Working Through

Right now I'm sitting in a hot bath while my husband tends the little one. Yes, you heard right: I'm in the bath. Don't ask how I'm typing this in the bath. Just know that I'm in no danger of electrocution...I think.

I've spent most of today trying to catch up on my obligations. For those of you who don't know me well or haven't guessed yet, I'm generally a terrible procrastinator. The occasional bout of depression doesn't help that, either. Or my irrational paranoia of making phone calls. Oh, I can dial family and friends for casual chats just fine--it's calling the doctor's office or the DMV that gives me pause. I'll almost always put off business calls for as long as possible. How bad is my procrastination in this area? Well, I haven't seen a dentist in at least five years....

(Go ahead and say, "Yikes!" I won't be offended.)

But this year I unintentionally made a New Years resolution to tie up all my loose ends. That meant saying "no" to new projects, like translating a Japanese technical manual into English for a friend. It was a paid project, too. I just knew I wouldn't finish it, no matter how much he paid me per page. And taking on that project would have kept me from completing my novel and sending out the last dozen "Thank You" cards to friends who had purchased baby gifts for William. In November. Thankfully, I've wrapped up those two things and have moved on to searching for literary agents to represent my novel. So far I've queried 10 agents and received 3 rejections. (Getting published is a long and bitter process.)

In the meantime, I'm trying to talk out my feelings with my husband, which appears to work for about two days before I'm back to square one. He came home briefly this evening in an edgy mood, which sent my ever-tenuous mood plunging straight into the gutter. He recovered his good humor about 10 minutes later and went back to being his affectionate self, while I spent the next few hours stewing in silence and being irked by his little attentions. In my mind it's just not fair! I'm in a war with my psyche and my biology (and losing), I'm not exactly thrilled by the sight of my post-pregnancy body in the mirror, I can't fully satisfy anyone under this roof no matter what I do, I'm overwhelmed by the guilt of it all and crazy with frustration, and it seems I can't get my husband to truly understand any of this no matter how I explain it.

Sometimes I feel so angry I could just smash things.

And every time a cat walks on me in the middle of the night, or William spits up on a fresh change of clothes, or I watch my husband compulsively scrub and reorganize the kitchen for the FIFTH time when he STILL hasn't cleaned our bathroom like he offered to do TWO WEEKS AND SEVERAL SHAVES AGO, I feel my anger growing. Yet I don't feel free to express my anger, so I keep it to myself.

I know it's not healthy.