our little miracle.

Birth was tough, tougher than I'd hoped, I don't think I'd have survived without the heroic, nay, epic, support of GM. But now the whole ordeal with vacuums, arms stuffed inside me to dislodge stuck body parts and multiple midwives battering my belly seems so distant, as if it happened to someone else. And the emergency cesarian didn't happen. All's well that ends well.

Was it painful? I don't really know how to answer that. At first, the pain was there, but manageable. And towards the end, it was washing over me in waves, rendering me a crying, helpless child in the arms of my lover. I don't think the pain was unbearable though, not in itself. But on top of utter exhaustion, it was too much. Epidurals really are the gift of God to birthing women.

There are only two things I remember very clearly from the birth. The first are the hands of my man, holding me, soothing me, his chest against my cheek, his arms pressed around me, holding me tight, his voice whispering words that now escape me. The smell of his T-shirt, how good it felt to have him to hold on to, even when my body was being torn into pieces by contractions or medical staff of various valor. The knowledge, deep inside, that this man will stand by me always, he will never leave me. And I will never want to leave him either.

The second is the feeling as the baby slipped from my body, how hot she felt, and I was thinking how she could be so much hotter than me, coming from inside me. She was put on my chest for a brief second before being whisked away because she wasn't breathing, but as she touched my skin on the outside for the first time, she seized to be an abstraction, a series of hiccups in my abdomen at 0430 in the morning, a heel poking out below my right hand side ribs, a heavy feeling on the opening of my pelvis, and started to be a person in her own right, and I knew she was the same one, it was odd, knowing her movements and the weight of her body so well, yet knowing nothing at all of her as an individual. GM went with her to see her being weighed and massaged, and I lay there crying, the absence for a minute of them both seemed to go on for ever, or maybe I just cried with relief, or from sheer exhaustion.

She slept for hours after being born, not even awake to feed or make contact, I guess we were both exhausted after being pushed this way and that by contractions for 36 hours. When I was going for a shower after being stitched up and having a rest, I couldn't stand, I had to be wheeled in a wheelchair to the room where GM, baby and I were to spend our first nights together. I've never known anything like that level of exhaustion, there was simply nothing left of me. Yet pulling the baby to me in her sleep, watching her tiny hands reflexively clutching my index finger at night, it didn't matter that I was too tired to move. She has arrived. And it is true what they say, life will never be the same.

Immodesty, according to Facebook

Every once in a while, an application comes along on Facebook which is actually worth a visit. Although it's a bit scary to think that somewhere on the interweb, all your statuses great and small are snuggled up together along with a bunch of metadata.

Get yours here!

Wintertime

How 'bout a swim!? Originally uploaded
by Trondelarius

The days are getting to be ridiculously short.  I got up two hours ago and it's not yet light outside.  The sun, like some hungover teenager, struggles to lift its head above the horizon even at midday.

It is freezing outside, literally.  The door downstairs actually has a thin slick of ice covering the inside of its little window, and GM prefaces like every other sentence with "hrm, maybe I should buy another heater..".

My heartfelt thanks go to H&M, who are the only people I've managed to find in the high street who care enough about pregnant people to produce tights made out of at least 50% wool and with an extra bum panel so that the growing belly will fit at the front.  OK, so it looks like it's made to fit an enormous diaper across the back, but at least my piles and urinary infections are kept from an icy death.  Once again, thank you, Swedish people.  And don't even get me started on the children's department in IKEA.

I actually love the cold.  Not because of the cold, which is of course a bit of a bitch (it's like when you visit somewhere really hot and rush between stores to enjoy as much air conditioning as possible, except with the opposite pretext), but because it gives more light.  The sun is so pale now it would barely be noticed if it was cloudy and rainy all the time.

Also, I love Christmas.  Love it love it love it, although I am already fearing the eating aspect will be much curtailed this year due to the growing belly aspect of pregnancy, which is really starting to take its toll despite me not having put on abnormal amounts of weight.  Next week I shall bake gingerbread, and from thereon out, the year will be a veritable feast of advent calendars, cosy fireplaces and long lie-ins snuggled up to GM.  Bring it on.

 

 

 

First snow

I woke three times last night. Once, I identified the reason for waking as an icy draft winding its way from the window to my bum via a small opening between the duvet and the mattress. When I woke and drew back the curtains, it had snowed outside.

