The Ghosts of Yesteryear

This seems to be the year of epiphanies for me – lately they seem to keep tumbling around my head like bales of hay, suddenly so obvious and unavoidable that it begs the question: what took me so long to realize this?

I had a late night. I didn’t sleep well. I stumbled out of bed much later than I’d planned and just about managed not to break any appendages in search of coffee – before which you might as well not even talk to me because I will most likely eat you alive. Once my brain cells appeared alert enough to be entrusted with operating heavy machinery (aka driving), I made a brief dash out into the real world to run some errands. I kept zapping through my playlist because nothing quite seemed to fit right – I wasn’t feeling melancholic (yay!), wasn’t in the mood for country, didn’t “feel” the overwhelming ooomph of techno. I finally stopped on a completely unlikely selection for a bright, sunny Saturday morning: Happy Phantom by Tori Amos. It’s on the only album of hers that I own called Little Earthquakes, which I’ve owned and “abused” since I was a college student and an incurable insomniac in my dorm introduced me to her music. (At least I think it was her – I really can’t remember who it was. Who can remember all the people they met in college dorms? They don’t even have name tags!)

The important thing is that, usually, when I play Tori Amos, it’s a bad sign. It’s my personal soundtrack for break-ups, heartache, disappointments of a magnitude so excessive that their tremors couldn’t be measured on the seismic scale. I’ve had moments where I’ve played the same song probably a dozen times in a row because the semi-melodious and somewhat discordant strings of notes combined with lyrics that are open to interpretation (and beg the question of just how much alcohol and/or narcotics were involved in their creation) have always been perfect for my most morose moods. I don’t like to cry in public or even in front of people I know if I an avoid it and I figure that it’s better than drowning my sorrows in a more destructive way. Sometimes music just helps hone in on the epicenter of the pain, which you can then excavate after lamenting on your misfortune, cursing whoever or whatever it to blame (since, obviously, you’re completely without fault – duh). 

Happy Phantom, though, is a “kicky” little tune – it really seems to skip and hop around so that you can almost imagine someone’s fingers dancing across the keys of the piano…which, as I was listening to it in the car today, coincided with passing a pond, on the outskirts of which a duck or other fowl was surrounded by a whole smattering of tiny, downy little chicks. Awwwww!

They were so incredibly cute that I almost stopped to admire them – but thankfully had the presence of mind to remember that (a) it probably wasn’t the best idea to suddenly brake and swerve to admire this display of the Animal Kingdom version of universal fecundity from which I continue to be excluded; (b) I really didn’t want to give Mama Duck/Goose or whatever feathered friend a heart attack while trying to snap her head around in a 360 degree rotation like the Exorcist, trying to make sure all dozen or so chicks were accounted for before the Crazy Woman careened too close for comfort and turned them all into pate.

And there it was – BAM! Another epiphany. (Sidebar: I finally understand Emeril Lagasse’s need for vocal expressiveness. I bet after the 3rd or 4th time when he thought of some genius way to spice up a boring old baked chicken thigh, he realized that this kind of repetitive epiphany was deserving of a loud exclamation.)

In watching the cute little chicks against the song I was listening to – all too familiar, I’m afraid – I suddenly realized that I felt like a ghost. It was the most curious feeling – not like an out of body experience, of course, but it was like I finally found the right way to express what I’ve been feeling for such a long time. For far too long now, I’ve been feeling like a bystander – in my own life, but also in life in general. I feel like I’m standing still while the world around me moves on – without me. I bemoan the life I once had, the dreams I still refuse to give up on (I’m stubborn that way) but that I sometimes wonder, in the dark when it’s just me and my own thoughts: am I just deluding myself? Am I in denial, refusing to accept the inevitable conclusion that it’s just not going to happen for us – or maybe not meant to? I feel, for lack of a better way to express it, like a ghost of the woman I used to be. I feel invisible – and not the good kind where you can sneak around and pinch people or flick someone who annoyed you. (I may have smirked briefly while contemplating the potential. But I’m thinking? Ghosts probably can’t drink coffee or eat ice cream, and that’s a non-starter for me.)

And then, of course, by the time the sun started to turn orange much later in the day, the Happy Phantom started feeling a little less perky. It may have had something to do with trolling through other blog posts – one of which almost caused an instant heart attack when I read on a fellow DOR blogger’s post that menopause is expected within 2-3 years of a primary ovarian insufficiency diagnosis. I tried very hard not to panic because (a) I don’t actually know if diminished ovarian reserve and primary ovarian insufficiency are the same (although writing it now, they sure sound the same to me – nerts!), (b) there’s really nothing I can do about that RIGHT. NOW. You know, other than freak out and scream WHY THE HELL DID NOBODY TELL ME THAT???

So my choices at the moment are:

1. Freak out, start bawling, contemplate life as a barren woman before I even hit 40 – at which point I’ll have such a huge midlife crisis that it’ll make RuPaul look like a Soccer Mom.

2. Panic and start dialing. Oh, wait. Who do you call? This clearly isn’t a case for Ghostbusters (hah, I just realized I could’ve made a totally pithy connection with the whole Happy Phantom thing – but can’t think, must panic!) and I don’t exactly have an RE on speed dial. Did I already mention that before. WE DON’T HAVE AN RE! I AM FREAKING OUT NOW! THIS IS ME FREAKING OUT!!!

3. Take a deep breath and look for the Valium. Oh wait, that’s right – I’m not actually a pharmacy. Or a doctor with a prescription pad. Double Nerts!

4. Take another deep breath, tell myself that drugs aren’t the answer – alcohol is! (Which should be an indication of the level of desperation I’m experiencing, since my alcohol intake is roughly 1 drink per YEAR. (What? I’m going to waste money on booze when I could buy new shoes? Me thinks not!)

5. Attempt to calm down and not hyperventilate while reminding myself that NEITHER drugs NOR alcohol are the solution to any of life’s problems – especially since neither are going to do anything for those shriveled raisinettes masquerading as my ovaries. (I should come clean here and admit that I have absolutely no clue what my ovaries actually look like.)

6. Start crying because there’s no ice cream.

7. Sober up and think about an action plan.

8. Go back to crying because there’s no ice cream. Or chocolate. Contemplate eating the baking chocolate before remembering that it tastes like coal bricks might. (I have no way of proving this, btw.)

9. Play Tori Amos for the rest of the evening and curl up in a fetal position, trying not to think about the irony of twisting my body into a pretzel in a replication of something that I’m trying to accomplish inside my body, not with it. I’m not installation art – although if it’s going to sell enough tickets to pay for IVF, I might just consider it at this point…

10. Take a breath. Sigh. Cry. Curse. Cry some more. Write about it. Think about it. Cry even more.

And make a damn decision, once and for all.

So we’ve come full circle to playing Tori Amos and hating doctors who fail to fully inform us of all the ramifications of our conditions – and once again establishing that, in MY house, chocolate isn’t a luxury, it’s a necessity!