The War on Negativity

I’ve decided to issue a moratorium on bitterness, resentment and fear.

I know I’m far from alone in having been subjected to these terrorizing emotions for so long, it seems they’ve taken over every waking second of our lives. I know we’ve been struggling, grappling, trying to make sense of it all and desperate to regain some sense of our former, happier, selves. Like a wounded animal, we retreat to solitary confinement as it feels like our hearts become blacker and shrink with every month, every year, that goes by without our most fervent dream becoming reality: motherhood.

I feel like I keep slipping and sliding around in the muck that my emotional, mental and physical “well-being” has become – a misnomer, at this point, because I obviously DON’T feel well. I haven’t felt well in a really long time. I don’t sleep well, I don’t eat well, I’m angry all the time. I’m jealous, bitter, resentful, sad, scared – all the time. I don’t do anything I used to enjoy doing. I don’t go anywhere. I avoid people. I avoid leaving the confines of my little cocoon of self-imposed isolation because it’s too scary “out there”. I feel trapped in a prison of my own making.

And I’m so sick and tired of feeling this way.

It’s easy for me to blame it on my circumstances, on infertility, on my ensuing isolation, on the words and actions (or lack thereof) of others. I’ve been stewing in a sense of failure, of self-loathing, for so long that I apparently stopped fighting back. At some point, it felt like everything got to be too much; my world caved in and I got buried under all the rubble. I lost my sense of self, I lost the belief that I have skills, talents, and that I’m a good person. I let the actions and words of others define who I was, who I became, because I felt like I was fighting a war on so many fronts that I just got too damn tired to swim against the stream. We have no support, no one to turn to – so I convinced myself that it was all our fault: our fault that we couldn’t get pregnant; our fault that people we put our trust in deceived us; our fault that we’re hurting, angry, sad and alone.

The truth is that I’m at a crossroads, and I have a choice to make. I can keep feeling like crap, I can keep beating myself up, I can let my inner critic convince me that it’s my fault we don’t have any children yet, it’s my fault that we might not be able to, it’s my fault this, that and the other. I can get angry at the world, angry at everyone else’s fecundity, IVF coverage, supportive relationships. I can throw in the towel and just exist in a vacuum of misery that will become a never-ending pity party. I can wait for my marriage to disintegrate because I can’t snap out of it, I can drag my husband down with me as every ounce of love is drained from my heart because everything is dark, angry and bitter – and watch him blame himself for not being able to help me, to make me feel better. I can keep beating myself up about my shortcomings and comparing myself to others with the end result that I feel bad. I can let things I have no control over make me feel like I’m weak. I can despair to the point where I stop getting out of bed altogether.

OR…

I can stop fighting with myself. I can stop pretending. I can stop lying to myself. I can stop comparing myself to others, berating myself for the choices I’ve made. I can stop thinking, and feeling, like not being perfect or not having the same way of doing something as someone else makes me worthless. I can stop hating myself for the fact that my life isn’t exactly the way I thought it would turn out. I can stop judging others just because they’re not having to walk a mile or three million in my shoes, because they haven’t had the same experiences, because they don’t care, because they don’t get it, because they’re doing/saying things that hurt me.  I can stop blaming myself for the things others say and do because, really, it’s not my fault and it’s not something I can change. At the end of the day:

“Holding onto anger is like drinking poison and expecting someone else to die.”

Some days, I feel like I’m dying – both emotionally and physically. I feel raw, I feel beaten down to the point that I don’t even want to try to get up anymore. I just want to tap out. I know those feelings won’t just go away. I know I’m not suddenly going to wake up tomorrow, a reformed pessimist suddenly chipper like I’ve had a lobotomy or a Walt Disney makeover. But I realized, with strange clarity, that I’ve been playing the victim – instead of actually remembering that I’m not weak; I’m not pathetic; I’m not hopeless, hapless, stupid, or a failure.

I’m human.

A few days ago, I got really worked up about a site that I felt had a bunch of posts by women who’ve clearly never had their reproductive abilities called into question. I was so angry at what I felt was a set of completely insensitive, selfish posts that showed absolutely ZERO consideration for women who struggle to conceive. But then I thought – hold on a minute. Why am I getting so angry? This site is clearly run by women who don’t have these problems. Why should they think about infertility when it obviously hasn’t touched their lives? I mean, you don’t see me writing posts about Asperger’s, to throw out some random medical condition. It’s my choice whether or not I read these types of things – so getting angry about something that, technically, I’m not the target audience for is just plain ridiculous. It’s also pointless, because the end result is inevitably detrimental to ME.

