Your Aunt Becky
I sat there, on my freshly cleaned couch (thank you o! gods of steam cleaners), in a group of my very best friends. We were eating the greasiest of greasy pizza, occasionally stopping to fetch a rogue binkie or wipe a dirty face. We laughed, talking about the times we’d shared, where our lives had randomly found us, pausing now and again to wipe tears from our eyes.
These people, my friends – my very best friends – they’d flown in from all over the country to celebrate my daughter’s birthday with me. They didn’t have to. I didn’t have to threaten them with a tube sock full of quarters. They did it because they wanted to be there with me, with us, together.
I’d never felt quite so at home in my living room.
It had been so long since I’d sat in my home, surrounded by people who know me as I am, fucked up bits and all, and laughed so hard that I was afraid I was going to whiz myself.
Seeing packages that my friends, my Pranksters, had sent for my daughter, knowing they’d cared enough to send her something for her third birthday, it reminded me of the connections. How lucky I’ve been to know so many wonderful people.
Because I am.
Lucky, that is.
Back when using the Internet cost approximately nine bucks a minute and I used it to fuck with people in chat rooms (oh, like you didn’t), I’d never really understood that there were people behind those words. Even as a blogger, back in 2003, the very notion that the words I hastily strung together would be read by another person was mind-boggling. I assumed my site was read by porn bots trying to increase my penis size, not living, breathing people (I assume that the un-dead don’t have internet access, but I could be mistaken).
I have never been so happy to be wrong. No, not about the un-dead.
When I get asked about making money blogging, after I stop laughing, I’m always a little bit…stung. Not because I don’t understand the desire to make a little cash on the side, but because to me, it’s not what it’s about.
I’ll take the friends I’ve made, the connections I’ve formed over a stack of cash any day.
A pony on roller skates, tho…well, maybe not so much.
A present from my very best friends who work with me on Band Back Together.
(if you’re a member of the Band and would like to vote for Band Back Together at the Weblog Awards, you may do so here. MWV is nominated too, which OMG, but The Band deserves the award for all of the bravery they’ve poured into our site.)
After obsessing (I’m being kind here) and beating my brain against the wall, trying to allow myself to get over that stupid lump in my throat and just. fucking. do. it, I manged to, this year, talk myself out of talking myself out of planning a birthday for Amelia.
(did you follow that? I barely did)
I had my reasons. They sounded good rolling around in my head. I had my convictions. I held onto them in my grubby ass hands like a bottle of vodka. I didn’t NEED to throw her a party for her – she’d be happy eating Mouse Pizza while I suffered epileptic fits near the pee-smelling ball pit as we all contracted some mysterious Oregon Trail Disease.
That much is true.
She couldn’t care less if we had a zillion people over or if we went and played SkiBall until my arm threatened mutiny. I know my daughter and that’s the truth (truth time – she’d prolly giggle if my arm did, in fact, fall off)(if my severed stump of an arm did fall off, tho, I’d like to hope it would get me 100,000 points on Skiball).
But I had to do it. It wasn’t for her. Or Alex. Or Ben. Or The Guy on my Couch. Or even The Daver.
It was for me.
It was a way to challenge myself to do something that I was entirely certain I couldn’t do. Something I wanted so badly to do. Something that meant well more than eating sugar until we passed out.
It meant that for one day – one single day – I could tell my demons to fuck off, go back to bed, and leave me be. I could drown my anxiety in my little girl’s smile. I could show the world that while I had been knocked down, I wasn’t planning to be knocked out any time soon. That my demons could threaten me all they want, but they weren’t going to stop me from living.
I did it.
It’s a small victory, for sure. A child’s birthday party isn’t exactly the penultimate of challenges, however, it was one. more. thing. I couldn’t properly do. If PTSD hadn’t taken enough away from me, it tried to take that, too.
I call bullshit.
Since throwing the party, it’s as though a minor weight has been taken off my shoulders. Certainly it’s not the first or last challenge I’ll face, of this I am entirely aware. But it is a challenge. And I took that challenge, stared it in the face, and told it that I was, in fact, going to beat it into submission, if I had to go eye of the motherfucking tiger on it to make it scream UNCLE.
It did.
I’m one step closer to kicking PTSD in the taco.
And that feels fucking great.
—————–
How do you battle YOUR demons, Pranksters?
(Also: Band Back Together (which I know many of you are a part of) as well as my own site were nominated for a Bloggie this year. If you’d like to vote for one of the many deserving nominees (myself not included), you can do so here.)
Ben, my oldest, has two baby books – TWO – devoted to his adorable chubby-cheeked ass. Everyone was all, “just wait until you have your SECOND kid – it’ll be lucky to have a single baby book.” (this was before anyone knew I’d be HAVING a second kid, so “it” was a perfectly fine way to refer to my yet-to-be-gestating child).
When I got pregnant with Alex, I was all “IMMA PROVE THEM WRONG, BITCHES.” So I went to one of those fancy sites where you can create your own baby book with an adorable cover and paid approximately four kidneys for the honor.
You can guess what happened.
His baby book looks remarkably like my own – a couple of pictures shoved inelegantly into a never-opened book. Sure, the site I’d signed up at would EMAIL me to remind me to fill out month six or whatever, but I’d quickly delete them before I got all mushily guilty about it (postpartum depression is a motherfucker).
Amelia, well, I spent most of my pregnancy with her determined that something was wrong, so I didn’t exactly feel comfortable buying a baby book for her (oddly, I was right). I figured that if the unborn fetus lived, I’d buy her a lavish baby book and begin to fill it with all kinds of pithy observations.
Ha.
Ha.
HA.
Okay, so that didn’t happen. Who saw THAT coming?
Stop laughing.
After successfully launching a party for my girl this weekend, I was all “I need some nice photo books!” Which is a huge statement coming from me – I’ve never printed a picture in my life, much less actually arranged them in some sort of “book” to “hold pictures.”
So I turned to The Twitter, to find myself a place to order photo prints. See, The Twitter solves EVERYTHING for me. From dispelling the “feed a cold, starve a fever” Old Wives Tale, to hysterically informing me that Notorious SNOMG is going to bury me and I will have to subsist, Donner-party style, upon my angsty cats, The Twitter does it all.
The Twitter was sadly divided about this particular dilemma. Some suggested snapfish. Others swore it was crap. Some suggested shutterfly. Others said it was crap. Most people said Walgreens did right by their photos.
I was, of course, confused. This was more information than my wee brain could possibly process!
So I visited the second site I listed (I am desperately NOT trying to sound like one of those annoying PR blogs) and saw I could make a photo book AND THEY WOULD SEND IT TO ME.
Oh.
Em.
Gee.
That’s awesome.
Except it tapped into the unused slightly OCD part of my lizard brain, each time I had to create a page, thus reminding me that scrapbooking would be the death of me (and not just from boredom). I’d be so screwed if I were a scrapbooker.
Because of the twenty pages that come with my book, I have completed ten. You’re all, HIGH FUCKING FIVE, AUNT MOTHERFUCKING BECKY, because ten sounds like a BIG FUCKING NUMBER.
Until I tell you that I’ve easily spent an hour on each page. Each. Fucking. Page.
Because if it’s not perfect, I know I will point it out to everyone that sees it (read: three people): “Lookit that stupid embellishment – it’s SO not right for that background.”
What, me neurotic?
NEVER.
If you need me, Pranksters, I will be trying to starve my fever by feeding it vodka and working on this baby book for my girl. Then, I must make one for her big brother.
THE POSSIBILITIES ARE ENDLESS.
Also: they may kill me.
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