You did it!
Nine whole months of growing something inside you and now you'r the proud parent of your alter-ego pandemic baby, Cindi, who enjoys sweatpants, never washing her hair, and purposely avoiding all responsibilities and deadlines because who the hell cares nothing matters anymore it's all pointless.
You carefully read "What to Expect When You're Expecting an Alter-Ego Pandemic Baby" and tracked your week-by-week growth on CNN, NPR, and your father's Sunday-phone call diatribes. One week you felt calm, the next you felt gassy, even hour by hour, you could track your heartburn by Cuomo's news conferences.
You dutifully took your daily Chardonnay and made sure you had 20 million grams of Cowgirl Creamery cheese because that's what Cindy wanted, and damned if Cindi's brancells weren't going to be highly developed enough to watch "Bridgerton" upon immediate birth. After all her anxiety was finely honed in-psycho-utero on "Tiger King", her sense of impending zoom blossomed with "Dead to Me," her release of all vanity and warrior mindset took shape with the handsome Vikings on "Last Kingdom". Cindi's not a total sloth-sociopath, though. This alter-ego pandemic baby said a firm no to "Ozark" just like she did to make her own starter-sour dough. Attagirl. Cind.
It was a strange nine months, because it felt like 10 months. Which it was. Your body wasn't your own. You gave excercising and vegetables, and embarked upon a brave new routine of mental survival and trained hard for movie marathons. Cindi felt like the weight of the world when she was growing inside you, and now that she's out, you're not necessarily feeling lighter, but celebrating the glorious feeling of the inevitable. Should you go back to wearing pants that zip up? Hell NO! Cindy doesn't want to and Cindi's feeling pretty good in her Cari Underwood label athleisure.
Everything they say about creating an alter-ego life inside you is true. The first trimester was exhausting and debilitating. There was nothing magical about it, but you truly bonded with that hairball of anxiety growing in you, feeling it develop into an avocado of mistrust, then a melon of disbelief. It was--and is--a pure reflection of you. So adorable.
The second trimester was interminable. You were grumpy, irritable, depressed, snappish, the usual, but with Cindi, you finally had permission to own those feelings. Together, you were a delightful mix between the emotion Sadness from "Inside Out" and the character 22 in "Soul:" a blob with a dim view of life.
The due date they gave you was a farce-oh, 40 weeks, really? You knew better. You knew everything would be changed forever. You knew there was no going back from Disney Plus or BBQ Lays or the sudden discovery of putting collagen in your coffee because you want Cindi's skin to look amazing.
You're on the other side of it, but of course you're still in the thick of it. You bought "What to Expect the First Year," but Cindi is really into Season 4 of the "The Crown" and expending energy towards hating Prince Charles and you don't have time to read. Ah, the days are long, but the years are...even longer.
Oh, come on, Cindi's not all doom and gloom. Yes, she has an appreciation for eating Stouffer's lasagna at 4pm in 400-count organic sateen sheets, but there's hope on the horizon. It's hard to tell, but it's either the good ship Pfizer or a new season of "Billions."