I’m trying super hard not to think about the fact that my due date would have been tomorrow.  I spent a few days throwing myself into work and errands and activities.  Things! Lots of things to keep me distracted! Yay!  And then, oh then, Wednesday night as Will and I were curling up to go to sleep, it just… hit me.  It hit me that, if nature weren’t so effing mean, I would almost definitely (given the sporadic nature by which babies are actually born on their due dates without the induction of labor) be holding my kid right then. And that is when the floodgates opened.  I thought that I would let myself leak a few tears and then I’d hunker down, make my belly all steely and let it go.  But you know what?  Once I let one tear out, a whole bunch more came out.  And then?  Oh then I was doing the ugly cry.  I haven’t done the ugly cry very much since my procedure.  That first week was hard.  But I have an awesome (cheerleader sometimes) husband who does his very best to keep me feeling positive and moving forward.  What happened was awful but it isn’t like there was anything I could have done to prevent it.  Nature is just a bitch sometimes. Unfortunately my brain knowing those things wasn’t quite enough to stop the very primal and very uncontrollable…despair.  It’s not really the best word for it but there you go.  And in the midst of all of that ugly-crying and as wave after wave of fresh, well, pain rolled over me came this:

“Sadness is salty.  It’s not all that different from the wonderful fizziness that starts to fill your cells when you’re “close” but there’s no explosion of joy or love to follow it up.  You can feel it spreading up from your toes and out from the center of your brain and you know that when it meets in the middle the only explosion you will get is tears and grief…and there’s nothing you can do to stop it. All you can do is ride it out and hope that at the end there will be some sort of calm.”

It’s hardly poetry but it was eloquent enough to distract me with “wow, I’m deep” thoughts so that I could fall asleep.

And then, when I woke up the next morning, I decided it would be a good day to quit caffeine cold turkey.

I? Is not so bright.

I went all day yesterday without even a teeny bit of caffeine.  And you know what?  If those are the symptoms I suffer when I go through caffeine withdrawals from Pepsi?  I am soooo not ever cut out to do any harder drugs.  Between the emotional roller coaster I was already riding and the lack of caffeine, I was a hot mess yesterday.  I only wrote four pages.  The rest of the day I spent lying down and wishing that my head would stop pounding and willing myself to not start dry heaving.  I did not get my way on either counts and, after a tasty pizza dinner, well…. gross.

Did you know that one of the reasons your head hurts so bad when you go through caffeine withdrawal is that your…some sort of receptors…are letting too much blood go to your brain?  I always figured that the more blood I had flowing into my brain there was, the happier (and smarter!) my brain would be.  There is a reason I’m not a doctor, guys.

This afternoon I caved.  I had gone with Will to look at weapony things and on the way back we stopped at a 7-11.  I thought about getting a Sprite but all I wanted was a regular Pepsi.  And I was beating myself up pretty badly about wanting to cave so soon.

“I feel like such a loser!”  I wailed to Will, “People get over frackking heroin addictions and I’m ready to have soda after thirty six hours? And it’s so bad!  But my head hurts!  I’m such a looooseeerrrr!”  (PMS+hard week under normal circumstances+sleep deprivation+caffeine withdrawals=DRAMA. QUEEN.)  And do you know what Will said?  I swear to God and whatever deities you find holy and worth reverence, he said: “you need to do what feels best for you right now.  Don’t worry about the long term, that will take care of itself.  Do what you need to do right now and no matter what you choose I’ll support you and be your cheerleader because I love you.”

His wonderfulness and awesomeness and oh-my-God-I-love-him-so-much-ness is marred only by the fact that he physically wrestled a Super Gigundo Double Gulp bazillion ounce cup out of my hand once we were inside the 7-11 and said “moderation dear, moderation,” before handing me a 32 ounce up instead.