I feel like having a family should be considered an inalienable, constitutional right – and that, consequently, all 50 states should be required to carry mandatory IVF insurance. However, the fact that this isn’t actually the case and that the current state of affairs makes me angry does absolutely nothing to change MY situation. I don’t live in a state that has IVF insurance, nor is IVF covered by our medical insurance – not even a portion of it, no cap, nada. But this doesn’t make my situation unique at all – I know there are many others who are in exactly the same boat. It also doesn’t mean that I should get angry at other IFers who do have IVF coverage – it’s not their fault that, apparently, our society considers it more important for a guy to be able to have a boner than for a woman to be able to get pregnant. 

I realized, these past couple of days, that I am so incredibly lucky to have had some wonderful experiences in my life, to have choices and freedoms, to have a roof over my head. I have a husband who loves me to the end of the earth. My life is far from perfect, and I myself am definitely a work in progress. But I know I’m not alone – even if it feels like it. I know that there’s hope, somewhere, out there, for all of us. We can’t know which bend in the road will lead to the next chapter in our lives, but I’m tired of feeling consumed with negativity. I’m tired of getting worked up, seething silently and letting all this crap fester as it chips away at my very soul.

So I’m just going to keep working on ME and try to change my perception of the world around me. I’m going to try to remind myself that I have a choice of how I’m going to receive information and how I’m going to deal with it. Instead of focusing on all the things that make me unhappy, I’m going to focus on the things that make me happy – and work on finding more positive ways to deal with the things I struggle with. Because, at the end of the day, I don’t want to end up being a mother who can’t find the good in small things, the sunshine in spite of the rain, the proverbial silver lining.

Carpe Diem, my friends!!

PS: It goes without saying that reserve the right to occasionally think that someone is a total a$$hat and deserves to be poked in the eye with a really hot french fry rolled in ghost peppers. I’m not bucking for sainthood.

Reconnecting with your Hubby

I was actually working on a totally different blog post earlier today, but then I got sucked into the vortex that is my WP Reader, leading me down the rabbit hole from one blog to another until I came upon some type of “blog post gone viral” etc – I’ll spare you the boring details (which you may have stumbled upon yourself already anyway).

But I felt compelled to re-post a list on a blog that, really, was a response to the viral post and that I found kind of cute – as well as a great reminder for all of us struggling with IF to “stop and smell the roses” (obviously some will be less appropriate for those of us trying to scrape together every last cent we can get our hands on to afford ARTs – my own comments are in italics):

23 Things You Can Do With Your Husband Regardless of Age

1. Have safe sex, however often you want. It’s a wonderful concept. I know, I know – if you’ve been TTC for any amount of time with no BFP, this becomes a chore. You stop feeling sexy. You stop thinking of sex as fun because now it’s work. But there’s something to be said for going back to basics, reconnecting on a more spiritual level and (trying) to bring some romance back to the bedroom 🙂

2. Get a passport and travel- a honeymoon, or even just a vacation. In this case, due to inevitable budgetary constraints, I like the idea of just making time for a date – the kind where you dress nicely, go out to a restaurant, maybe see a movie. Or just walk, hand in hand, in a park, on a beach, get a coffee – just pause and make time for just “you and me”.

3. Run around the house naked. It’s more fun than sitting in a boring window. Hehehe, ahem – I don’t think I need to elaborate on that. Except that instead of just running around, you could play tag. No laser guns required. 😉 

4. Get a tattoo that has meaning for both of you. Not for me, personally – but that makes a lot of sense, I imagine, especially for people with angel babies (hope I’m using the correct term here).

5. Explore somewhere new with your best friend, instead of alone. Assuming you’re not both working yourself to a nub to make enough money for IVF. This one is on my to-do list before DH and I become literally home-bound by our “need” to economize. Who says exploring needs to be expensive? Just check out a new part of town etc. 

6. Pick up a new hobby together. Mmm, that’s a toughie. Maybe a “healthy” hobby – like cooking, hiking, biking, swimming? Preferably a FREE one.

7. Start a family if you want. If you don’t, then wait. Yeah…ok, I guess I could’ve just deleted this one because I was sorely tempted to say “uhm…instead of waiting, have your ovarian reserve checked and a basic SA done. Stat. Forewarned is forearmed. And you know what, while you’re still blissfully unaware – why not have some eggs and sperm frozen. You know, just in case.”

8. Make out. At least you know where his mouth has been. LOL I kind of love her approach on this one – it was in response to the original blogger suggesting you should make out with a stranger. But then, when you’re in your early 20s and aren’t attached to anyone – don’t most dates or boyfriends start out as strangers, technically? Either way I agree with her, making out with my hubby is the least “chore-like” part of struggling with IF. 

