dear ollie

September 29, 2022

It’s been exactly a week since I found out I’m pregnant.

Ping asked me at the time if I was going to get an abortion. When I told her no, she told me it would be difficult to give the baby away if I carried it to term.

Wild assumption. Mom sat down on my bed and said that she was supposed to be super happy with this news. BUT I wasn’t married, Santi is in Spain, and I have no job.

I cried a lot this week. I am grateful that I have Santi because he has been incredibly supportive when my own family has been making me feel like I can’t handle this, like I should be ashamed of this. Mom told me I needed to keep this a secret.

Dad didn’t have much of a reaction. He asked me how - if I have a boyfriend. Johnny asked me a lot of questions. He didn’t assume I’d have an abortion, but asked if that was something I would consider. He said I needed to think this through hard, to think about how I was going to make it work, because if I couldn’t, it would be too difficult for mom, seeing as i don’t work.

My main sources of support so far have been Santi, Sarah, and Deb. Sarah has been so sweet through all this and stayed emotionally available to talk to me and keep me company. Deb is always resourceful, helping me think of ways to make things work. Santi is just beyond. Talking to me, helping me keep perspective, reminding me that things will work out, assuring me he’s always going to be here for me, sharing his dreams about our family. He is so happy, so proud, so excited. The three of them are what’s keeping me focused on the positive. Electra has also shown up for me in a time where we really are not so close anymore. She drove to the city and came in for my first doctor’s appointment, which I really appreciated. I wish my family were more here for me. I wish they could see the positive in this, but I guess we are cut from the same cloth. It took a second for me to embrace this whole relationship for real, and definitely a hot minute for me to relax about the baby (if I even am now?).

I never imagined id be so isolated from my family during this process. But thinking on it, ive never been on the same wavelength with them about anything. Ive always had to do things my way, with the goal that id show them that things work themselves out. The less my family supports me though, the more I feel capable of handling this. I guess because I know I can’t rely on them, i also know i dont need them. I’m determined to make it work and I will show them it will work.

I think about how i often feel put down by the people closest to me. I was talking to Scott about writing a book one day, and he laughed and asked who would want to read it. I talked to Johnny about my passion being writing and he said, no way, if it was, you’d already be writing. Ive always felt that people dont take me seriously, but I think what i need is to take responsibility for the fact that I care too much about what people think, give too much value to people’s opinions, and dont respect myself enough to pave my own way.

I hope I can share my stories to one day be the support that someone in my position needs. Ive cried to Santi so many times this week about feeling so alone. Ive felt overwhelmed and overpowered - helpless. But I don’t need to feel victimized or stressed by my circumstances. Ive always looked forward to pregnancy, to having a baby, to making things work non-traditionally, and it’s happening now. I’m lucky I still have support, even if it’s not my family, to remind me to stay positive because a baby is a blessing and pregnancy is one of the best things I will experience. The next nine months are going to be a journey to enjoy.

October 3, 2022

I ate gluten today. I’ve been feeling nauseous for two weeks now, I couldn’t poop this morning, and i am beyond stressed about all that is about to happen. I wanted to sabotage everything, stop caring about it all. So I downed a bao from the Chinese bakery, ate two haagen Dazs bars today, 7 rolls of sushi.

I’m going to have the shits tomorrow.

I need to start writing for myself and cultivating a different frame of mind. I was telling Santi today not to stress about money - if we have an abundance mindset, the money will come. He laughed and asked me, the same way you only need to think positive and be happy?

He’s absolutely right. I have to stop letting myself spiral into the deep holes I get into. About how this visa process is going to take forever. About how I’m not going to have access to healthcare in Spain. About how I’m going to be kind of (very) illegal there. About how huge I’m getting and how insatiably hungry I am (or maybe just using pregnancy as an excuse to eat everything). How it’s been raining non fucking stop here. How the weather is so nice in madrid right now. How I miss Santi and how much he’s going to think I’m gross when he sees how much weight I’ve gained.

I feel so uncomfortable in my body. I just want out. So I self-sabotaged today. I ate what makes me feel absolutely sick, and now I feel absolutely sick.

I need to get myself in check and do something that reels me back in when I begin in the spirals. How do I coach myself when I start hating my body? How do I embody the child loving, pregnancy loving, woman loving self?! The person inside me that thinks everything about this process is AMAZING and supernatural and just so damn beautiful?

How do I start treating my body to things that make me actually feel good? Taking showers? Eating healthy? Refraining from eating the seventieth meal of the day? Drinking tea? Hot water? Listening to music? Imagining things I love?

