Cocooned

It has now been exactly a month since I found out I was pregnant. How do I describe these first few weeks to you? For sure, it was not what I had expected. Not what the movies or your childhood ideas would led you to believe. For me, there have been very few moments of reveling in amazement over what is happening to my body, or crying in my husband's arms in happiness, or smiling a secret smile a'la an Italian madonna in a portrait. No, instead I have become more withdrawn, more disconnected from the world. Now I don't want you to take this in the wrong way, so let me try to describe it.... I feel as if I have become insulated from the world, in a little cocoon of my own. Looking out through a fog. I am hyperaware of my body in a way I have never before been. I can feel my energy drawn to physical work. As if my body (and mind) has ceased to care about anything else except the job in front of it. Eating? Meh. Who cares. Sex? Not interested. And it's not only my physical sensations, but my emotional and intellectual energy. At work, I am less efficient, less organized, less....awake. I am also less connected to the feelings and stories of my clients, as if I am wrapped in a gossamer fog that separates me from everyone else. When I talk to my friend, my husband, even a person in a random encounter at a store, I find myself putting less energy into the interaction. Not that I don't care (although at it almost feels that way), but that I can't be bothered to give of myself to this moment. I am too inside of myself.

Basically, pregnancy is making me selfish. I have never been a very selfish person. Instead, I worry and care too much. I don't like to upset people. I want to be polite and say the right thing. Now? Who gives a fuck. I am willing to put me (us) first. Hmmm. No, let me rewrite that. It's not so much a volitional act as much as, I can't dredge up the energy to have the empathy I am accustomed to feeling. I still care about other people and other things, but the ability to truly empathize seems to be lost somewhere in the core of my stomach.

It's funny because, in a way, it's strangely liberating for me. For someone who puts too much emphasis on saying the right thing and keeping up with friendships and doing a good job and...and...and... It feels a bit of a relief to just let things slide a bit. To just, focus inwardly on the physical being of me.

But I can feel me buried somewhere deep inside fighting back with a tiny voice saying things like, Why are you saying that? Why didn't you say this? You should care more. So I know I am still there. I know that girl is watching and rolling her eyes when I don't make polite chitchat with the lady at the grocery store and she is groaning in exasperation when I made a sharp comment to my poor husband, but I just tell her, Wait. Right now I can't be bothered. Later I will come back to myself.

And I hope that is true. I hope once I am done with this land of foggy nausea and disconnection I will come back to myself. Until then, I will keep muddling through, wrapped in my cocoon, doing what I need to do to get through this first trimester and starting being a human again.