9. Decorate your house/apartment with Pinterest projects you did together. I have a better idea: make projects from Pinterest, then sell them at an IF or adoption fundraiser. Because, really? You need the money.

10. Get a couples massage. Things are more fun with your best friend. Or, get acupuncture together. Although a massage sounds pretty darn good right about now – all that stress and constant worrying, panicking etc is really turning my neck muscles into a stale pretzel.

11. Sign up for CrossFit together. Or just workout together period. Once upon a time, the words “workout” made you smirk because you weren’t thinking about a gym, you were thinking about getting horizontal with Mr. Perfect (your hubs). But I’m definitely in favor of physical activity in tandem – which, btw, is rumored to multiply the health benefits. Too bad you can’t actually afford a gym membership anymore because, oh yeah, you’re still saving for IVF. Hopefully you’ll be able to keep the lights on before it’s all said and done.

12. Share an entire pint of your favorite Ben & Jerry’s in one sitting. Or not. You’re struggling to conceive – no fellow IFer will judge you for eating an entire pint of ice cream by yourself. Even if you upended a jar of Nutella over it. But I’m really trying to replace my desire and knee-jerk reaction of reaching for junk food when I’m depressed with the healthier alternative of fruit. Mmmm, fruit. Or make your own healthy frozen yogurt!

13. Build a future. Yeah…that’s what we’re trying to do. That’s what we thought we were doing. Apparently it’s been backordered – I’m expecting an email any day now telling me that my bio baby is back in stock.

14. Disappoint your husband. Trust me, you won’t have to try, it’ll just happen. And then have make-up sex. Yeah, I think we’ve got that covered – in spades. Not just our husbands, but ourselves, our families etc. But mostly it feels like we continue to disappoint our husbands – who, thankfully, love us just as much as before. 

15. Bake/cook for each other. Things taste way better when they’re made for someone with love. This is very true. My husband isn’t exactly a chef (neither am I, come to think of it – ooops!), but he doesn’t mind helping. And it’s definitely a lot nicer to cook together – a great way to turn a frown (can’t afford to eat out anymore) upside down (look what we made together! team work RAWKS!).

16. Start traditions together. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that no one wants to think of visits to the RE as a “tradition”. Let’s make our tradition something more fun – like watching a funny movie after an unpleasant appointment; taking the dog(s) for a walk after a sob fest; or just hugging each other tightly when it feels like all hope is lost. 

17. Travel within the United States. And when you get lost, make an adventure out of it, knowing you’re safe with your best friend. Make that “travel across the US to several different REs or clinics until you find one that suits your specific needs, budgetary considerations and feels “right” for you.” No need to worry about getting lost – you already feel that way without a baby in your arms. In the meantime, though, I have to agree: there’s almost nothing I can’t endure so long as my husband is there to wrap his strong arms around me and let me wail and sob until I’m all out of tears.

18. Have a sleepover with him every night. If either of you can actually sleep without sleep aids at this point.

19. Go out together, have fun, come home together, and have more fun. Let’s make that “go out together when you don’t have an appointment”. Remember to laugh and smile at the little things – because that’s all you can afford between the chump change and lint left in your wallet.

20. Adopt a pet. When you’re both ready. It’s easier when two people are caring for it. Check. Instead of adopting more pets, don’t feel weird about talking to your pets and treating them like surrogate babies – you know, within reason. Please don’t get a stroller for your wiener dog or an entire closet full of outfits – otherwise I might have to slap you.

21. Start a small business now that you have a confidant, companion, and faithful business partner. You’ve already got at least one Ebay and Etsy store between the two of you and have been putting things on consignment all over town because you’re busy selling off all or most of your worldly possessions for extra income so you can afford IVF. Make your own business cards or flyers from cardboard or paper that comes into your house without additional cost – bonus: original, unique way to “advertise” your fund-raising endeavors. 

22. Start a blog. Together or separately. See? You can do it when you’re married too! Crazy, I know. Or, rather, start a crowd-funding site. The time for being shy, sheepish or embarrassed has come – and passed. Time to take action. 

23. Befriend other happily married couples. Because the ones you used to be friends with all had babies and then (a) started avoiding you when you told them you’re suffering from bubonic plague SARS mad cow disease infertility; (b) gave you inane advice until you couldn’t stand it anymore and stopped calling; (c) you couldn’t stand being around them anymore because of the very obvious, non-pregnant “elephant” in the room. Instead, consider joining an IF and/or adoption support group in your local area to connect with other couples struggling with infertility. Assuming you don’t live in podunk where those things are, apparently, not-a-happening. 

