had some–probably psychosomatic–scar-area pain;

but trends seem to indicate that it will hurt less each year.

Will I lose weight as I become more active in the weeks and months to come? Your guess is as good as mine. (Lord willing, with this move I will be getting healthier.)  But if I weigh myself again in two years and am not at least “overweight”, call the doctor, ’cause I’ll be dying.

As for now, I kinda like the ring of deathfat. Wheeeee!

That is the lesson I have learned.

Natural birth at its best glows up the whole experience with gobs of endorphins, a vast and powerful reward, maybe even encouragement to do the whole thing again someday. Well, I got that with my healing, wonderful free (FREE!) birth last August. I remember pushing her out, the joy and relief and the end of all pain. A world away from the pain-numb-cut-sleep-pain(and on and on) of the hospital-bound inaugural event of my motherhood.

But then came the battle. The belittlement. The home invasion. The threat.

“When I have a baby, bad things happen.”

And there are selfish reasons I want to wait now before getting pregnant again: Like, I enjoy being not pregnant, I want to have my body back post-breastfeeding for a while (whenever that is), and I want to try something besides the intensity of infant-parenting before going back to it again. Or, you know, I could just stop here. My parents had two children, and that worked out fine.

Beyond the selfishness, though, is the lesson learned. Bad things. I get cut, altered, depressed and want to die. Or people come to run my life and steal my kids.

Even as those bad things haven’t included loss of life, I take pregnancy and birth too seriously to think all will certainly be well. There’s that scarred womb hanging in there, being a riskier place for any life that tries to inhabit it. And I have tasted the freedom of a birth without bossiness, I don’t want to be in a position to have to make those decisions again knowing what I know about the way I labor and just how good it can be when undisturbed. I don’t want to love and lose, and I’m exhausted by the thought of taking that responsibility again. Oh, and if I get pregnant again, even with everything I know, I could still get cut. Again. Either by necessity or court order. I would rather die. (At least that’s how it feels right now.)

I hate both assaults on my births with a fiery passion and I cannot say that I am always doing well with loving the enemies who did the assaulting. I hate my scar so very much it invades the way I feel about my whole body. And I hate what the midwives and social services did to my confidence and to some of my friendships and to those precious months of my family’s life. I want to be done with assaults! I want to be done with this pain! And hey, I really would rather have been celebrated instead of humiliated [BOTH TIMES], but you can’t have everything, eh?

I’m looking forward to going home and getting my medal. And…the way through I see involves a break in this childbearing gig, but I am the Lord’s, and if he has other plans I will do my best to trust him to show me another way through. And hope…that He will change my tune, teach me more excellent lessons:

“When I have a baby, the forces of evil tremble and are enraged. Though they plot, though they attack, they do not prevail. God laughs at them as He comes to my aid, using everything meant as harm for good instead.”

What is missing in the Jerk and the Nice Guy is the recognition of a woman as a whole person with the right to say no for any (or no) reason, with a life encompassing more than her potential romantic relationships.

I’m sure I’ve heard about another way.

Treat younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, and younger women as sisters, with absolute purity.

In this context, a man who would follow God is called beyond [selfish, calculating] Niceness and into absolute purity. Treat women as mothers and sisters? Yeah, that changes things just a bit.

Not aiming this at anyone in particular. But I do have a son (who loves his sister and mother, so he’s off to a good start.) We’ll see how this goes.

A week from today is the last work night, and then we start moving out of the flat.

I’ve packed up my craft supplies (that’s what’s important, right?) and started taking apart the painted boxes, but clothes…oh clothes.

A handful of sizes and dozens of pounds past, and I don’t want to just dump them at a second-hand place. I came here [newly wed, happy, on the verge of growing up and learning and experiencing and yeah, getting hurt so much] with these clothes, and I’m leaving this place a different person.

Dumping the clothes feels like letting go of some of the last shreds of the girl who moved here nearly four years ago. Maybe that’s stupid, but it seems like a kind of grieving.

Of all the things to grieve, right? I am leaving family here, and friends. The first church I chose as my own. The flat where I gave birth. Rain and history and all the little things I won’t notice again until they’re gone.

And it all ends so quietly. One day at a time.

I’m going home!

To the place I lived the longest: over 12 years of my nearly 26 so far.
I’m going to the open arms of family and old friends. There is potential for making new friends, but knowing me that will take a while. Like, years. (While my husband will have a new gang in a few months, just you wait.)

I’m going with scars, fears, and fight. My heart is heavy as the government of my country eats and eats, more power, more control. I don’t want America to turn into the UK–there, I’ve said it!–with people seemingly so dependent on “help” redistributed right out of pockets all over the country, and “services” which are well-connected when they want to control and lousy when there’s an actual, useful job to be done.

I’m going home and there is so much to do! Give stuff away, pack up, settle bills, celebrate, say goodbye, fly away… All of which takes fifty times as long when looking after two little children, which is kinda my job.

I’m going home with examined expectations, hopes of settling once and for all. How surprising that it is turning out this way! I’m going home and I hope that it will actually be…home. What an adventure. What a risk.

In my waking I can dwell on what I will eat and drink and wear, and what the world will think of me because of these things. In my long night hours I can absorb…messages from someone. Will it be them, or him?

I am to be adorned not (only? at all?) with gold or braided hair, but with good deeds. Not giving way to fear.

What goes into my body doesn’t make me unclean, but what comes out of my heart can.

And I am glad that these long nights are numbered. They can do my head in.

You can’t pick your friend’s nose or your family tree. Or something.

The people we choose to associate ourselves with will probably share with us some common views of the world.

Thank God that we can pick our friends.

Thank God for blood ties stronger than politics.

And yes, the discussion of the First Lady’s anti “childhood obesity” campaign is political. Some people actually think the government and related elite have no business telling people how they should eat, move, and look.

Some people have a problem with the idea that fat = inactive, gluttonous, unhealthy, ignorant.

Some people are frightened that governments think people are so stupid that they cannot be trusted to raise their children without their help.

Some people take it personally. BECAUSE IT’S PERSONAL. It’s about my fat body, my son’s, my mother’s, my father’s. The stigmatization of “obesity” is unlike a campaign to cure a disease. “Obesity”, fatness, is a characteristic, a part of natural human diversity that tells you nothing about the fat person except that they are fat. Okay? The “war on obesity” is a war on me. You want to eradicate my fatness? How? Starve me? Make me exercise 4 hours a day? Or how about cutting up my digestive system? ‘Cause those are the options, and none of them is going to make me healthier, and none of them is guarantied to make and keep me a “normal” weight. And none of them is your choice.

What about “eating healthy” and exercising, you ask? Who says the fat person you see is a twinkie-stuffing, sedentary salad-hater? AND EVEN IF SHE IS…she certainly should not have to justify her existence to you, the First Lady, or anyone else. It’s for her health? Guess what, it’s her health. If she is a child being fed only twinkies, that’s another issue, but again…seeing a kid is fat does not give you special knowledge about why she is fat (hint, it’s usually not twinkies), and shaming her or her parents is not going to put you in a position to “help” anyway.

Oh my goodness, I wish the world wasn’t so stupid.

Yeah, I’m my own not-so-little fat rights champion, but it can get hard. Stop telling me it’s not personal. I’m not applying for a good fatty card. I’m not letting the government have my children. I’m not going to shut up.

I am, on the other hand, going to rock me some technicolor hair and a black trench coat. As soon as I can find one in my size.