I was warned that the recovery from the abdominoplasty would be hard. The pain, I expected. I didn’t expect it to be so long, so omnipresent and I didn’t expect that I’d frequently say, “holy fuck, I miss my abdominal muscles.”

But when my surgeon suggested that I might have some postpartum depression-ish feelings during my recovery, I sort of dismissed it. Not that I hadn’t had postpartum depression (hell, I’d had antenatal depression, that’s depression DURING pregnancy), just that it hadn’t been the sort of surgery that I’d been building up in my head for MONTHS or anything.

I kept the possibility in the back of my mind.

And after three weeks on the couch, I realized that I was getting pretty depressed. I don’t sit around well. I’m a terrible patient. I hadn’t expected the recovery to take so long. I ran out of help and couldn’t bring myself to ask for more. I was in pain all of the time. And furthermore, I just didn’t feel very good.

When I don’t feel very well, I get sensitive. When I get sensitive, I don’t feel like writing. When I don’t feel like writing, I get depressed.

For the first time in my incredibly mediocre blogging “career*” I felt stifled. After a couple semi-personal attacks, I simply didn’t feel like writing on my blog. I was tired of feeling like I had to defend my life.

I think therein lies the crux of blogging: we write about ourselves and our lives and that’s what brings people in. But sometimes, when we spill our secrets and expose our underbelly, it’s almost impossible not to open ourselves up to an attack. When they happen, what then? Knowing you have a legion of people out there rooting for you to fail, how do you continue?

I’ve been thinking about that all week.

It’s made me really sad, too, because I love what I do. I’ll never achieve fame and fortune, but I do have a Band of Merry Pranksters who (mostly) understand me and that’s always been more than enough. Telling stories, making people laugh, making people cry, stringing all of my words into sentences that flow into paragraphs; telling stories, that is what I do. Without it, I don’t know who I am.

So there is my answer. I will keep doing what I do because that is what I do. I’m not about to let anybody stop me from doing what I love. When I stop blogging, it’ll be because I choose to stop, not because I feel frustrated or full of the sads.

My life isn’t on trial here. It’s not open for debate.

And moreover, I’m nobody’s bitch.

*career is used VERY loosely** here.

**after seeing “loose” misused as “lose” for so long, it looks bizarre now.

This has been the longest time that I’ve had to sit around and do nothing while I wasn’t acutely dying and/or pregnant (I don’t handle pregnancy very well) and I’ll be honest that I haven’t exactly been a model citizen to anyone I live with. While some people may long for the time when they can sit around like a banana slug, I will tell you that I am not that person. It’s always been my biggest nightmare (besides being stuck in an episode of 7th Heaven) that I become stuck in bed for days on end.

I’m not exactly in bed but I am wearing a healthy ass-groove into the couch. I sort of fear for the moment that I am released from the couch because I’m deathly afraid that I will go leaping off into the wilderness wearing a tinfoil hat screaming “THEY’RE AFTER MEEEE!”

There is one sliver of good that has come of this whole “sitting around like a cockroach” and that’s that it’s forced me to consider things like, “who is the best detective on Law and Order?” and “How can I hate The Who so much?” and “How can I take better care of my blog?”

The latter sounds douchier than it should, but this is the year of Bringing Aunt Becky Back. My blogging cohorts all seem to be a bit better business-people than I ever have been, and I was sitting there on the couch, the voice of the motivational speaker from Dexter echoing in my head, “TAKE IT!” Trust me, it’s creepy as hell.

I’ve been saying that if I can’t make it as a writer (hel-lo shitty market!)(read: hel-lo shitty writer!), I’ll try and make it as a blogger.

So that’s what I’m doing.

I parted ways with my ad company, I’m selling my own ads and I’m making some changes on my bloggity-blog. Most of all, I’m trying to get motivated to do more.

Why?

Because this is what I do. This is what I love to do. And I needed to remind myself that I am worth it. I need to take myself seriously as a business-person, even if I don’t own the powersuit and sensible heels.

If I don’t take what I do here seriously, why would anyone else?

As female/mommybloggers, people don’t take us very seriously anyway and we all know that’s bullshit. But how are people supposed to take us seriously if we don’t take what we do with some semblance of seriousness? I don’t mean like we need to play our “We Are Women Hear Us Roar” records and dance around the room but I do mean that we are mighty and we are many and we should act like we deserve the power we have. We need to own it.