Reposted from:

http://kbeauregard.com/2013/12/31/my-first-blog-the-result-of-a-close-minded-23-year-old/

The Comeback Kid

After my last tirade diatribe blog post, I was so infuriated that I couldn’t think straight. I felt so churlish, and I hated both the issues that had prompted the post in the first place – and that I’d lost my temper that much. You’d think that, on the downslope to 40, I’d have harnessed my feelings into a calm and composed demeanor by now.

You’d be mistaken.

Then again, I could argue that the last few years haven’t exactly been a stroll in the park – and that, as an adult, I really don’t have any inclination to pretend that I have sunshine coming out of my you-know-what* all day. I’ve lost the majority of my family to death or estrangement, so that IF is just one more thing on my “let’s see how she responds to adverse conditions”  life stress test. And then, a few months ago, not one but two people I thought I was close to and could count on basically did such unforgivably horrible, evil, conniving, mean and backstabbing things that I had to end those relationships too.

So if I appear caustic at times, let’s just say that I’ve been making A LOT of mouth-puckering lemonade lately.

For the last couple of months, I kept thinking about whether I should just tuck my proverbial tail between my legs and slink back to virtual obscurity after deleting my blog. At times, as I lay awake in bed and listened to three parties snoring in concert (one human, two canine), I composed my comeback post. But somehow I just couldn’t seem to snap out of it – and as the holidays drew closer I realized that I was not only no closer to motherhood, I was now a year older than when we first went to see the RE we both hated. Or, in the most disparaging terms, a year closer to my body completely closing up shop in terms of any viability for reproduction (impaired as it has been).

Most of December was a bit of a mind fog. I tried hard not to think about the people who are no longer in our lives. I tried even harder to ignore comments from people about how they hadn’t expected or planned their very evident pregnancy (and tried, even harder, to resist the temptation to say how glad I’d be to take their unplanned/unexpected miracle home with me). I tried to muster every ounce of happiness I could feel for others as their lives lit up like our Christmas tree: new home in time for the baby; new addition to the family; travels across the country for a family Christmas. All things we would not have, yet again. 

And then more bad news came in. Home repairs came a callin’ – and of course not the kind that could easily be fixed with a DIY job. Strangers came into our home, traipsing through our bedroom with street shoes as I tried to bite my lip hard enough not to have a total hissy fit that would’ve made Teresa Giudice blanch. Our tv kept having problems; and then our internet seemed to be having a premature midlife crisis. More people came to the house. Equipment was repaired, swapped out, repaired again. I stopped counting the amount of “service people” that had dragged an entire quarry worth of invisible ick through my house. (Sidebar: as of this moment, I’ve decided that if someone comes to my house and doesn’t take off their shoes or put on those blue hospital footies, I will buy a guillotine. Or, failing that, a cattle prod. Because if I have to deal with one more person stepping all over my crisp white bath rugs – the same ones I stand on with bare feet – I. am. going. to. lose. it.)

As if that’s not bad enough, DH’s company is downsizing and he has no idea whether or not he’s going to make the cut. He might be ok. He might be ok for a little while. He might have to find a new job. Oh, and our insurance is going up! Peaches and cream, aren’t we just so lucky???

The cherry on top? I spent the entire week of Christmas sick as a dog.

It’s amazing how resilient you become through struggling with IF, though. You learn how to roll with the punches because you’ve already figured out that life isn’t fair. Good things don’t always happen to good people. Sometimes, bad things happen to good people. You almost manage not to throw up or dissolve into a puddle of tears after the gazillionth person tells you about their “happy news” (and remind yourself that an ingrate who can’t understand how grateful she should be for her blessing isn’t worth committing a felony – even if you feel like throttling her). You try not to think about how they can marvel at the life that is growing inside them even though they only just learned of it a minute ago and are still holding the plastic test stick. You almost convince yourself that you have so much to be happy for that you have no right to be so upset that something isn’t going your way. You almost forget that you weren’t always this angry, resentful, bitter, desperate, sad, lonely, pathetic shadow of a person.

Almost. 

Until, one day, you think about the day you hope and pray for with every fiber of your being – the day that you hope will happen sooner rather than later. And you realize that, unlike your fertile counterparts who can think of a million and one ways to tell their husbands the happy news, your “happy news” will be a qualified revelation. It will involve days and weeks of tension. It will be preceded by hours of jumping out of your skin every time the phone rings, every time your stomach growls, every time you feel anything at all.

