A Post About Mucking Around

Sometimes I hesitate to post the personal. I'm sure it'd be a lot more interesting if I got my lazy fingers to type up a nice piece about el dia de los muertos or our little jaunt to the coast. But then I remember that I'm selfish and I'm posting because that's what I feel like doing, and frankly it's other topics that are on my mind.

I guess in a lot of ways life has settled down here. I've become a whole lot more content being here, though maybe it's not so much contentment that I feel as acceptance or resignation. Or maybe I've just been happily distracted by visitors, friends from home who've kept my spirits buoyed. Or maybe I'm just too busy and too exhausted taking care of my baby to think about much else. Any way I spin it, I'm not living in the pits of woe I was in nine months ago.

Blogging has helped. I guess it's therapeutic. I always knew I was blogging for my own benefit not because I thought anyone else would be entertained much by what little I have to say. Still, I started blogging, and just getting it all out in English was a big help. And then, oh and then, I found all these other American women living in Mexico with their husbands, many of them with young kids, and they're all blogging away about all this crap we're all facing, and all the wonderful stuff too, and suddenly I had this weird feeling of community or that at least I wasn't alone. And misery: it sure do love its company. So here I am reading these other blogos every day, half the time the posts are about exactly what's been going on in my head, and I want to write one big "I know exactly what you mean!" comment over and over again, and "Thank you so much for blogging. It means so much to me." and suddenly I find myself, still not thrilled to be here, but somehow managing it a whole hell of a lot better.

And then there are all my amazing friends - who send me email or come visit or send little gifts for my fat man child, and every gesture, every laugh, means so much.

And maybe it's just time - that I'm getting used to living with cockroaches and rats and the smell of burning garbage and sewage in the streets and constant noise and sexism and machoism and being stared at and not having any friends down here, and having to explain and defend every assumption, value and opinion and just being really lonely. At least a little bit used to them. Those things still drive me crazy.

I'm still frustrated a lot of the time. It bothers me how Hernan forgot how to do any housework since moving back in with his mother, how he now expects me to do it all. I still have no idea what to do about him going out all the time with dudes and leaving me alone and lonely, and I have to nearly break his arm just to hang out with me, because I used to think we enjoyed each other's company. It's hard that I feel like the freak all the time because I don't have anyone who shares my persectives on child raising (or anything else), and I feel like a bad mother for holding my baby "too much", for nursing him, for using cloth diapers. And I wish I had friends here. And I wish I had money and a job. And I wish sometimes for a whole lot of things.

But then I know too that I'm handling those things better than when I first got here. That I've come to really value the company of my in-laws, and I'm daily thankful I like them so much, and they're so accepting of me, and that my little Hanix can grow up with a big, loving family. And I've started liking a lot of things about being here and maybe I'm a little less uptight than I used to be. And probably this is all character-building anyway, right? So I'll look back on it all and feel it was a good thing in the end. Right?

So why am I sharing this (unintersting, poorly written, overly-personal) brain fart with you all? (Because I'm selfish. I think we alrady covered that.) Because (here's where I make up a reason for the time you just wasted reading it), in the end I guess we're all just mucking around in our lives, trying to make them satisfying and pleasing, or maybe noble and good, or maybe just entertaining. But somehow we're trying to do it right. And for me to "do it right", this whole living business, I guess I've needed a lot of practice and a lot of support. The practice I'm still getting, but the support I've had. So I guess, in a way, this is one big "thank you" to all the great people who've been rooting for us, and to all the strangers who support me by sharing their stories. And I guess I'm just saying I'm trying not to let you all down, and I swear I'm starting to get the hang of it.