Why live in the world when you can live in your head

Since I spend most of my blogging life apologising anyway, I'm sorry. I'm totally going to make this post into my own little IFer version of the painfully skinny girl who moans that she's fat all the time when you want to slap the bitch and tell her how lucky she really is. Just don't do what I did in that situation in high school and tell her that yes, she really is a fat cow. Then she'll go and need to be hospitalised for anorexia and blame you for it. She will swear to cut off your eyelashes when she's all better too, just to spite you. True story, but I digress.

So being pregnant...yeah. I'm not digging it. Obviously given the option of being pregnant after all this time versus not being pregnant after all this time, I would choose pregnancy. However, no one warned me how freaky the whole process is. I can't remember a blog post written by anyone saying anything along the lines of, "My soul has been removed by beings unknown and placed in the warped body that I have no control over". This is how I feel at the moment. In the past few weeks my body has magically turned into something meant to house and nuture this Enid, and it's starting to look like that is its purpose as well.

I know this seems like such a stupid, obvious claim to make. Wait, you mean when you're pregnant your body...changes? You don't say? It goes beyond that though. I had a panic attack in bed the other night whilst I was laying there running my hands over my newly rounded, firm stomach (Note: This was a purely scientific touching up. There was no gleeful belly rubbing, I swear). The stomach I was touching was surely not my own. All of this is happening so quickly, and it's difficult to come to terms with the fact that it is beyond my control. In just a few weeks I have gone from "possibly just fat" to "pregnant belly forward ho!" and it's all rather overwhelming. Don't even get me started on the bellybutton-nearly-popping thing either, because I may just cry.

This isn't about not fitting into my clothes. It's not a vanity thing, it's a "what the fuck is happening to me?" thing. I can cope with thinking about there possibly being an Enid based in the spare bedroom come August, because a baby I can handle, she says naively. However, a thing that makes your belly and boobs grow at alarming rates and pokes you throughout your work day is just...disconcerting. I do feel as if I have ceased to be me, as this whole experience is foreign. This body isn't mine, and this reality isn't either.

I had my are-you-pregnant cherry popped the other day and I felt sick after it happened. I should have known that the ex-coworker casting the odd glance at my stomach was arriving at her own conclusions, but to have to say it definitively to an acquaintance was bizarre. I had a total pod person moment when I felt as if I had just astrally hopped into this pregnant person's body and assumed her identity. Pregnant? Me? Really?

I've had some time to think about the whole pregnancy thing. About 3 1/2 years in fact. I should have known that if it did happen, that I would be thrown into some existential crisis whereby I would start to question who I really am and what I want. The same thing happened when The Dude and I got engaged, and later when we got married. After the engagement, I hesitated to tell people the news. I didn't feel old enough to be engaged, and couldn't bear the thought of using the word "fiance". That was for grown-ups, and surely I was just out of high school? Marriage was even more traumatic in that sense, as it took me months to cough up the word "husband" in conversation. Again, I pictured myself as a child bride, not ready for the level of maturity and commitment that marriage brings.

So here we are again. The ::ahem:: damage is done, and here I am questioning it all after the fact. I'm now old enough to be married and I can cope with that, but shit...being pregnant? I have to carry it in my body? It's all getting a bit serious now and I hope I can sort out my head before Enid reaches puberty. It's crazy in there.