Fear, Loss, and Resentment

35 weeks, 1 day

So I had a little bit of a breakdown today.  I lifted my shirt in the bathroom mirror today, and almost couldn’t handle it.  My stomach looks like a crime scene.  It’s almost gory, it makes me so sick.

I didn’t have a single stretch mark for the majority of my pregnancy.  It wasn’t until five months came around when the first couple reared their ugly heads.  I didn’t mind so much, because they were small, just three tiny red lines coming out the top of my belly button.  Otherwise, my belly stayed smooth and flawless for a good amount of time.  I developed a few more as time went on, but not enough to really bother me.

And then one day, it seemed my skin couldn’t take the strain anymore, and I woke up the next morning hardly able to recognize the once-smooth surface of my belly.  The marks had exploded across the bottom half of my belly.  I don’t care who you are, stretch marks are ugly because they look painful.  The skin is RIPPED apart.  Since that first initial explosion of stripes, the marks have only gotten worse.

This hurts me worse than anything else I have gone through with this pregnancy.  My VANITY suffers.  I suddenly have this great, glaring physical flaw, and I don’t know how to deal with it.  I am reduced to tears consistently, facing this horrible change.  I know it sounds vain and selfish, and maybe it is, and I DON’T CARE.  It hurts so badly to suddenly have something about myself that I HATE.

What will happen to me when I go back to work?  I will never again be one of the flawless girls, “one of the hot ones.”  I will never again be able to work in a high class club.  Forever, for the rest of my career, I will be one of the mediocre ones, one of the ones that is lucky to make even half of what could be pulled out of a club.  I was only able to enjoy my work for a little over a year before this pregnancy took over me.  Dancing is my PASSION, my LOVE in life, and it has been taken away from me.  Now, instead of a beautiful dancer, I feel like I will be a desperate mom stripper. 

I don’t know how to even articulate the level of hurt that this causes me.  I expected to be able to spend many years as a beautiful dancer, choosing to work in whatever club I liked, making as much money as I chose to ask for.  Now what?  My future is nothing like I wanted it to be.

…

Even writing this is making me cry.

I cannot wait to get back to work.  I want to feel the pain in my muscles again, and I want to feel the power of strength that that grants me.  I want to lose myself into the music, and I want to fly.  But it will NEVER be the same.  It will never be the way it was again.  I feel like somebody let my take one bite of the most delicious cheesecake ever made, and then threw the rest of it down on the ground before me.  I didn’t have enough time to really enjoy and experience this work as I wanted to.

The universe has taken everything from me.  Every material belonging to my name, I have lost.  I have lost the time that I wanted, and I have lost my VANITY.  Everything I ever cared for has been taken from me, and I know it is meant to be replaced by this little boy.  I am afraid I will still be unhappy.

I am afraid of resentment.