In that moment, you realize that you will never have the quiet happiness; the elation that “normal” women feel. You will never be able to just be excited about getting pregnant – because, for you, it will have involved countless tests, a battery of invasive exams and medical procedures. While other women can think about how they’re going to outfit their baby’s nursery, you’ll be wondering what more you can sell of your personal possessions to buy the necessities for the baby you’ve dreamed of for so long – because all the resources and assets you had have long since disappeared in the ether.

I don’t dream about the day that I will find out I’m pregnant (and I’m still, infuriatingly still, trying desperately to replace “if” with “when” – yet another sign of all the things you do, irrationally, for fear of jinxing yourself). I don’t dream of being pregnant. Because I know all that stuff will be painful, scary and expensive. I know that, from the moment I get pregnant, I’ll be terrified of doing something wrong to jeopardize the pregnancy. I’ll be anxious to fight my increasing anxiety; worried that the wrong move, the wrong drink or food, the wrong activity (or even thought) will make my baby leave me.

So what I’m dreaming of isn’t the process of getting there; it’s putting all that behind me – not of conceiving but of having a baby. Because if I’ve learned anything from my fellow sisters-in-arms, it’s that the coveted BFP is only the first of many hurdles for us IFers. So you won’t see or hear me screaming from the roof tops when it happens; but you might see an agnostic clamor to any semblance of spirituality in a desperate attempt to barter for something, anything, to allow her to carry her baby to term.

And while, given our predicament, the only thing I truly care about is having a healthy child with all limbs and organs intact and fully functional, there’s a part deep inside me that continues to dream of having a girl. Ever since DH and I got married, I always pictured a little girl with his eyes and hair. I don’t know why I didn’t picture a mini-me – maybe because, somehow, I wanted so badly to create another life with my husband that was almost like a gift, a homage, to the man I love. Silly me.

What I dream of isn’t the moment I find out I’m pregnant; or the moment where enough time has passed to believe that the pregnancy is viable enough to consider sharing the news with what little is left of our families. What I dream of is the moment that a nurse places our baby in my arms; the moment I’ll dissolve into tears of happiness instead of sadness and frustration; the moment I’ll feel whole again.

I hope that this day will come for me. And even though I want three children, I’ll be the happiest woman alive even if this blessed event graces our lives only once. Just once – that’s all I ask if it’s meant to be that way. Because without even that one time, I don’t know what I’m doing on this earth…

 

*

*

* My New Year’s Resolutions may or may not have included swearing less. However, it’s early days yet – and the bottom line is that if you’re acting like an a$$hat, I’m probably going to tell you that ya kinda are in my best David Spade/Russel Dunbar impression. Just calling a spade a spade.

The Big F

*from Decibel Magazine* This is pretty much EXACTLY how I feel today. Except that I’m pretty sure it’s even less cute on a grown woman.

WARNING: angry shouty (wo)manchild full steam ahead.

Epic FAIL.

Not now? Not yet? NOT EVER??

For the last couple of days, I’ve been walking around with a ticker-tape displaying repetitive bursts of the F word. I’ve been so irate and annoyed that it’s a miracle I haven’t ground my teeth to nubs yet.

AF is 3 days late, but of course only to torment me before eventually crash-landing today with a resounding thud to remind that, no – for ME, a delayed period just means that something is wacky this month. Or maybe I inhaled something weird. Or the stars aligned to punish me for some long-forgotten misdeed.

Whatever the reason, I really feel like S-C-R-E-A-M-I-N-G – because, quite frankly, who needs this hassle? Part of me felt like shouting at my own body and saying, FINE, you don’t want to stay on the clock? Then tell that b**** to pack her bags because, as far as I’m concerned, I’ve put in more than enough time after over 2 decades of MISERY without so much as a blip on the radar that would indicate that it will EVER pay off. 

I’m so angry right now that I want to send nastygrams to all the a$$hats who make “Happy Period” commercials and tell them that they can stuff those products where the sun doesn’t shine. Because, aside from the fact that IVF isn’t covered in the majority of states – last I checked, I also can’t write off all the crap I have to buy so I don’t look like a victim of a slaughterhouse on our tax return as a medical expense. Meanwhile, Viagra is covered – because, OF COURSE, getting a boner is more important that procreation. “Oh, I know, this must be so hard. My wallet’s too small for my fifties AND MY DIAMOND SHOES ARE TOO TIGHT.” (*)

So I will most likely have to spend an inordinate amount of time at home for the next 10 days or so – lest I suddenly turn into an eerie reenactment of The Exorcist when someone annoys me by, oh I don’t know, breathing.

