single spaced.

So I finally went and did it and got rid of all records of my nemesis ever existing in my world.

This is on some MySpace-beef type shit so it really isn’t even worth writing about, but I know a lot of you normally level-headed women (especially new moms) were able to relate to me on some level about having that one sickeningly perfect and sentimental person you just wanted to erase from your lives. I tend to be a masochist about things like these, and I sometimes like to put myself in unbearable situations as a stupid way of testing my emotional endurance, but it’s gotten to the point where I just couldn’t take it anymore.

In a way, freeing myself from her kind of felt like finally throwing out the last remnants of a past relationship. This girl actually reminded me of one guy I dated in particular, around the time I was gearing up to move back to California in ‘03. He had broken up with me because he didn’t want to be held to a long distance commitment (though not before we split a trip for him to visit me on the West Coast, of course). But he kept pushing this whole “Let’s Stay Friends” thing with me for months on end, playing the angle like I was a weak person if I didn’t keep up the “friendship.” But all he ever did was call me or email me to talk about himself and how awesome his life was going — his new girlfriend just moved in with him, he got his Masters degree, he self-published a book of his crappy poetry, he started a business with his best friend, he traded in his Lincoln Navigator for a Benz, and my favorite, “I just got married in Vegas and I thought about you the whole time!” — never once asking me with any sincere interest about how I was doing. He just wanted somebody to brag to.

So one day I asked myself, “If we never started dating, would I actually want to be friends with this guy?” He was the kind of guy who drank to oblivion on Saturday night and was up at the church on Sunday morning criticizing everyone about walking the righteous path. He once made me miss one of my best friend’s going-away parties because he couldn’t stand to be in the same room as a gay person. And he missed payments on his truck to buy rims for them. The answer to my question was a glaring NO, and if anything, I wanted to slap myself for even dating him in the first place. I’ve been ignoring his emails for four straight years and he’ll still send me a message on MySpace every six months.

As for my nemesis, I don’t want to be the kind of asshole to get into specifics here but she was basically a real life Disney Princess: a beautiful, self-exoticized, size-2 girl who was helpless until her husband came and swept her off her feet and “completed” her, and now she was living pretty as the biblical perfect wife. She represented both the feminine ideal and the orientalist fantasy that I’d spent my entire life’s work up until now trying to smash, and trying to share intimate details of our lives with each other only made me feel unfeminine and unpretty and basically not good enough.

I just had an online pal remind me that you never really know what people are hiding behind their portraits of perfection. At first, I really tried turning this energy into something productive, hoping maybe hearing endlessly about how much better this person’s life was than everyone else’s would inspire me to clean up my act, get skinnier, work harder, do whatever it was that would make me feel like I was on her level. But I’m really not the competitive type. Aside from baptising Hugga Bunch this weekend, I’ve only ever done things to make myself happy, and trying to keep up with the nemesis just made me miserable. And why would any self-respecting woman do that to herself?

When I really thought about it, she wasn’t even the kind of person I saw myself being friends with in the real world anyway. In her world, if I kept allowing myself to be part of it, she’d always be holier and prettier and have better things. And the truth was, there wasn’t really all that much to clean up in my life. I may not be model material, and I may not have somebody taking care of me but I’m okay with that. As a matter of fact, I take pride in the fact that I take care of business for myself and I’m not physically perfect. Boyfriend is a good dude, Hugga is a happy kid, my family is still mad supportive, and my job is pretty sweet. To borrow a metaphor from Ludacris, I’m on the top floor and she should get on my level.

For some reason, whether it’s because of the hormones or because “mother” seems to be the one job everyone loves to criticize endlessly, self-esteem issues seem to get so much more serious when you have a kid. The outside world can be pretty ruthless in challenging and beating down your values as a mom and as a woman, so on the brighter side of things, if the responsibility is taken seriously, then becoming a mother can slowly force you to believe in yourself and your own instincts.

On a tip completely unrelated (or at least only marginally related) to parenting for once…

I’ve had my MacBook since March and I’ve done little more on it besides load up my iPod and iPhone and surf the internet.