The hillside I can see from my window has been sprinkled with icing sugar, it looks like a gingerbread village, especially at night. Pretty, as if everyone inside each house is cosyed up in front of a fireplace, roasting chestnuts and drinking good quality hot chocolate.

So winter is here, and it ain't no joke.

I don't know what happened to this year. Today is pretty much the first day where I am not grieving over loss of dreams due to previous partner, panicking because I'm pregnant or working 50-hour weeks to make ends meet (practically, not economically speaking; for some reason I like to torture myself by taking on way too much work).

I am still as much in love with GM as I have been since we met, though. I just think that missing him horribly because he is at school being (very deservedly) adored by a bunch of slightly stupid 16-year olds has become a bit of a baseline state, something I automatically allocate mental resources for dealing with.

This morning, I handed in the last essay I have to write this year, in fact it's the last essay I might ever write as a student. Now, only my thesis and final exams remain. It's a weird feeling. I am glad I put in as much work as I did, uncharacteristically working until a few hours of the deadline to get it right despite it only being pass-fail and as such having no impact what so ever on my GPA.

Getting through till actual Christmastime should workwise be relatively easy, no exams, just a lot of mandatory lectures through which I'll probably get to produce a lot of knitting. And after Christmas, well it's almost babytime, and all this missing my boyfriend and living apart will thankfully almost be over.

Suddenly there is space in my head for me. It feels weird. Like, what do you do with it?

"I'm relieved this secret passage still works"*

When you open the door to happiness, you also have to open the other door, to all the stuff there was no space to feel previously.

I spent so much energy taking up as little space as possible in my previous relationship. Now I find that expanding into someone's arms, even though I trust them, is difficult. I have to unlearn so many coping skills that have become second nature, I have to unlock so many bolted passageways in there.

Yesterday improved, for a while. We went for a lovely long walk along the beach, took sickeningly cute photos of ourselves at the shore in front of a bunch of most likely jealous toddler parents who were out to dip their offspring in the not-too-cold-even-for-up-here sea.

Being outside just does wonders for me when I feel a bit down and restless. The weather was soothing, windy, warm but not too hot. GM bought me ice cream on the way back. We kissed and wondered how one makes an instance entrance for a wedding reception. GM thinks he knows someone who can.

We went for an open viewing in the neighbourhood, because it just so happened to go on when we passed by. Neither of us liked the flat.

Later, in the evening, we went on our second date. Yes, second. We only had one date before we started practically living in each other. I plucked my armpits and dressed up, GM cut his hair and trimmed his beard and also dressed up.

We walked along the seaside promenade in town, looked at the bench where we first sat a little over a month ago. GM said his heart skipped a beat when we first met properly a year ago. That even he, who will refuse at any opportunity to recognise that he feels something, admitted to himself that this probably meant something. All I remember is that he hugged me so softly, I wondered how a man his size could manage.

We made it to the restaurant on time. The reservation was made so early the place was almost empty, as the city sleeps off its latest "food and drink to excess"-festival (the festivals here have different names, but essentially they all do the same). The food was great. Coming home after was even better.

I had to do some work when we got back, and suddenly I felt so depressed. I had no anxious thoughts, no weird ideas of guilt or sorrow rushing through my mind, just a claw in my chest trying to squeeze tears out of me, though I've never been much of a crier, so of course nothing came.

GM stayed awake with me, holding me, soothing me. And I think I feel angry, somewhere deep down, but I also feel bad about feeling angry, so I can't seem to let it out. Maybe this something I feel but cannot name is not sorrow, but rage. Of all the wasted time, of all the tongues bitten, of all my needs and personality aspects locked away so deeply that not even I can seem to reach them anymore.

Yet, I will expand, like one of those Disney washcloth cubes you put in water that magically become a piece of terry fabric. I will drive down Highway 1, and I will hold the hand of the man I love, playing the Cure on the radio.

PS! I bring good luck. GM came with me once (!!) to do the seasonal boss, and now.. Well, the photo below looks a lot like him. Naked man pleased with his new Frostscythe of The Lord Ahune, yes, I'll have one of those.. Especially considering the snow flurry effect.


* "To the ends of the earth!"

Happiness is...