Is this what DBT is all about? Being present and mindful? Catching myself and rerouting myself on the path that makes me feel good? Is this the shit that I have been struggling with all my life? Did getting pregnant not cure all of that?

Baby steps to getting back on track. This is the work, right? Catching myself and getting right back up.

Tomorrow, I will go to the couchers dinner. It’s gonna rain all day, and THAT’S OK. I’m even going to go to barre before. LIFE IS A PRIVILEGE. Moving makes me feel good. Friends make me feel good. I have power over my mind. I can do the things that make me feel good. I am not my thoughts of laziness, negativity, self-hatred, anxiety. I am open, abundant, free, loving, and positive.

It’s going to rain all day tomorrow, and that’s okay.

January 13, 2023

The last time I wrote about my pregnancy was at the beginning, when I was going through a rough time after just having found out.

Ping and mom weren’t supportive and it felt like I was keeping a huge secret. I couldn’t really talk to anyone and I was really, really sad. I cried a ton during those weeks and every time I talked to Santi, I told him how I wanted to go to Spain and be with him. Every time I went to the doctor, I spent the rest of the day so sad and alone because I wished he was with me. Electra came with me the first time I saw the doctor because she wanted to support me - I couldn’t even go to mom. I felt nauseous, alone, depressed, and overwhelmed with all the obstacles in my way of being with Santi. I started looking at the visa process in that time, and I definitely did not have gratitude in that moment. Everything felt hard and like too much. I also felt guilty about feeling all the negative feelings because I didn’t want to stress baby.

The first trimester was terrible. After mom came around, after seeing that Santi was around and we were making plans to be together, sh e started to really embrace the idea of me being pregnant. I told dad, Johnny, and Colleen and while it all felt like I was having a teen pregnancy at first, it became normalized and like good news. Everyone was super happy and once I was able to talk about it normally with everyone, I felt much better. BUT, I had terrible morning sickness. I was hungry all the time, tired all the time, eating insanely, and still never felt ok. There were a couple of weeks when I was waking up so nauseous, two nights in a row I threw up. I think I only threw up three times in total, but that was enough. This time was rough for me and Santi too. I was taking everything out on him and the poor guy bore the brunt of my negative energy while being an absolute angel about it all.

There was the one night on Halloween when we had been fighting - and he went to a party without telling me first. He didn’t even have data so I pretty much didn’t hear from him until he texted me hours later. I was livid. I cried so much that week, I didn’t know what to do. I was feeling so much regret and I was so mad at him, but ultimately we decided we needed to turn the page and be happy with each other again. No amount of conversation was helping me stop be mad at him.

I was too happy to pack and head to Spain during the days leading up to my flight. I couldn’t believe it was finally happening. Unfortunately, I was still dealing with bad morning sickness and I had a terrible flight. I was so full the day of my flight (I ordered multiple orders from Fuel) that I could barely eat at Bobby’s Steakhouse, but then I was insanely hungry on the flight and there was nothing I could eat. I, for whatever reason, didn’t have a gluten meal prepared for me, and the chips would not go down for me. I drank water, peed a ton, and felt so terrible the whole time. When I landed, I called Santi and he said he was on his way. He did not leave, even after 20 minutes, and when I went through immigration and got my luggage, I told him he didn’t even need to come. I was pissed. I was fully expecting him to watch my flight and be at the airport waiting for me, because that’s what he said he would do. He spent the night playing COD and I was extremely disappointed that he let me down. I called a car to his house and he was waiting to help me with my bags. He made me some hard boiled eggs and gave me cheese to eat. I was in a terrible mood with him and we just went to nap.

Later that day, we moved to our Airbnb and I was trying to settle into being in Madrid. And into all my feelings. I was still so upset about the airport, and that first week, several things happened to make me upset. In that Airbnb at Ciudad Lineal, I must have freaked out on him 4 or 5 times. It was like half the time we rented the place. They were big fights too. One was about the airport, one was about seeing naked pictures on his Instagram, one about him not wanting to take the job at Acid - which turned out to be a BLOW UP where I talked about money and how he didn’t care about anything and I ended up crying on the couch. Not great statistics for the first 10 days in Spain. We definitely had some more fights but I can’t remember what they were about.

