new order

Well, internets, it seems things are finally starting to shake down in the mind of annacyclopedia. I’ve had a few realizations about why it’s been hard for me to write since getting knocked up, and I’m really hoping that this will help shake loose a flood or even a steady trickle of words from my brain.  I realized the other day that I was holding back from writing about the pregnancy partly because I don’t think it’s that interesting – I’m no different from any other pregnant woman out there who feels tired, nauseous, incredulous, freaked out, bloated, awe-struck, whatever. But also partly because I was having a blog-dentity crisis.

When I started blogging, I was desperate to find others whose stories were just like mine. I combed the blogrolls, searching for my own story told by someone else. The more similar, the better, I thought. And surprise, surprise – there weren’t very many. I found other DI blogs, which was so great, but nobody had gone through a failed vasectomy reversal and gone straight to DI. To this day I don’t think I’ve found anyone whose story matches mine on those points. But I don’t care anymore, because I very quickly realized that it truly doesn’t matter – that the sense of community and belonging I found here in the blogosphere has little, if anything, to do with how similar someone’s story is to mine. Instead, it’s about something way harder to describe – it’s the heart connections that happen the same way they happen in real life. Mysteriously, instinctively, spontaneously –  through the little jokes that I tell that someone actually gets, or the casual mention by a blogger I already read that they love a particular band, or share a particular interest of mine, or the way a woman I admire to the point of being intimidated gives me a shout-out or sends me a sweet, supportive email out of the blue.  The way some of you have taken the time to tell me that my words have made a difference for you, in some small way. The way the guts of our experience – spiritual, emotional, physical, political, intellectual – get shared either through brilliant, detailed exposition or revealing little aphoristic posts so crammed with truth they leave me breathless for minutes or hours or days. 

If all of this sounds incredibly self-centred, it is. For me, blogging has been about finding a place where I belong, where I can tell my own story and be heard and understood. I do it because it is about me.  And in some way, I think that’s true of all of us. At the very least, that’s what draws me in – the appeal of women all over the world, trying to understand themselves and their lives by writing their own stories and releasing them like a cage of doves. 

Somehow, getting knocked up and trying to write about it, I forgot all that. I got caught in the belief that my blog is for other people who might need it, and I feared hurting those women who were like me at the beginning – desperate for a mirror of their own experiences. I didn’t want to have the story someone needed to hear, only to have them show up on my blog and be faced with a post about about stretch marks and the alarming growth of my ass. I didn’t want to let that woman down.

How’s that for wanky and delusional and self-aggrandizing?

I’ve realized that my blog is for telling my story. Plain and simple. That my story now includes being pregnant and hopefully becoming a mother to a healthy and adorable baby. And while I don’t have an obligation to tell it, I do have a desire to tell it, as much for myself as for anyone else. My blog archives are some of the most precious things in my life – it is so powerful being able to look back at a record of who I have been, of what I’ve come through, of what has healed and what remains to be healed.

I realized, too, that while I don’t struggle with feelings of guilt about being pregnant, I was wrestling with some weird stuff about talking about being pregnant. I know that everyone who doesn’t get or stay pregnant easily has their moments of anger and sadness over others’ pregnancies; I’ve had plenty of such moments myself. For some reason, I was taking that on, and trying to protect those of you who are still waiting and trying and hoping. Again with the self-aggrandizing.  I finally remembered that even though I’ve had times when hearing someone else’s good news has been painful, there are lots of times when it’s brought me joy and hope, and that my reactions are largely random, i.e. that sometimes I’m able to be thrilled for a virtual stranger and yet am plunged into despair over my own sister’s pregnancy announcement. And also that all of you dear readers have free will and can click away anytime you want, with my blessing and support. 

So this post is to declare a new order here on my blog. That although I probably will never talk about pregnancy symptoms in great detail, I will no longer be holding back. I’m claiming this space as my own even though it always was. I just forgot. 

Blog-dentity crisis over.