My post section body

I take mincing steps, like a foot-bound lady of long-ago China, but only on my right leg.

I feel bruised, and to see no discoloration where there is such purple-green soreness is disturbing.

There is no where for my waistband to go without weirdness--either right on the scar like a hot rubber band with spikes, or up too high like some wedgey havin nerd.

I can no longer arch my back, for the front is so tight and shrunken from the mincing steps, anything beyond straight posture is just disconcerting ripping and heat.

I do not want the front of me touched, period. Too nervous, too tickly, too sore, too disconnected,too numb, too afraid, too wounded, too gross, too much.

I dream of walking around town safe and secure in a suit of armor, stainless steel, 1/2 and inch thick, something like a girdle, from the bottom of my ribs to the tops of my thighs, strong and thick and protective...no grocery cart handles or childrens hugs or car doors or blue jeans or seat belts or shelving units or fridge doors could ever hurt and shock and scare and embarrass me then, not with my metal protector on...

I wait for the entire part of me, the whole numb prickly blobby demented fat blob of it all to float away, fall off, dry up, shrink down, crack off, get better, go back the way it was, heal, die, leave me please please please.

I fantasize about a "tummy tuck", and would feel great victory and pleasure in seeing the entire fucking thing in the garbage can at the surgery clinic. The whole bloody thing they cut off, I wanna see it. No blue sheet to block my view this time.

(Numb me up enough and I'd do it myself.)

I get to enjoy useless Mommy-guilt at not being glad enough for my children or however that rhetoric goes. It infuriates me, this dismissive and limited idea that I could not simultaneously love and adore my children AND despise what I am left with corporeally. This is just more and more and more of the same old double standard shit I touch upon in past posts---NOBODY TELLS NON-MOTHERS TO "BE GLAD" WHEN THEY HAVE SUFFERED. Its always the mothers who have to cheer up or shut up. You're scaring the others...you're delusional...just please be gladder...who cares if you weren't able to do one single thing on the post operative instructions list because you were completely alone in the hospital and once you got home, completely alone with all four children all day all night forever and ever and couldn't heal "right"...please be glad...

Like a bad bad mommy, i do not feel joy or pride when i live my life with this lumpy pinchy flap of fucked up pain, my babies showed no signs of distress, not for one second, and so I do not gaze upon my midsection and feel whatever it is that the thought police say I should feel---gratitude, love, amazement--no, my post section tummy symbolizes for me, deepest physical and mental isolation, mute and helpless pain, learning exactly where I stood in my familial and social circle when and if I ever suffer great bodily injury, fear and danger for my future, fear of sports or high speed travel, scarlet-black regret, and the impossibly heavy pressure to have experienced my own life experience differently...

So what am I left with here, where can I forge some nice firm closurey-conclusions out of this oily basin of quicksand? How does one form anything out of grey clouds;
I may or may not have been a failure. My baby may or may not have needed this. I may or may not have excessive or inappropriate pain. I may or may not have been a burden to others. I may or may not have scared the nice neighbor girl who loved her section. I may or may not have this done to me again. I may or may not receive any care or support afterwards again. I may or may not ever feel better or whole or healed. I may or may not piss off the "community". My pain and sadness may or may not offend, disturb, annoy, disappoint, confuse, or bother others. I may or may not ever be heard. This may or may not matter.

Tomorrow, I'll go put on some nice jeans and buckle up my nice seat belt and for heavens sake be nice about it. But it doesnt help me, it really doesnt. I wonder if they have at-home novocaine shots, and if that would help. I wonder if the tummy tuck and the throwing in the garbage can of my entire midsection would help. I wonder if some natural healer thingy that I could never afford like a deep tissue massage would rip me all up and cause me to hemmorage, or if it would release the tension or the adhesions or the nerves.

My all time favorite "advice": Dont live in the past. I wonder if the sick-knobs who keep telling me this can explain to me how my daily life and my future is "the past"??????????????????????

Its really really ok to tell someone who is really hurting that you are sorry that they are having sucky pain. And it really really is ok to tell someone that you are sorry they were abandoned. It really really is ok to go forward and help other mothers when they have their babies, and it really really is ok to just accept someone elses personal experience without putting your own judgemental spin on it. If it helped, to bark at people to MOVE FORWARD, buck up, cheer up, be glad, be gladder, shut up, squelch your self squelch your truth then yeah, I guess Id see it as some kind of tough love thing. BUT IT DOESNT WORK. IT DOESNT WORK. IT ONLY DOES ONE THING, AND IT DOES IT VERY SWIFTLY: IT TEACHES THE PERSON WHO IS HURTING THAT THEY SHOULD HAVE NOT DISCUSSED THIS WITH YOU. thats all it does. thats all it can do.