And I am. One thing at a time.

——————

Here’s where I’m asking you, Pranksters, The Question. The question of the ages (that’s a lie).

I pulled down my blogroll while I revamp it (= it’s gone right now) and I’m wondering honestly what you think of my blogroll. I’m adding a poll and I’d love your comments. Do I bother revamping it and putting it back? Do you guys like having it? I kind of do, but I get upset sometimes because non-Pranksters will be all, PUT ME ON YOUR BLOGROLL, BITCH, and then I realize they’re using me for the free real estate.

Oh, and I will always keep it as an open-door policy, meaning it won’t ever be just like 5 people on it. Does that change your opinion of it?

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Rad, yo.

In order for this to make sense, you have to read this post first.

Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

…

…

…

Done?

Okay.

So, that plan didn’t quite work out. I shouldn’t have expected it to.

Let me back up a moment.

I’ve been in terrible pain for so long that I cannot remember when I wasn’t. I’ve had daily migraines since Amelia was born, something that I’d had off and on before that. I take a drug called Topamax (I lovingly call it “The Max,” when I’m feeling especially jaunty) to treat them, but it leaves me feeling a bit blurry.

The muscles spasms I have in my back, neck and shoulders are relatively new, and they trigger the migraines that The Max once blurrily held at bay. Through a mixture of muscle relaxants, pain medication, and daily chiropractic appointments, I’ve managed to keep them decently under control.

The pain has made me excruciatingly depressed. It makes me feel broken that “something is always wrong” with me. My friends tease me about it. I hate it because deep inside, I fear that they’re right. I’m irrevocably broken.

Because nothing can go according to plan, it’s no surprise that the surgeon took one look at my breasts and said that while they were, in fact, large, the insurance company would deny my reduction. It wouldn’t be enough tissue removed to meet their arbitrary criteria. I could, of course, fight it, appeal it, and in the end, perhaps get it covered. But, he also warned, I’d also probably want a lift and restructuring of the breast as well, not just a removal of tissue.

I saw dollar signs add up and I knew he was right.

I’d also gone in to talk about an abdominoplasty, which, in non-medical terms is a full tummy tuck. I’d heard you Pranksters talk about having both done at once and figured that I might as well, since I was going in for a reduction that I was certain insurance would pay for, see about having that done at the same time. Or really, just see what that was about.

We all have Those Things that we hate about ourselves. Maybe you hate your hair or your nose or your feet. I hate my gut. Always have. I was blessed with a pot belly and I’ve always planned to have it removed…eventually. No matter how skinny I become, I can’t lose it from there. Drives me bonkers.

The surgeon palpated my abdomen and discovered that the three babies that gestated in my short torso had done a number on my abdominal muscles. I’d suffered diastasis recti, or the separation of the abdominal muscles, which was weakening the core muscles of my body.

It made sense.

The surgeon wasn’t pushy about the surgery at all. He didn’t promise a miracle cure or that somehow my symptoms would miraculously improve overnight. But between what he said, my nursing/anatomical knowledge, and my symptoms, I felt that it made sense. Yes, it will be partially fulfilling my lifelong dream of having a tummy tuck, but also, and it’s a shot at me trying to get better.

I’m having surgery next week on Wednesday. I’ll be having the full abdominoplasty, not simply the outpatient cosmetic one, which means I’ll be in the hospital overnight.

Frankly, Pranksters, I didn’t want to post about this.

I’m nervous about the procedure and I know that there will be enough people reading this who don’t agree with what I’m doing. Whenever you open up about some health-related thing on The Internet, there’s some faction of people who are all, “YOU SHOULDN’T DO THAT, YOU SELFISH HEATHEN,” and really, I don’t need to hear it. This is my decision and my body.

To those of you who feel it’s important to come and attack me for my choices: I don’t have to ask permission. If you do not like what I am doing, that is absolutely fine. I don’t ask that you like it. I ask that you respect it as my choice.

But as my Pranksters, I know that you deserve the truth.

The Internet Mole People that will invariably come and shit all over me can suck it.

And to the person who said that I am proof that bad things happen to bad people? You can eat a bowl of hot dicks, baby.