Day 8 and Day 9. A Pregnancy Journal

Day 8. Replay of Previous Sunday, Replete with Pittsburgh Loss Vs. Denver

Day 9. I'm Still Here.

She's calling off the hook this morning on her way to work. So nice to turn the ringer off. She can call all she wants, and email too. She's worried that I've skipped out, or worse. I was out of it when she called last night. Half asleep, I answered the phone reluctantly. I let her think whatever she wants. I sounded funny, she said. She's knows I'm depressed. She asks me if I've done anything stupid. Not lately, I said.

Late in the morning I let up some. I'm still here, I typed. I think these games are pathetic but it feels like something to have a little leverage. Otherwise I'm powerless. What kind of situation is that to pull a kid into?

Maybe it's all about me though. Maybe all I need to do is suck up, regardless of what I believe or how I feel. To be man, as they say. Man enough to put it in, weren't you? Etc. I love machismo morality. It's such conservative fucking bullshit. I was stupid, I'll give you that, but it's kind of like saying, well you got cancer but because you were stupid and smoked you'll have to suffer, instead of receiving treatment. What the fuck good is science then if it's not above moralizing?

Maybe the Serb and the Albanian were right about American men. Maybe we are locked in to this archaic mode of being, left over from the cave. Maybe sports and beer and John Wayne and guns and shovels and trucks and spit and hard work are our just and only rewards. Obviously, as long as we hang onto these notions of that's just the way we are and the way it's always been, we can not become an enlightened society and maybe that's what this is about. Preserving the ties that bind us.

This doesn't have to become that though. That's a whole treatise worthy of philosophy and I don't have the time for that. I've got a couple of weeks to come up with something and then after that I got the rest of my life.

So what then? Maybe I'm looking at this from the wrong angle. Maybe I should trust her? Is it possible that she knows something, or understands something on a greater level that I can't see? Should I just put my head down and believe in this sudden goddess of fertility?

Maybe she can explain it to me in concrete terms, without using words like miracle and love, or the idea that things happen for a reason. Maybe she can tell me why I feel less and less for her everyday, as she robs from us to nourish herself. Maybe she can tell me why I feel shanghaied and we can talk about what that does to a persons insides.
Then again, if she is willing to go this alone, maybe she is already finished with my insides.

Believe me, I can share. She and me and the baby, that's all fine, and I can occupy myself in myriad other ways. Jesus, I'd prefer if they left me alone. I'm tired of it already. I'm just trying to appeal to her love-side but I'm finding she's very fierce. She's not about to give up something she's wanted for so long, or, for that matter, something that she's reasonably sure will never happen to her again. And that's really it. I'm fighting the life force head-on. I'm taking on creation and there's no doubt who wins that battle. Had I talked to someone who already knew this they could have put me straight and saved me the embarrassment of this journal. Perhaps.