The Year I Lived Someone Else’s Life

Ever since we moved from South Dakota back to Minnesota, I’ve felt like I’m not really living my life but some kind of ghost life. It has felt like once this year is over, everything will go back to normal. We’ll have a home again; I’ll see my things. I’ll grocery shop for myself, decorate my house, work a normal job, clean my house, snuggle with my cat, stay in bed all day with my husband.

At the beginning of the summer we moved in with my parents. We left a nice town, and I left a good job, in order to save some money so that we could travel to New Zealand and eventually move so I could go to Grad School. Sounds simple enough, but what it turned into was not:

1. New Zealand: This meant finding jobs that paid enough so we could save for the trip. This meant researching, shopping for, and purchasing equipment and clothing. This meant researching for the trip, where to go, what to do, where to stay. This meant six months of worrying, wondering what it would be like to be homeless, to live in a tent, not to know where we’d sleep each night or eat each day. This idea was very exciting, but also very unnerving.

2. Grad School Application: This meant studying for and doing well on two, count them two, GRE tests-the general test (i.e. MATH!) and the English Literature test.  This meant spending several hours of each day studying, creating flashcards, memorizing flashcards, practicing math problems, writing practice 30-minute essays. This also meant asking three former professors for recommendations and organizing folders for each of them that would remind them of what an outstanding student I was and why they should write me a stellar recommendation. This also meant organizing writing samples, a (scanty) curriculum vitae, gathering information and transcripts from all four institutions from which I took a single credit, and writing the accursed Statements of Purpose (customized for each program). In addition to all of this busywork, this also meant underlying dread which manifested itself physically, in my stress-induced IBS and my neck pain that had to be treated by a chiropractor. Any one thing could ruin my chances of getting in to Grad School; so many people I knew applied and got rejected. This was (is) a constant source of stress.

We moved in with my grandparents at the end of August so that I could take care of my grandma. We are being compensated very well, and it is nice to live on the farm where it is peaceful and not too stressful. I was beginning to see the end in sight. New Zealand was a month away; we would go and then come back and find an apartment and move in and everything would be back to normal.

Nope.

3. A surprise. A baby. A baby! We have been married four years, and we have been trying to have a baby for as many. I was always haunted by the idea that we might not be able to get pregnant. That I might be broken. Then WHAM! A month before we leave for New Zealand, I become horribly sick at every mealtime. I can’t stomach the sight of a slice of bread. I feel something heavy inside me, like a bladder infection or some kind of tumor. I went to my mom’s house to sleep and she brought home a pregnancy test. I was reluctant because I had taken many of these in the past and they had always been negative. There was no chance.

Then we saw two lines. I couldn’t believe it, so I took another one. Two lines again. In a daze, I stopped at Target on the way back to Grandma’s to tell Chris. He was very happy and even a little teary-eyed. We remained in shock and some doubt until the next day when we went to confirm it at the doctor’s. Positive.

Why now?! We have no insurance! We have no home! We won’t move until after the baby is born! I don’t have my own kitchen to cook in, my own bed to sleep in, I’m not surrounded by my things and my cat, life is not the same right now. This isn’t my life, why is the baby coming now?

Maybe this ghost me is more fertile than regular me. Maybe this is just the only way we’re allowed to have a baby. While living someone else’s life.

Well, we’re still going to New Zealand,  but we changed our flight so that we’re only staying for three months. I’ll be about 27 weeks along by the time we get home, with only about a trimester to go. This is definitely not how I thought I’d spend my first (or any) pregnancy: homeless in a foreign country. It’s scaring me to death right now, but it is also still exciting. What a way to start a new life as a family. What a story we’ll have to tell our son/daughter. I’m just keeping my eyes forward, watching that apartment filled with our new family creeping closer and closer every day. Soon it will be my life again, and I’ll get to keep the baby.

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