So, I spent most of my day in the hospital. I suppose it must have been a false alarm. I got to bring my baby home with me, but not in my arms.
I spent most of the time waiting. And during the times in between, I was being probed and searched and prodded and swabbed. They warned me that the procedures wouldn't be pleasant -- I mean, a cold speculum without any sort of lubrication? fucken OW... -- but I actually asked the guy at one point if he'd ever seen that Cronenberg film "Dead Ringers." He said he hadn't.
["It's not the instuments that are shaped wrong! It's the WOMEN!"]
Argh.
I am, by all accounts, doing well. And the baby is, by all accounts, doing well.
I am very sad and disappointed. I find it very hard to focus on the fact that everything seems to be fine. I find myself thinking more about the fact that I didn't get to bring the baby home in my arms. I can't explain, exactly. I should be happy.
And throughout much of the hospital stay, people were asking me for things.
"Ohhh, soda! Gimme!"
What the fuck? I have no money, it's my only soda, I'm stuck in a hospital bed hooked up to a monitor, I'm fucken thirsty, and in all of about a minute, my friend had drunk half of the remainder of my soda. It should be mentioned that, when Neil asked her to buy him a cup of coffee so he could stay with me, she had to get whiny and complain about the cost.
Then she spent a good long time complaining about how her back hurt. Well fuck that too. I got a fucken speculum shoved into me, repeatedly, and the pain was bad enough so that I very nearly cried (and came VERY close to passing out from adrenaline and low blood pressure) -- and I've gotta sit in a fucking hospital room listening to somebody bitch that her back is sore and she wants a massage?
I swear to gahd, people are just so stupid and insensitive.
They shut up, at least, when Neil turned the TV on to some stupid children's cartoon. They watched that and left me alone.
And then my other friend was asking me where I got the money to buy a pack of cigarettes, and asking if she could have one. Fuck that too! I bought a pack of cigarettes -- my brand -- because after the baby is born, I would like to have one to celebrate. Shit, other people have cigars and crap; I want a cigarette. But there I was, trying to keep my ass-crack from gleaming out into the hallway in the hospital, and she's standing there reminding me that she REALLY likes my kind of cigarettes.
I'm tired of this bullshit. I cook for these people, and I clean for these people, and I shop for these people -- and last night, I went out at two in the morning to buy a ginger ale for one of these people who said she felt queasy -- and then gave the ginger ale to somebody else to drink........ And now I feel like I'm supposed to entertain these people while I'm mostly naked in a hospital room, feeling incredibly uncomfortable.
Well, no more. NO MORE. I'm going to be a mother to a tiny little girl who is genuinely going to need me. As in, she's going to depend on me for her survival. I'm NOT going to continue sitting around being a mother to a couple of spoiled, bratty 20-somethings. I'm done taking care of people who figure they can use me to whatever advantage they can think up. FUCK that. They're my friends, not my children, and if they think otherwise, they can FUCK OFF.
Not even a word about "how are you feeling?" I think one of them said, "what's up?"
Fuck this shit. I'm tired of feeling used.
Came home. Without a baby in my arms. Went to buy another soda, since the other one got finished, and some tea.
Took a shower to rinse off the speculum-feeling. It only partially worked. And I couldn't rinse off the feeling that I'd failed somehow. I took a long, long shower.
And got out. And my room-mate D. had invited a friend over to stay the night -- mind you, without asking if anybody else in the household minded. Personally, I'd rather not be around anybody but Neil, but I guess the kid's got nowhere else to sleep tonight or some shit. So, everyone started clearing a place for him on the couch. I had forgotten that I'd left a bunch of my crap there, until I heard a shout from the next room -- "what do you want me to do with all your stuff!?"
"Hm... Shit, I forgot that was there," I grumbled. I really just wanted to go to bed and not deal with anything else. In order to expedite matters, I started flinging stuff off the couch.
"Um, did I DO something to you, or what?" And this, again, was one of the room-mates, bitching at me. She sounded like I'd slapped her across the face or something. It wasn't so much her words, but for a fraction of a second, I actually thought, from the tone in her voice, that she might slap ME.
"Um... NO... I just forgot that D.'s friend was coming over tonight... And I forgot I left all my shit here..."
"Whatever," said the room-mate, and stormed off.
"Whose soda is this?" asks the girl in the kitchen. She happens to be the same one who drank a bunch of my OTHER soda.
"Mine," I say.
"I'm gonna have some if you don't mind..."
"There's no caffeine in it," I tell her. What I MEAN is: YES, I fucking mind. But I'd come off as a total bitch at this point if I dared to say anything.
"That's fine. Thanks."
I'm really about ninety-nine percent sure that nobody on this planet, aside from Neil, a couple of very-far-away friends, and a couple of select relatives (also very far away) really gives a damn what happens to me. Just as long as I'm around to PROVIDE for others, they sort of act like they care... My fear, my pain, my wants, go unnoticed. I swear to gahd, the people with whom I surround myself couldn't care less if I died right now, just as long as there were still somebody to do their dishes. No, actually, they'd probably be delighted, because then they'd have the bulk of Neil's attention again.
I hate feeling like this.
I wish I could have brought my baby home.
A lady down the hall gave birth while I was waiting for the doctors to discharge me. The new baby sounded like a very small crow.
And I left without hearing my baby cry.
Once, almost exactly two years ago, I left a hospital without my baby. And I never heard her cry.
Somehow, I just can't forget that.
I'm going to go to the bathroom and take my soda off the kitchen counter -- which apparently is a free-for-all as far as everybody else is concerned. And I'm going to curl up in bed with Neil and Bean, and hope that this feeling of being completely alone in the world goes away.
~Helena*