dyspepsic                                                
I have nothing, I'm empty, full up of space and distance, so out of practice I barely know where to begin.

Last week we went home, to Santa Cruz, where we no longer live. I stood along the steep cliffs in the hot sun and the thick air with the seals barking and the green ocean and the tiny waves crashing and the chattering pelicans, feeling as if I will never be so complete as this, that I will always be missing an entire chamber in my heart.

I did not ever want to be a mommy blogger. I do not ever want to be a mommy blogger. Lately, as I stare vacantly at the various entries of some of the more formidable mommy bloggers who populate the momm-o-sphere I feel as if I have never been so alone in my life. As if I am certainly an alien being, as if I am certainly out of my guano mind. I can't relate. To any of them. Well, maybe this one and this one. But neither of them are mommy bloggers and both of them are equally and separately stunning. I look around and see so little that centers me, so few women who anchor me or make some kind of semblance of sense.

Lately I have been sick. Again. Almost, if not as bad, as before. My heatburn is so bad it forces the food back up again after I eat. On all fours and sobbing I crouch in front of the toilet, coughing and gagging every bit of it back up. When it stays down it hurts so much sometimes it takes my breath away. It comes on like a spasm, out of nowhere, a full frontal attack. I can feel the little bit I manage to eat in a day forcing it's way back up again, ripping up the delicate skin of my body as it works it way backwards, up and out, punishing. I feel like a mental patient, like some deranged person that no one believes, or understands. People just look at me, cross-eyed, and say still? Aren't you supposed to be done with that stuff? I makes me want to kick them in the teeth.

And I'm still nauseous. Always. Tums makes it worse. Almost nothing is worse than trying to eat Tums. Even barfing is a better alternative. Nothing tastes so foul as those little round chalk chucks from hell. I've tried Maalox but my nausea was so extreme that I gagged it right back up again, into the sink. Food is a total fucking nightmare. Nothing tastes good and everything, everything, leaves me with an aftertaste so excruciating I can't tell what's worse, the heartburn from not eating or the nauseating, hyper salivating aftertaste mixed with the heartburn from eating.

People ask me how I am doing. I am supposed to smile and glow and say, just lovely. The nursery is all done and everything is painted in garish fucking pink. I'm fucking ecstatic. That's what they want me to say, what they expect me to say and what I do not, almost ever, actually say to them. Ever. I want to say, this fucking sucks. It fucking sucks. I'm miserable and sick and every single moment of my life is consumed by the complete revolt and failure of my body to do this the way it was supposed to and I can't eat and my chest is going to cave in from being eaten inside to out and no one seems to understand or even believe me and no really, I can't "just eat" to feel better. Everything I put into my body causes me pain or makes me vomit and even water tastes like hell so no, I don't love being pregnant, fuck you very kindly.

Instead, I walk around like an escaped mental patient, clutching at my chest and mumbling, heart racing and breathless, wondering why it is my body is failing so miserably at the one thing it's supposed to do right now which is feed itself.

Andy looks at me and frowns, be nice to her, he reminds me. And I crumple and die inside, because clearly I am already an unfit parent, unable to put aside my own visceral discomfort, waiting for this mystical love to arrive, waiting for the moment, as promised, when I will recant and cave and believe, somehow, that it was all worth it.