Given how anal retentive I was about my little beloved Toshiba Satellite, and given the fact that I work as a web developer, I’m way out of my comfort zone here. Most of my family works in computer engineering so my machine was always up on the latest must-have software. Most of the shit I didn’t even need — obviously this blog stays low maintenance without the use of Dreamweaver, and I don’t even know how to use Photoshop outside of the really basic adjusting functions — but having them installed on my machine just made me feel better, somehow. Like they could help me increase my productivity when I finally got around to being productive.

There was nothing wrong with that machine, so it wasn’t like I absolutely needed a new computer. I wouldn’t say I bucked under the pressure of Boyfriend, a die-hard Apple dude, but he made bangin on a Mac look like so much fun. Since I already had an iPhone and iPod, it seemed like it’d be so much easier to sync them all together on a Mac (it is). I imagined myself perfectly organizing Hugga Bunch’s photos by month and compiling all kinds of movies (apparently, I also imagined the MacBook would create more hours in a day and train my baby to nap for longer periods of time). And as ashamed as I am to admit it, I honestly thought having a new toy would get me to write more.

But Macs don’t come standard with a word processing software besides a barebones something that’s basically Notepad. Maybe Windows machines don’t either, but I just didn’t notice because somebody I knew always had a bootlegged copy of Office available. Also, did you even realize that Adobe software costs like $9,000? Anyway, I started researching all the suites available for Mac OSX when it dawned on me…

I’m not in school anymore!

It was a feeling very similar to the one I have every time I realize I’m actually a parent now, that another person will be entirely dependent upon me for the next eighteen years and my lack of free time will not magically fix itself. (In all honesty, when you’re busy and you’re making a mental list of things to do, you’d be surprised at how easily you forget to factor in naps or feeding times or how often your baby needs to have her diaper changed.)

But this time, the feeling was actually freeing. I am (for the most part) master of my own fate! If all goes according to my plan, then I’ll never have to make another PowerPoint presentation for as long as I live! I’ll never again have to use my own computer to maintain spreadsheets and figure out how to make a new type of chart for one stupid report every six months!

All I needed was a word processor; and preferably one that could handle footnotes, could format documents to fit a half-size zine page (in case I ever felt the urge to do it again), and was easily compatible with MS Word files. Boyfriend brought home iWork last night, and I plan on putting it to work over the weekend. I’m kind of miffed that it can’t default save to .doc, but beggers can’t be choosers I guess. It’s something.

———-

That said, to jumpstart the engine, I’ve been reading a lot of books, both in the pump room and whenever Hugga naps or plays on her own. Obviously I enjoy reading in and of itself, but I’ve also been mining for ideas and just getting a feel for what’s getting sold and what kind of writers can get on these days. Also, it keeps the TV off. I’ve been especially big on essays on nonfiction works lately. My observations as follows:

• I can’t remember my exact reasoning, but somewhere along the line I decided I don’t like Chelsea Handler, and I’ve found myself avoiding her books at all costs. I think it had something to do with an Asian joke and her seeming to be aggressively irritating, even though I’ve never actually watched her on TV. The author of Sippy Cups are Not for Chardonnay and Other Things I Had to Learn as a New Mom dropped her name as a friend of hers, which was kind of a turn-off, but surprisingly, I’m still finding the book to be a hilarious read.
• That said, books about the “realness” of motherhood all seem to come from the same demographic: married white women in their 30’s (who are usually also well-established in their careers as editors and columnists). Not that this automatically makes for dry reading — I thought The Second Nine Months was pretty okay — but aside from the frustration of not always instinctually knowing what to do with this new creature, I find I have a hard time relating. Also, as Cel had pointed out, it seems the media has a very narrow view of all young, unwed mothers of color as irresponsible, uneducated “ghetto trash,” assuming that our kids are growing up without fathers (and less in a “there is a problem that we need to help solve” kind of way than a “these girls are dumb and there’s no helping them” kind of way). No doubt there are some very real issues directly related to teen pregnancy in many communities of color — Filipino Americans included — but I can name at least a dozen women off the top of my head bunking that stereotype, and yet it seems we’re still more conveniently viewed as the exception to the rule.
• Sloane Crosley’s I Was Told There’d Be Cake was recommended to me by a friend as a study of how to get on. She seems relatively young for already having a New York Times Bestseller under her belt, but her push seems to come from all the popular online stops she’s written for before putting out this book. And I only find myself reading it in between other books — it stays in my desk drawer at work and only comes out when I’ve forgotten to bring the book I’m really reading from home. These days I don’t like saying bad things about writers who can actually finish a work, but it was filed in the Humor section of BN and it’s not really that funny. But from the jacket, Sloane Crosley appears to be very pretty.