It doesn’t help when the idiocy of others that would annoy me under the best of circumstances now seems even more aggravating. This is especially true of the heathens involved in preparing my coffee – and, somehow, despite remuneration, performing said job in a decidedly sub-par fashion.

Exhibit A: Since my husband works long hours, we usually try to go out for breakfast and/or coffee on the weekend. Yet, apparently, when I ask for a simple thing like a wet latte – you know, what with a latte NOT being a cappuccino, which should render my request unnecessary…and yet I invariably end up with HALF A CUP OF FOAM if I don’t say anything. Sorry, but I’m not interested in paying top dollar for AIR BUBBLES ON MY COFFEE.

Also? When you burn your coffee beans or (re)use substandard coffee and my caffeinated beverage of choice tastes like what I assume it would be like if I decided to lick asphalt instead, I’m going to get a little annoyed. If you then give me attitude, an exagerrated eye roll you don’t feel self-conscious about at all – what with me, the customer, paying your damn wages – or some kind of backtalk, consider yourself lucky that I’m not crazy enough to throw the coffee right at you.

I’m not an unreasonable or rude cafe patron – I’m polite, I’m friendly, I make just enough chit chat to show that you’re not a robot in my eyes – so KINDLY refrain from shouting talking about some stupid football match with a coworker so loudly that I can’t hear myself think, never mind have a conversation with my husband. Otherwise that fork you gave me for my bagel (??!!??) may end up spearing the thick part of your brain, since you obviously use it for insulation rather than to, you know, WORK. And shut the hell up. Because, I’m thinking? When you’re at work, you should display a modicum of professionalism – it’s not my fault that you’re over the hill and working as a barista.

(I’ll make an exception to the poor hapless soul who was forced to contend with a customer who wanted a wet cappuccino “but not latte wet” – which made even me want to spit in his coffee: http://twrage.blogspot.com/2008/03/wet-cappuccino-on-fools-and-possible.html. However: all you little s***s on ihatestarbucks.com – you can get bent, because if no one were willing to fork over the money for the overpriced concoctions you’re sick and tired of making and/or using dishwater, decaf or whatever else to make because you hate your life and yourself so much that spouting off about ruining someone else’s day on your little site makes you feel less impotent, YOU WOULDN’T HAVE A JOB. Get that, dumba$$? So I don’t give a fig if you hate making holiday drinks for months – last I checked, you’re getting paid to do just that, so kindly keep your piehole shut. That’s the only tip I’ve got for you.)

So I’ve come to the conclusion that the best thing for me is to (a) make my own coffee; and (b) ween myself off of it entirely in favor of herbal teas. I’m thinking; something calming/soothing laced with heavy dose of Valerian Root Extract. In the meantime, I’ve managed to find a bag of whole beans that are supposedly both fairtrade AND organic (although judging by the way both the USDA and FDA deal with the general well-being of the population like a theoretic problem in the script for a bad reality tv series, it’s anybody’s guess whether what I bought isn’t just the same crap they cram into the El Cheapo coffee bags).

I’m sure that, at this point, you may be thinking that someone ought to force-feed me a copious amount of prescription drugs to induce a less belligerent state of mind. I would concur – except that I’m trying really hard to take as little medication as humanly possible in my perhaps useless, senseless attempt to reboot my body and make my reproductive parts WORK, DAMMIT, WORK!!!

(Sidebar: As if I wasn’t already so angry that I had a mental image of ripping my own arm out of its socket, cartoon-style, just so that I would have something to use as my Captain Cave(wo)man club – I spent the last half hour continuing the write this post until I tried to save it…and was logged out of the site for some random, inexplicable reason. The same reason that, somehow, the auto-save had not engaged and so I lost about 3 paragraphs worth of postulating on my descent into wildebeest mode.)

I’m so annoyed that, while preparing veggies for the dinner I’m planning to make for my husband tonight, I cut myself with a serrated knife because I was impatient and not paying the kind of attention you should be paying when wielding sharp instruments. Everything is somehow going wrong and everything is irritating me to a degree that I have a hard time putting into words: the dogs barking, the fact that there’s never anything on tv when you really need something to distract you (and, for that matter, the incessant DRONING ON of commercials that seems to underpin the notion that, yes, parenthood is the badge of honor to strive for, the call to action for heroes) the remote control that aggravatingly not just slips out of my hand but then lands in the trash can full of fur from when I trimmed one of my dogs; the fact that I just want to wake up in a different life on days like today.