So I got engaged.

Wait, I'm going to write that one more time.. SO I GOT ENGAGED. In. Real. Life.

Omg, it looks all the more absurd in writing. It is 0617 in the morning and I can't go back to sleep to save my life.

If you want to read about the actual proposal, please skip by clicking here, because a lengthy rant of "how the fuck did you get engaged after less than a month" is to follow first.

I had a strange evening on Wednesday. Our Best Mutual Friend rang up and wanted to have a few beers in the evening. I invited him over. It just so happens he is also best friends with my First Proper Boyfriend, whom I was with when I was 15. Or at least they used to be, they are not as close anymore. FPB has actually finally managed to leave town at the age of thirtysomething, and I guess he has found that he in fact misses BMF, because he also wanted to come along. So did my brother.

Before the guests arrive, as I'm showering, I notice that my breasts are slightly swollen and sore. This is weird, as I have about two periods per year, and the last one was about three weeks ago. I say to GM that I could be pregnant. We google "early signs of pregnancy". We are happy. However, I find this thought too unreal to keep me from drinking. Poor lump of cells that might be down there.

So I am sitting in the beautifully refurbished kitchen of GM (though I guess now I should say "our" kitchen) with these four men: My brother, my lover, my first boyfriend and the man who introduced me to both the latter.

There were beers. There was cheap white wine from FPB, which was so sweet and nasty I had to help him drink it in exhange for a few G&Ts.

Whenever I drink with BMF, I get totally pissed. The last time we did this, in this house in fact, I had a whole bottle of wine to myself plus an unknown number of drinks. I was still trying to be with someone else. But it was here, surrounded by these people, that I had one of the best evenings I'd had in months.

BMF is barely allowed by his wife to go out with me, because one drink tends to turn into several, and we once went out for "one beer" and stayed there until 0400 in the morning when the bar closed.

The weird thing is, when we are together, I never feel drunk. I have known him since we were 10, and he knows everything there is to know about me, which is why I think I never notice that slippery slope from talking about work to talking about your sex life in disturbingly candid detail.

So we sit, we drink, and strangely life seems to have come full circle. BMF approves of me and GM, though he thinks it's weird, but he says, in fact, why should we not be together? He has a lengthy rant about how he thinks GM is smarter than me (in a conventional sense this is clearly bullshit, but no doubt GM would make a far better shrink than I'll ever be once I finish my studies).

FPB and I have a Spotify Battle all evening where FPB interrupts about 4 out of 5 songs I try to play and puts on old music that reminds me of being 15, holding hands, snogging in his basement and spending hours playing video games. Not much different than what I do these days, in fact.

I love FPB. He was an excellent first boyfriend, and since taught me the number one important rule of getting over boys: If they don't want you, they are either stupid or gay. So you probably shouldn't go for them anyway. This was, of course, long before I was with my gay ex and eliminated one of those options. These days I think whomever doesn't want me must simply be stupid. He looks into my heart, straight into it, still. I sort of wish I could have asked him what he thinks of this new relationship, but maybe I will never know. Maybe it's time to make my own decisions.

The evening rolled on. Much important stuff was talked about across the table, most of which doesn't actually matter anymore. But it was important at the time. I sat next to GM, we kissed, we held hands. We behaved. There was no public groping.

I belong with him now. I guess it was a coming out of the closet sort of event. We are now a unit. My closest friends have seen it. I spent the last half hour fashioning rings from beercan ringpulls with a Leatherman, which was no easy task, though I am somewhat unsure of whether this was due to the levels of alcohol in my blood or to the task being impossible to begin with.

Brother had to go home to his wife and kid, FPB and BMF decided to get a cab into town (which is like a 5 minute walk but as I said, there was quite a lot of drinking). I emphasised to GM that if he wanted to go with them, which under normal circumstances I'm sure he would have, I didn't mind, but I personally was fully ready to hit the sack. He insisted on staying home with me, though I think he appreciated the sentiment.