Then we moved to his mom’s place because our apartment in Numancia wasn’t ready. These few weeks were really sweet because his family took such good care of me, but it was rough. I wasn’t comfortable, I was cold, I couldn’t take long, hot showers, we were sleeping with his family. I got mad at him a couple of times while we were there too, and it was shitty because I couldn’t even be openly mad. There was one night he didn’t text me that he was coming home. Then there was one night we were bickering on my way back from Spanish class and I left him without saying bye as he dropped me off at McDonalds. One day, I walked to Numancia and spent the whole day out because I just couldn’t be at his family’s anymore while being so pissed at him. We fucked a couple of times with everyone home / once even in the same room with his mom and Dulce sleeping.

I was too fucking happy to move into our apartment on December 23rd. We met up with Adan, signed the contract, got our keys, and immediately headed off to Costco to buy a ton of shit. We spent the next few days (past few weeks) buying a crazy amount of things. Doing laundry, buying things, cleaning, trying to scrap together food to eat. We celebrated the holidays with his family - Christmas Eve was ribs and rice & gift exchanges & Jenga for the boys, NYE was meat with mashed potatoes & more Jenga & lots of Facetime.

The last time I made drama was about the Spanish YouTube fat shaming a girl and Santi agreeing that fat people shouldn’t eat whatever they want. That was a huge fight on the 30th, and on the 31st, before NYE we had to have a big talk before heading to his family.

This week has been REALLY good. We’ve been spending a lot of time together - he had two days off this week and two days starting work at 6 pm. A lot of quality time together, sex, cooking, eating.

We have JUST started seeing baby move!! Just three days ago, I was telling Sarah that I couldn’t feel baby yet. The next day, Santi told me he saw the baby really kick. Now I’m sooo conscious of the baby moving inside me (so damn active!).

I’ve been sleeping a lot and eating a lot. I’m getting big lol, but I’ve just started exercising again. It’s my third day in a row doing 5 knee pushups, 30 second plank, 20 squats, and 20 single leg deadlifts (no weight). Today I was able to do 8 pushups and 35 seconds for my plank. I already feel stronger!

I haven’t at all been able to see the doctor, but I just read that having too many scans can be dangerous for the baby. ALSO that some hippie parents actually choose to opt out of ALL (or some, but one) scans! So I don’t feel as scared or bad anymore, and I’m trusting that everything is good and baby is ok. I feel really good especially now that I can feel baby all the time. And soon, I’ll be doing my weekly classes with Rocio and we’ll be able to check on the baby.

There are a lot of days I feel empty and lonely and I just keep remembering Stutz saying that we just have to do one thing that’s going to keep us going. The chain of us doing good things for ourselves. It’s the reason I started doing even a little bit of exercise. Even though it takes me probably less than 5 minutes to do one set of exercises, it makes me feel good that I’m keeping a streak of intentionally doing one “difficult” but good for me thing for myself. That’s all it is. I’m also trying to remember that the goal is to observe my mind and keep it calm so I can see through all the muddiness. I think I’d like to start meditating again even for a few minutes, but I would like to get into a real habit of continuing with my exercise. I’m so proud that I already went from 5 to 8 push-ups! Even if they’re only knee pushups!

March 13, 2023

These past couple of weeks I’ve been feeling kind of lonely and out of it. I can feel myself being super needy and un-fun to be around. Today I decided to do something different to snap out of it. I went to Spanish class, which was super fun today, with the professor from Uruguay. Then I went to Carrefour to get mangos and avocados, and went home to invite our neighbors downstairs to dinner! I met him and his friend Andrea and it was a really nice convo - they’re so nice - and we exchanged numbers. I’m super excited to be friends with them.

I did laundry, ate salad, etc. Getting out of the house was nice.

Earlier today, Santi and I went to the judicial court place to get free legal advice. It turned out to be a sham and we just got pizza and went home. I took a nap and we watched a little bit of Attack of Titan.

Our baby is good, even though I keep discovering that I’ve been eating shit I’m not supposed to eat. I was having so much caffeinated tea (earl grey!!!) and then I stopped. I switched to poleo menta and for shits and giggles today, I googled if it was okay to have while pregnant. IT’S NOT. It’s actually explicitly stated as something you CANNOT have. Oy. And at the pizzeria today, the waiters advised me not to eat my calzone because the cheese was unpasteurized. Lol. I’m a disaster.

Tomorrow we have our second session with Rocio and it’s going to be a body-work session. I’m really excited to be with Santi for it. We also need to do his appeal for his political asylum denial.

How I’m feeling

34 + 4

36 weeks

38 wks

5/14

5/15

5/16

5/17

Ideas