To completely contradict what I said in my last post, I went to my first Pumping Mom’s Support Group lunch at work today, and as much as I appreciate the other pumping moms I work with, I kind of felt like a loser.

I have a confession to re-make: my pushing myself to breastfeed Hugga until she is a year old is more about myself than it is about her. Actually, I’d say it’s probably 90% about me. All the literature suggests it’s best for your baby and breastfeeding strengthens their immune system, and so far my baby has been pretty good at fighting off infections, but in my right mind I know she’d do just fine on formula. I mean, I like breastfeeding and I love the bond I feel with my Hugga, but I’m tired of stressing the fuck out over my pump output. I’m fairly confident she’d be fine if I didn’t worry half as much as I do about everything having to do with her health. Still, I remain a slave to the double-electric pump for the same reason I act like I’m genuinely interested in researching staggered vaccination schedules: because I’m afraid I’d be a bad mother if I didn’t.

Also, I was not so meticulous about sticking to my birth plan as were the moms in my support group, apparently. Two of the other moms had their births planned to the core, withstood relatively average labors without the use of painkillers, and they still had complaints (mostly having to do with the hospital folk not respecting their plan). Seemed to me like all that planning set them up for disappointment, but to be fair, they dealt with some complications in previous pregnancies. They had ideas of birthing their next children in bathtubs with midwives, but that’s kind of icky to me.

I printed up a birth plan using an online app mostly just to humor myself. It was a fun visualization exercise for me, and I really only did it in response to all the horror stories I’d hear from other women about their labors, but I still kept a lot of the important decisions up to the doctor. I wasn’t going to plan on refusing painkillers only to beat myself up later on if I needed them. I never gave birth before and I almost blacked out when I got my nose pierced — I was not about to bet on surviving the pain of passing a child. Besides, when I told my aunt that I was thinking about not doing painkillers, she said, “You’re fucking crazy.”

Did I ever tell you the details? I worried about the worst stuff in the world happening, even the possibility of Boyfriend having to deliver in case we got stuck in traffic on the way to the hospital (which actually almost happened), but my labor pretty much went by the book. My water broke at 3:30 in the afternoon and Hugga was out in the world and crying by 7:20, just in time for dinner.

The fact that it was a natural birth was totally luck of the draw. As soon as we walked through the hospital doors I demanded they pump me with painkillers, but everything was happening too fast and too many tests needed to be done to determine whether or not it was safe. So even though I brag at every chance I get about giving birth naturally, I feel like kind of a fraud. Unless I was absolutely sure my next kid(s) would be born in the same amount of time or less, I probably wouldn’t plan on doing it again. I’m a little hard-pressed to admit this, but I am all about the miracles of modern medicine.

Also, another confession: I worry that I don’t worry enough. I used to worry a lot, a very unhealthy amount, when I was still reading all the baby-raising manuals. But ever since I burned them, my worrying has cut down significantly. Since Hugga was born, we’ve only made three after-hours calls to the doctor. Granted, I have a cousin who’s just gone through all the new-parent worrying (his daughter was a preemie) and he always seems to have an answer whenever I casually mention a concern. But one time he made me feel bad because Hugga had a red mark on her cheek and instead of assuming she was having an allergic reaction, I easily figured it was from Boyfriend’s stubble when kissing her and didn’t think it was pressing enough to call the doctor. Anyway, I ended up being right, but I resented my amount of parental concern being questioned.