After they had left, about 130 in the morning, I sat on GMs lap in the kitchen, and though part of me wishes I remembered more about what we talked about, I know the central points were such:

• We love each other.
• We want to get married.
• The proposal GM had secretly planned in his head involved whisking me away for a weekend in about six months time, proposing in front of some embassy where he had also secretly booked a slot for us to get married.
• GM has been waiting because it is so soon, and the rest of the world cares about those things.
• GM is slightly drunk (though he insists now that the moment was so sobering he felt sober, he clearly wasn't) and decides he doesn't give a shit what the rest of the world thinks.
• We have never been better than with each other.
• It becomes clear that my passport is not in town, so there will be now impulse-travelling to a romantic location this weekend.
• GM says that this is just as well, as instead, my father will be incredibly proud to walk me down the aisle, my best friend will cry because she's my maid of honor, and my mother will shed tears of joy in the church of my choice.
• Did I mention we love each other?

There was other talk too, kissing, hugging, which escapes me now. He, who never cries, is tearing up, I can see it. We feel emotional. We hug more. Then, GM lifts me up from the chair, and I assume he wants to carry me off to bed, which he does like five times a day (yes, five.. It's nuts, like being 21 again, or possibly even younger, when men had stamina and you thought maybe sex would run out once it was legal).

But he puts me down on the kitchen floor in front of the IKEA fridge with the ice cube dispenser, kneels down closely in front of me, takes my hand and says something I also can't quite remember, but which went along the lines of "I love you. Being with you is so good, I've never had it better. You are the most amazing girlfriend. I want to share the rest of my life with you. Will you marry me?"

I completely lose my faculty of speech, which, if you knew me, is pretty rare. Had I been completely sober, I would probably have cried. GM reports later that I looked clearly emotional. I hug him, I kiss his forehead. I manage to say yes, yes, yes, of course I will marry you.

There is more talking, though the only thing I can really remember is that he says we should go look at rings in the morning, and I can have what ever I want. And GM says he also thought that if I really am pregnant, he wanted me to know that he really wants us to be together forever, for me, for us, not just because we are having a baby. This brings me close to tears. He has a last cigarette and we have a pint of water (with ice from the ice dispenser) each. We brush our teeth, I am too dazed to notice that we don't clear the table, which I usually always do after a long evening, somehow we make it to the bedroom. We have sex, we fall asleep.

When I wake, early in the morning, I have no hangover, just a dull sensation that quite a lot of alcohol must have been consumed the evening before. I turn around in bed, and the man I love is there. He will be there, in person or in spirit, every time I wake for the rest of my life. It is an incredibly peaceful feeling to have.

I feel a little anxious that he will regret having popped the question after quite a few drinks, considering he had such grand plans. I feel a little disappointed that I can only remember bits of our pre- and post-proposal conversiation, because it felt important there and then. Though I suspect he remembers his proposal, it was rehearsed in his head over and over before he carried through with it, so even if he was drunk, which of course now he claims he wasn't, he will remember. Maybe one day I will ask.

Then GM wakes too, calls me his fiancee and says he loves me. We want to go into town for rings, but have to make love three times and have breakfast inbetween before we manage to get going. I have no regrets. Maybe he will carry my regrets for the rest of my life, as he does already. I feel lighter.

So we are now engaged. And I have never had it better, either.

I'm dating my guild master

Yes, it's true. Love exists in Azeroth even though the chances of finding it are about 1:11.000.000. But I made it, we made it.

I asked my GM out for a drink. He said yes. I said I liked him. A lot. I told him I was anxious I might change my mind. He said he definitely wouldn't.

I told him I remembered when we first played together a year ago. He said he remembered what I was wearing when we first ran into each other seven years ago. I outfit tested it. He really did remember.

Every time I tell someone where we met, I blush. My mother refers to him as "the gamer" and refused to meet him for several weeks, as she is already lumbered with two addict children and one addict son-in-law. Probably she is wondering where she went wrong with it all. Personally I think she should have let us have an 8-bit Nintendo when we were kids, so we wouldn't have grown to see video games as such a treat.

Obviously now, though, my mum has caved in and met him. She loves him. Everyone does.

And I love him. I love him in a way I have not loved someone since I was 21 and fell head over heels for my gay ex and soulmate. I love him in a way that is whispered in someone's ear at 03.30 in the morning when they are half asleep, in a way that promises that he will never again have to scale back on his expectations of being cared for in order to avoid disappointment.

