hiding in the open

i am an actress.

some of the time.

especially, recently.

when i look back i notice that i am not being honest. i'm not really lying either, it's more like not telling the whole truth, not letting people EVER know exactly. i can laugh and smile with the best of them and, you know, it isn't as if i NEVER feel happy. just, most of the time, it's a mask i'm wearing. i don't really want to talk about it cuz i don't want to be all 'boohoo me' and, in the end, who really wants to hear about the bad stuff all the time? plus, i know that of the people i talk to in my life - my husband, my mom, my best friend - not one of them really understands the way it is. you know, i don't really understand it myself so i can't blame them.

i can't lie, i know i'm not the worst off, i know that there are things that are a million times worse and would make my life (and even the way i feel these days) feel like paradise. BUT, the fact remains, even if it's 'paradise hell' it's still a sub-division of hell.

i feel like an open wound walking around. actually, maybe not quite an open wound, but a very slowly healing wound where the scar keeps opening up when you barely even bump it. it shouldn't be like that - the last 8 months should have been the best times ever - i have an 8 month old baby girl who is the most wonderful, best, most beautiful baby that the world has ever seen - trust me, i know! she's healthy and happy and growing bigger and learning so much and she's perfect and i am so blessed to have her. i HATE that i am unable to enjoy the process as much as i should be.

why?

it was a normal delivery the doctors all said (though, in my world, it was equivalent to cruel and unusual torture)...my question then is WHY WHY WHY did it take 6 freakin' weeks for me to be able to cough or laugh without it hurting? how come it took 30 minutes to walk the 10 meters to my bathroom, go pee, get up and wash my hands and walk 10 meters back? that, to me being an amateur at giving birth, is NOT normal...but hey? who questions the doctors?

and then the baby bean grew slowly and we had to go to the doctor to get her checked out every single month (sometimes more than once a month cuz bean's momma is a bit dense) for 5 and 1/2 months and every last time, they weighed her and she was 'fine, just small...NOT CONCERNED'...okay, so loudly i tell everyone, she's JUST LITTLE...then one day bean doesn't weigh any more than the last month that we weighed her (must have been the wrong clothes - don't even get me started on weighing babies with clothes on) and suddenly we are referred to a pediatrician and 1 month later when we finally see him we are admitted to the hospital because my baby was starving.

you tell me which human being, let alone mother, in the world can hear someone say that their baby is starving and not feel like it's her fault. tell me who has heard those words and doesn't feel the gaze of every last medical person involved and every last person who knows what happened and NOT feel their condemnation. and you know, i almost didn't blame them, i still feel like it was my fault, but, honestly, i did EVERYthing i knew how to do - i fed bean cereal early (cuz she seemed hungry - and don't worry, she could hold her head up and all that) and i got in trouble for it...i tried (as she kept getting skinnier) to feed her formula from a bottle and she would not take it and i went to the doctor every blinkin' month - what more could i do? and yet i wish i had done more.

if you HATE all things hospital as much as i did and do (even more now) the admission to the hospital was hideous...though i am SO thankful that baby bean is growing big...but in spite of that good - it was awful. and through it all to feel as though every last person in the world blamed me...and not being able to justify myself at all. on top of that, our pediatrician was an ASS - he thought he was the most brilliant doctor in the whole world and he really wanted to let you know it...he couldn't seem to understand english - though last i checked they do speak english in england (where he was from)...and he seemed to spend all his days thinking of new ways to be awful to me...it didn't matter what we were talking about - he was ridiculously negative. take, for example, 2 days before we were discharged - bean was learning to drink from a bottle, was gaining steadily (so, the problem was my milk - not that anyone told me or bothered to test it or anything), and was doing so well despite the trauma of the 11 days and the ASS (shall we call him dr. a?) told me that they would have to send us to a bigger center where they would put a 'button in her stomach' so the food would go directly to her stomach. THAT is what the 2 weeks in the hospital was like.

but we're home and have been doing well and despite the fact that even after changing doctors in an attempt to find one who was human still and NOT finding one (i'm convinced that in order to become a doctor you sign your soul away and forgo being human), most of my time seems spent dealing with the way i can't stop feeling.

not every time anymore, but every once in awhile, i see my sister nursing her baby, or some random person nursing their baby and i feel that scar break open and the blood gush out - i was forced to wean in the hospital because it was the only way i could see that bean would ever learn to drink from a bottle - but instead of taking a few weeks, i had to do it in 1 day...my god, it hurt - physically, and emotionally and, like i just said - the wound opens up.

as i brought bean in for ANOTHER appointment, our new doctor - the one who was hopefully human - yelled at me and told me that basically i was a sorry excuse for a mother and it was lucky that bean at least had her for a doctor cuz she actually cared what happened - and the scar broke open.

i hear other moms talking about nursing their babies, or about what is going on with their babies - why they are fussy, how they know that this and that is going on - and the scar tears open. i feel like i have no right to 'know' my baby any more - after all, i almost killed her. i'm sure my voice is the loudest, but i hear all the voices saying - honestly, what DO you know?

doing stuff with my husband's family makes the wound start to fester. i KNOW that a HUGE part of it is me - i need to forgive and i KNOW that the things that hurt me like crazy were not and are not meant to hurt at all...and yet i can't seem to give it up - this big part just won't let go, it wants them to actually realize how hurt i was and am and for them to say sorry. plus, i know that they wish bean belonged to someone other than me. i know that they think i do things with bean ALL wrong and so, i lash out (just quietly but still lashing) and i open the wound up myself.

my mom, who has been SO supportive and without whom, i couldn't have made it, casually rips the scar off when she sees someone who knows what bean has been through and says jubilantly 'yep, she sure looks different than when she was STARVING to DEATH'. now, i KNOW that she isn't trying to hurt me, and i know that she's just happy that everything is going smashingly now, but still, i feel that blood start to pool.

so, hopefully, being an actress will give me a little time. just a little time for me to 'stay under cover' and for the wound to heal. hopefully, my lack of forgiveness won't turn into bitterness (though, if i'm honest, there is a definite sprout) and maybe even just writing this will allow me to begin to let go, even just a little.