I also have to say that my attitude about co-sleeping/crying-it-out is pretty much on par with my attitude about breastfeeding. Not to say that I don’t love waking up next to my little one, but lately I’ve been keeping it going mostly because she cries whenever I leave the room and the books equate letting your child cry with neglect and abuse, and I’m also afraid it’ll kill my milk supply if I don’t let her nurse at night, making it two for the lose. But tell me, experienced moms, am I really setting my daughter up to hate me for the rest of her life if I let her cry for a few nights in her own crib? Will this forever scar her and weigh her down with abandonment issues the way all the Attachment Parenting folks suggest? Cause I actually really miss having sex with Boyfriend and not having to wake up three times a night to switch sides.

Conversely, just because we haven’t put her in her crib yet, does this mean she’ll be sleeping in our bed until she’s twenty, the way the other parenting books suggest?

Every time I voice a new concern, or insist that Hugga’s food must be organic and that all of the meat that comes into our house is hormone-free, my mom looks at me like I was just beamed from a space ship. It seems I was raised on formula and Froot Loops and I turned out just fine. And trust me, it isn’t in me to be one of these cultish AP lactivists. Sometimes I feel like I’m being held hostage by the Touchy Feely Parenting Militia. I’m tired of fronting: I’m addicted to Big Macs and Nike sneakers and high fructose corn syrup. And when Hugga is content sitting in her Pack N Play on her own, I catch up on MySpace instead of read to her or engage her in constructive play.

There’s nothing I’d love more than to pass the threshold of fear into freedom and just put Hugga in her crib and feed her formula and be cool with it, and just watch her grow up to be a well-adjusted child.

Am I really becoming the nightmare parent I promised myself I’d never be?

I started casually researching some local magnet schools, figuring it doesn’t hurt to get a head start on caring about Hugga’s education. I just started thinking how cool it would be if she could go to a more ethnically diverse school with smaller classrooms and concentrations on the arts or global relations or science or whatever, based on her own personal strengths and interests, and for free.

So started the casual researching. I’m really not looking to hold her hand throughout her academic career, but I can’t help but think about how much easier it would’ve been to concentrate on school if I wasn’t so worried about getting beat up or made fun of on a day to day basis, and I’d kind of like to give Honeybee better odds. But we live in the town we do (the one I grew up in) for the specific purpose of its pretty good public school system, so it wouldn’t be a terrible thing if Hugga went to the same schools I did growing up — after all, I’d argue I turned out pretty okay. And from the looks of it, our town is a little more ethnically diverse than it was when I was a kid.

That said, I saw this article on CNN today. A few weeks ago I saw that some young non-parents had some choice criticisms for parents who let their children play outside unsupervised when there are all sorts of horrible things going on in the outside world like kidnappings and school shootings and people being bullied and whatnot. I mean, no doubt we live in a different world these days, but is it really that necessary to equip a ten-year-old kid with a cell phone?

I talk a big game about being sheltered for most of my childhood. Honestly, my dad was as strict as parents come. He listened on the phone and forced me to hang up if he found out I was talking to a boy (unless it was my gay bff). I was never allowed to sleep over at friends’ houses. And even in our suburb, my field of play was no larger than a three block radius (though, I’d argue, I was still allowed to play outside without parental supervision while I was a kid). He even made me carry a beeper regularly when I was in high school (though I technically wasn’t allowed to turn it on until school let out), and he gave me the family cell phone when I went out to the mall with friends. My friends totally didn’t understand and everybody at school thought I was weird because my dad was so strict. How is this the norm these days?

Boyfriend and I have talked about the cell phone thing as much as we can talk about it so far, being that Hugga is only seven months and can’t actually talk yet. Speaking from my own experience, I never actually needed any of the precautionary measures my dad equipped me with — the beeper was kind of pointless, as its usefulness was dependent on access to a phone, and I often wouldn’t answer my dad’s annoying pages, citing the excuse, “There were no payphones around!” And my dad’s whole philosophy behind giving me a phone or beeper (as seems to be the case with most parents these days) was not about giving me a way to reach him when I was in trouble, but giving him a way to reach me so he could know where I was at all times. And I still managed to skip class a ton to smoke up with my friends, so how good did that do him?