And to reassure my anxious and recently broken heart, he has confirmed that he will:

• Scale back on smoking when we have children
• Sometimes bite his tongue and watch lame TV with me
• Do half of the housework
• Hold me when I wake at night and I'm scared
• Always kiss me when he returns
• Probably cry when I tell him I'm pregnant
• Propose
• Look me in the eye and still be his own person

He will carry me through life and I will carry his heart that he has given me, that is beating in my chest in return for mine.

He will boost me through every instance, make sure I have all the gems my gear can carry, teach me how to tank and heal, dps race me and tell me I'm great even when he crushes me, he will love me especially because I understand the pleasure of killing a gnome and getting an extra nice cable from Clas Ohlson on a Saturday afternoon.

I will not look back. This is it.

To my rebound crush,

So we have actually spent quite a lot of time together, though I can't remember the time we first met.

I'm tumbling down a slope of falling for you. I don't know if it's serious.

This is what a rebound is I guess, once you are allowed to really experience all those crushes you had to previously suppress, they start blossoming like weeds after a spring shower.

You are lovely, you really are. This whole spring when I've been complaining, whingeing, irritable, erratic, you have given me hugs at every opportunity, you have listened, given constructive advice and loyal support. Even though we barely know each other.

So now I am pouring all my dreams for the future into your cup.

Will you quit smoking if we have children? Will you sometimes bite your tongue and watch lame TV with me? Will you put up with me not talking to you for a day when your football team beats mine? Will you do half of the housework? Will you hold me when I wake at night and I'm scared? When I forgot to get something really important for supper, will you nip out and get it, and kiss me when you return? Will you cry when I tell you I'm pregnant? When you propose, will you look me in the eye and still be your own person?

I am asking so much of you, and who knows, maybe in real life you read the Daily Hate Mail and we have nothing in common. There is only one way to find out, but I don't think I'm ready to try yet. And I'm certainly not ready to break your heart in three months time when I realise that yes, it was just a rebound crush and you were not the cup I should be pouring all those hopes and dreams into.

Because even if you are not the one for me, you are without a doubt one of the nicest people who have crossed my path since I can remember.

Maybe when I come out on the other side, I will tell you this.

I know you will listen.

Fallout

It is raining outside today. Large drops falling almost straight, hardly any wind, and the harbor is rippled only by the impact of water on water.

The city is still sleeping, though I hesitate to call it a city, because it is not much more than a town really.

I have thought about whether I feel lonely. Whether I always felt lonely and thereby became a serial monogamist. It is weird. I never planned on having a boyfriend when I was younger. Sure, I liked guys but I've never really liked committment.

And I've never managed to form a relationship form which I got as much or more than I gave. With J and I, I guess we both gave more than we got. Our relationship turned into some kind of vortex that just sucked the life out of us both. The kind you read about in romatic novels, at the beginning, before the heroine realises that actually, the dashing guy next door is her true love. Like the opposite of gestalt theory, the whole is lesser than its parts.

So what am I afraid of? I, who barely know what fear is, unless it slaps me across the face with a fist, which it actually only did once for a brief moment during this last trauma.

My mother, always the pragmatic, told me several times to stop calling people, because she worried that they "would get tired of me". Experience of course showed that people didn't get tired of me, though they probably got used to me showing initiative and therefore rarely rang me first.

And maybe they didn't ring me first because there was something aloof about me, I had no fear. I might say no.

But I remembered my mother's words, and now I am worried of getting in touch with people, even though I do it, I don't feel entirely comfortable with it, except with my few very close friends whom I know I could call at any time of the day and they really would not mind.

Then there is the moving. I have moved around so much that I have never had time to settle into someone's social group. I am always welcome, never expected. Have I moved so much because I was afraid that if I tried to settle in, I wouldn't be accepted? I don't think so. I think this is just what I've had to sacrifice on the altar of my restlessness. Among other things. Though in a sense one could also say that at least they never have time to get tired of me.

So therefore, having a partner was always comforting to me, to my insecurity and partially my laziness.

It is fantastic to always have someone there, someone who will entertain me or that I can engage with my random thoughts about life, someone to have sex with. Sex on tap is extremely underrated, and I can tell I'm getting pretty cranky now though I'm too lazy and still feeling too tender to do anything about it.

I don't actually mind being on my own. I just mind not knowing that someone won't come rushing to my side the second I do.