On the flipside of all this anger and aggression I’m feeling is, of course, a free-fall into grief. Isn’t it pathetic that, at my age, you can still sit there and feel totally sorry for yourself? I don’t even know why I’m expecting anything else at this point. I mean, talk about deluded! My period is a few days late and, apparently, this idiot was deluded enough to think that, somehow, Aphaea herself had flicked my unresponsive body and kicked it into high gear, suddenly – and inexplicably – giving me the gift of fertility.(Cue derisive snorting from the peanut gallery.) I am so incredibly STUPID that, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, apparently Homer Simpson is at the helm of my brain because there’s no other way to explain why I keep coming back for more heartache or why, WHY WHY WHY WHY I keep returning to the bottomless pit that results from imagining what our child would look like. The child that I’m more and more convinced will just never be conceived and born. The child that I want but am beginning to wonder if I’m just not meant to have, if I’m so unworthy that not ONE single act of love has resulted in what other people treat like so much garbage.

I’ve been trying so hard not be bitter. I figure that I can’t really complain if nothing is happening since I’m not even undergoing any ARTs etc at the moment – and yet, the resentment I feel when there are so many people I’ve known who have conceived multiple children without so much as having to try for more than a couple of months; or people who got pregnant without trying or even consciously WANTING a child just then…it makes me want to put my fist into a reinforced steel door just so I have something to distract me from all the pain I’m already in.

I HATE, and I mean hate with a vengeance, not just being in this situation in the first place. I hate that I can’t come to terms with it. I hate that I’m angry and bitter, that I’ve never felt more lonely in my entire life and that I’m only one of thousands of women going through the same thing while NO ONE CARES. No one gives a crap about the fact that the majority of people struggling with infertility will have to mortgage themselves up to their eyeballs if they can even come up with the financial resources for a single cycle of IVF. I HATE hate hate running errands and seeing a woman so hefty that the best descriptive term would be the Hindenberg – who is also pregnant. Of course. Because you know, it happens to all these people all over the place – people who somehow DON’T EVEN REALIZE THAT THEY ARE PREGNANT until the baby pops out. Or people who, despite weighing somewhere in the vicinity of 500 lbs and not even able to get a standard seat belt across their bodies, or who poison their bodies with every illegal drug known to mankind, are apparently still more fertile than me.

I want to scream. I want to cry. I want to run away. I want to punch things, throw things, beat something to a pulp. Because on top of all the crap that’s at the heart of today’s diatribe, there are other things I can’t talk/write about that make all these issues even worse, even more painful, even more long-lasting. And all I can think about is how I wish I would just hit my head somewhere and have amnesia. Or a total change of personality where I don’t even want babies at all. So I spend the better part of everything morning and evening trying to remain as even-tempered as possible, trying not to turn into a weepy mess in front of my husband because if I had told him that my period was even a single day late, I know he would’ve gotten his hopes up, would’ve thought, dared to dream, maybe this is it. And then I would’ve just failed him, failed us, again – over and over, every single month for all these years that I have to fight the urge to get a hysterectomy so I can just say F YOU STUPID PIECE OF NON-FUNCTIONAL EQUIPMENT THAT KEEPS PUTTING ME THROUGH THE RINGER EVERY DAMN MONTH WITHOUT GIVING ME ANYTHING IN RETURN AFTER I’VE BEEN POKED AND PRODDED FROM HERE TO ETERNITY. I know I should learn to love my body despite its shortcomings, but today I hate it.

Dark days. Sad days. Pathetic days. I want to tear the screen of my computer and throw it at the tv because they’re all in cahoots in making me miserable. My body feels like it’s going to convulse from the warring emotions; bile rising in my throat, making me feel like I’m going to vomit. But the sad, sad truth is that I know there’s nothing I can do about any of it. I can sit here, typing, big fat tears stinging my eyes until they drop like anchors down my face – and it won’t change a damn thing. So I let it eat me up inside because we have no one to turn to, because no one cares, because we’re alone in this.

No one cares.

So if anybody’s asking – I’ll be moping on the couch, watching Family Guy and eating cookie dough. At least for today.

(*) partial quote from Chandler in Friends.

Hormonal Rage

I wasn’t going to go on this whole diatribe about road rage and how there are entirely too many people who don’t understand the basic concepts normally covered in driver’s ed – but, here I am. At this rate I’m thinking that *when* (positive thinking!!) we have children, I’m going to have to find a way to acquire and drive an M1 Abrams Tank so I can make sure my precious bundle(s) of joy stay safe from all the crazies out there. (Which now makes me totally chuckle because I’m suddenly reminded of the episode of Family Guy where Peter decides that a tank would be the perfect “vehicle” to buy for Meg. LMAO!)