MySpace and Columbine and 9/11 have undeniably changed the world in which we live. It’s definitely a creepier atmosphere these days, but do bad things actually happen to kids at a significantly higher rate than they did back in the day, or are we just more likely to hear about it when it does happen, thanks to the internet and 24-hour news networks? Everything you hear about on the news unabashedly encourages parents to exert tighter control over their kids, rather than equip their kids with the necessary know-how to get themselves out of a jam — or better yet, the wisdom to not get themselves in a jam in the first place. Kids will always and forever find a way to escape their parents’ control, the problem is they don’t come up with enough damn sense to know not to trust just anyone they meet online.

[Sidebar: it's kind of funny, but Boyfriend came home from work one day talking about how some lady came in complaining that a particular internet-accessing MP3 device she bought for her son did not come with parental controls. When asked why she didn't just buy her son one of the numerous MP3 players available that didn't have access to the internet, she answered, "Because this is what my son wanted!" Maybe the parents are the ones without any damn sense these days.]

I know it’s a little premature for me to have such strong opinions on this — after all, we don’t even need to have rules in the house yet. But I already know a GPS tracking device is just way too Big Brother for our household. And one of the CNN.com commenters had it right: if you let your child constantly depend on you to figure things out for them and to bail them out of difficult situations, then how are they ever gonna learn how to figure things out on their own?

I’m as terrible a worry-wort as they come. And I knew before Hugga was born that I was basically going to live the rest of my life in worry and heartache. I knew the desire to protect her from all the scary things in the world would nearly consume me. Cause anyway, how am I ever going to know that I’m teaching her the right things until she actually finds herself in a jam?

But what kind of horrible parent would I be if I were so spent by my fears that I’d deprive her of the greatest experiences growing up and not even allow her to play outside?

This is no walk in the park. Being a mom is, for the most part, thankless. I do the best I can, work full-time, pump three times a day, and try to get enough rest for Hugga’s sake, and usually the only indicator that I’m doing a decent job at all is seeing her smile when I come home from work. There are no pats on the back or A+’s or trophies or cakes.

Boyfriend still gets mad at me for slacking on my share of the housework, some bills still fall through the cracks, the yard goes to shit, I haven’t seen my friends in months, my writing career remains to be birthed at all, and I still haven’t caught up on sleep. I’m not Susie Homemaker, I’m not Wifey of Your Dreams, I’m not MILF-status. My best is nowhere close to being good enough, and much of the time, I don’t even look cute doing it. I usually look chubby and much like I just rolled out of bed.

It hurts, and sometimes I feel that the people who are closest to me are the ones setting me up for failure, whether they mean to or not. Admittedly, many times it’s crossed my mind to just give up, though I don’t even know what “giving up” would mean. Martyring myself? Giving up any goals and dreams I had for myself? Running off to some far off place and never looking back? Deciding never to get out of bed again? It feels like a marathon pity party and, while my tiring-ass life has gotten me here, while I wish Boyfriend and I could just stop fighting about these little things, and while I wish somebody would just give me a damn cake for once and tell me I’m the sexiest bitch on the planet, lately I’ve just been tired of feeling sorry for myself.

What makes everything so difficult, much more difficult than need be, is the little devil inside that tears me down at any opportunity. I could take the fights with Boyfriend so much better, and every little failure wouldn’t feel like The Failure to End All Failures if this creature wasn’t there.

There will always be chores to do, no matter how spotless the house is. There will always be something for Boyfriend and I to fight about, no matter how happy we are or how long we’ve been togeether. And I’ll always make my nemesis out to be better than me, no matter how much of an idiot she really is. This is my new life. But the only person who gets the big Fuck-You by giving up on myself is… well, me.

More than anything, now, I feel that hunger. While I’m glad that my job puts me in my “desired field,” it’s not enough anymore. I wanted to make something happen a few years ago when I moved to Cali and none of that has changed. I want people to know I’m here, that I’ve got things to say that people would be interested in, and I want these people to hear me.

I think more than that, I just want to have faith in myself for once, to say that I’m awesome and really, truly believe it.