Part 10

Wesley’s birth was another one of those before/after events. You know, “before Wes was born, this was this way” or “after Wes was born, this was that way.” I don’t think that I can really put into words what I felt about him. I also think it’s kind of obnoxious when people go on and on about gushy things like what they felt when their babies were first born, but I will just say this: it was amazing.

I felt very comfortable with my new baby boy, and did not have any of the anxiety about being able to care for him that other women experience. I just did it. I did have a lot of anxiety about going out into the world in general, though, and I was terrified someone would take him or make him sick or in some other way harm him.

I was suffering from post-partum depression, but didn’t really make that connection until years later, after my second son was born. I really believed that PPD meant that you wanted to harm your child or be away from your child or something like that, and my main feeling about my baby was that I had to protect him from whatever. I also thought that the extra intensity of my regular depression was just part of the “hormones” of having a baby.

I don’t really remember too much about the first six months of Wesley’s life, really – it is kind of blurry. Again, the same thing happened after my second son was born. I remember that I was terribly overwhelmed, and I am not sure what I was overwhelmed about, but am sure I could make a few guesses. I still had not made any friends in Charleston, and after all of the usual family had come and gone after Wes was born, I was pretty solitary.

The baby’s daddy was still going to school and working full time. I went back to work somewhere in there – the order of events is very vague to me. There were actually a lot of visits from this family and that family, maybe once a month or so, but what I remember about Charleston is being so lonely.

After I started back at work, I missed Wesley so much! Every time I would finish a shift at the gas station, I would get so excited about seeing him again once I got home. I was still riding my bike and working at the gas station, but had switched to mornings so we didn’t have to get a babysitter.

I don’t know – I think its kind of hard to talk about because of how difficult it was just for me to be awake. I remained very depressed, but began to feel more familiar and comfortable about living in Charleston. We were able to get a car with a very generous monetary donation from a family member, and that really helped a lot!

I also had Wesley. I honestly think that baby has saved my life and my sanity in more ways than I could ever recount. I remember a time very clearly when he had been up all day and would not go to sleep and would not stop crying unless I was holding him. I was exhausted, and I was worried something was wrong with him.

At about 4 a.m., I settled down on the couch to try to get some rest, Wesley still in my arms. I remember I looked down at his face, and he looked at me with his big eyes and stared at me. I stared back. He was very content with me holding him, and we stared at each other for a long time.

I had never felt such an overwhelming sense of complete love, acceptance, safety – whatever. It was good, though. It occurred to me that I had been up for almost 24 hours with this baby, and I could still just look at him and be washed over with love and contentment. It was weird – I wasn’t used to contentment, or to such a pure love, but I wasn’t going to do anything to try and make it go away.

The baby’s daddy and I moved back to Atlanta for the 1996 Summer Olympics. We found a ridiculously affordable apartment and settled in. By the time I left him four months later, I had lost 30 pounds, was cleaning obsessively, and would not leave the apartment except to take him to work (he still didn’t have a driver’s license from his previous indiscretions with the law).

Again, I don’t know what I would have done if it hadn’t been for Wesley. He was beginning to talk and walk and do all sorts of very cute new things every day. I really believe he is the only thing that kept my feet on the ground, and that was just barely. I literally was waiting for someone to come and take me away – to where, I don’t know, but figured it would involve a straight jacket.

Without getting into too much of the details, I finally left the baby’s daddy and moved back home with my parents. I began working for my dad full time, got a babysitter and health insurance and a regular paycheck, and even a car.

I really liked being around my mom, and really hated being around my dad. Fortunately, he was not at home or at work very often. When he was at home, he would have a very low tolerance for anything I might have to say. A few times, he demanded that I leave his house immediately. He would look to my mom to back him up, and she would say, “I’m not kicking my daughter and my grandson out on the street at 10 at night.”

My mom didn’t defy him often, but by this time he had really begun to be even more undone than ever. She was getting really tired of him, too.

He had always done inconsiderate things, like leave town and not contact anyone until he got home. However, by the time I got back home with my baby, he was doing really weird things like going out of town without even telling anyone, and he had gone to Russia for like four months with hardly any contact at all.

He would take off and say things like, “oh it was so funny – I got arrested for pushing some guy and was in jail for a few days and that’s why I wasn’t able to call.” This was an excuse from both Russia, and from a separate trip to Mexico.

I had grown up in his company and really loved working there. I loved the people and the work and how the warehouse/factory smelled, and really just the familiarity with it all.

Part of my job was to attend a convention in Vegas where his company had a booth every year. The first time I had gone along on this trip had been when I was 16 – he got my mom to take me out and get some suits and heels, and then I basically stood around at the booth for hours a day looking pretty and knowing nothing.

This time around, I was twenty and was involved in a lot more of the planning and carrying out the planning and all of that, so it was a lot funner. On the last day of the convention, my dad left. He told me to make sure everything got home, that I was in charge, that he needed me and knew I could handle it.

Then he disappeared. He had arranged for me to take his room for a night so that I could “take care of everything” (that was a mess, and I am not even going to go into it). When I called home to check on Wesley the next morning, my mom said my dad hadn’t gotten home and she hadn’t heard from him.

I freaked out. I just knew he was dead. I could picture very clearly that he went to play golf on one of those desert courses, hit his ball out in the middle of nowhere (because he sucked at golf), had a heart attack and collapsed and died behind one of those little desert bush things.

I got on the phone in the hotel room and started tracking down his every move – I actually was able to obtain a lot of information on him and what he had been doing. I found out that he had gone out to play golf before he left town, who he played golf with (a guy from Texas – I even spoke with him to see if he had any info), what time he turned in his rental car, and that he had gotten onto his flight out.

But after that, it was like he had vanished off the face of the earth. I was terrified that if I left, his body would be left out in the desert because no one would know he was there, and no one in Vegas would be looking for him. I managed to get an extra night at the hotel on his credit card and continued my investigation.

At about 7 p.m. the following evening, my mom called and said he had just walked in the door. I was furious. I asked her where he had been, did he know how worried I was about him, etc., etc. He wouldn’t tell her or even get on the phone with me.

I took the next flight home, and found out at work the next day that he had told everyone I had stolen his money and stayed extra time in Vegas to party and hang out with some guy I had met there.

I just didn’t know what to do.

We had a fantastic falling out at the Waffle House – he had a clipboard with a list of the ways he believed I was screwing up my life, and I screamed at him, “who the fuck do you think you are?” several times, and he finally just left some money on the table and took off. I then proceeded to have one of the most satisfying and peaceful solitary meals I had ever had, then returned to work.

Ok, it’s time to stop for now. This was all much more exhausting than I had anticipated, though I don’t know why. I mean, I don’t know why I had not anticipated that writing about this would have been this exhausting, because, I mean, duh.

Back to that fantastically inconsequential and easy-to-read romance novel – one of the best ways to get my head back on straight J.

To be continued…