wknd

Some guests came for the weekend, some people I hadn’t seen or talked to once since the birth -- since the pregnancy, I should say. Maybe it’s my Scorpio nature, but these slights stay in my book for a long time. I’m not interested in revenge. I just find it hard to forgive or forget.

That’s true for any bad experience, as I realized in retelling the events of the birth. The guests pooh-poohed me, of course, saying the usual platitudes, I’m fine and the buka’s fine, so I just have to get over it and do better on the next one. I wonder if it’s really that easy to dismiss somebody’s feelings, or if the real problem is that the feelings are too hard and too complex and too personal to face?

The doctor said it would take 90 days for my stitches to dissolve, and the pain would disappear when they did. I’m still in pain and my uterus isn’t right. Physically, I never expected, or wanted, to be the same after giving birth as I was before. I can talk about that. And I don’t think it’s necessary to spend time in my body to imagine what it’s like to have a 5-inch incision across your belly. But there are other things I can barely say out loud, or even to myself. Things impossible for men to understand, and probably most women. My mom gave me some good Dr. Phil advice: to put those things away in a box where I can visit them sometimes. It’s silly advice, it doesn’t really help, but I think that’s the only thing you can do with experiences too profound to share in a way that other people can really understand. It’s the loneliest thing in the world, but no lonelier than trying, and failing, to explain them.

Also this weekend, there was an earthquake. I was curled up on the couch half-sleeping through “One Tree Hill,” and Paschalis was curled up behind my knees. I felt the tremors, but I thought it was him, scratching sth, or licking sth, or moving. I looked up, and he was sound asleep. Later I found out it was a 5.8 on the Richter scale; the epicenter was somewhere in the sea.