As I was saying…

Apparently, these days using an indicator to signal that you’re about to change lanes is no longer deemed necessary – instead, it’s evident to me that most people give little thought to what could happen if some of us didn’t have excellent brakes and reaction times when faced with a grade A moron who, in dense traffic, decides that YES, this is the perfect time to switch lanes. Without signaling. In fact, why not go ahead and careen your death machine across three lanes of traffic all at once. Because, you know, you should always try things you’ve seen on tv – especially given your totally awesome driving skilllllz, yo! Fo shiz! (Do I need to point out that this is dripping with sarcasm? No? Didn’t think so.)

But it doesn’t stop there, oh no! Instead, I’m also starting to get REALLY annoyed at people who just don’t keep up with the flow of traffic – and then create problems for everyone else because they don’t understand that the left lane is the PASSING lane, not the “cruise as slowly as possible while still keeping vehicle in motion” lane. I actually had a conversation with someone about this a few weeks ago – and she told me that one of her girlfriends admitted to always driving in the left lane “because I just like it more”. I think I may have started twitching and balling my hands into fists to stop myself from screaming WHAAAATTTTT? – followed by a choice selection of profane expletives.

So if you are one of those people – STOP. If you’re going slower than EVERYONE ELSE – and people keep switching to the right lane to pass you – that’s a sign that YOU ARE DRIVING AT THE SPEED OF GRANDMA. So kindly get the hell out of the way, before I decide to trade my current vehicle for a Dodge Ram and decide to live up to their motto that “If you can’t Dodge it, Ram it”.

All of which is just part and parcel when dealing with the strata of population whose subpar intelligence also includes texting while driving (if you have a death wish, do us all a favor and just drink a bottle of bleach instead) and doing your make-up/hair/other cosmetic enhancements while driving (because, yes, of course you want yet another layer of foundation since you lost half of what was previously caked on your face on that shirt you tried on and didn’t buy – thanks for that, btw, not gross AT ALL).

But perhaps the most aggravating thing, to me, are people who don’t understand that you should have at least one hand available for driving – and that using one to smoke and the other to talk on your cell phone is just plain retarded. YES, I’m using that word because that’s exactly what it is. Also? Newsflash, it’s almost 2014 – ever heard of a damn bluetooth device, you troglodyte?

Personally, I think driving laws would benefit from a draconian make-over – such as, no phones if it’s not hands-free, absolutely ZERO tolerance for texting while driving, and if you hold up traffic because you’re doing something other than keeping your eyes on the road and moving to the right lane where you belong if you’re driving at snail’s pace, you should just have your license suspended. Also? Any vehicle that’s meant for construction and or hauling something (like, say, ignitable fuel, construction materials, chainsaws or who the hell knows what else) should not even be allowed to drive in the left lane unless forced to pass an obstacle to avoid an accident. Why? Because when there’s a tractor trailer, construction truck or someone with an RV attached on the back hauling a$$ on the highway – guess what? It takes them much, much longer to come to a halt. So if there’s a problem, or traffic suddenly backs up because Barbie forgot to put on her false eyelashes correctly? That behemoth is going to come crashing into a bunch of cars and cause something awful.

And people who have construction materials and tools shouldn’t be driving fast anyway since it’s a toss-up whether or not they’ve remembered to tie everything down – and you may otherwise find yourself in a predicament like what I went through a few years ago when a chainsaw literally went airborne from the bed of a truck ahead of me and damn near smashed into my windshield. Yes, that actually happened.

Last but not least – people who act like idiots at the gas station. Idiotic behavior such as talking on your cell phone while refueling your vehicle – or being too lazy to actually stand next to your car and getting back into your car while the hose dispensing flammable fuel is left unattended – deserves an extra dose of Gibbs Head Slaps. Especially since you can’t claim that it would hurt seeing as how you’re clearly just using your brain as insulation for your head.

All of this stuff is giving me serious road rage. (Because, you know, it wasn’t obvious from what I’ve written so far. Yep, all about stating the obvious today.) Can someone please explain to me what happened to common sense? Was I in a coma when it died? Or are people just too stupid to think about exactly how many things can go wrong if you’re not paying attention when you’re driving? ARGH!!! (On a side note – DH and I have already had numerous, erhm, “discussions” in regards to our as-yet-to-be-conceivable offspring being allowed to drive. I said not before 21 because as far as I’m concerned, until you’re deemed responsible enough to consume alcohol in moderation, you’re certainly NOT responsible enough to sit behind the wheel and avoid things like vehicular manslaughter. DH thinks I’m being unreasonable because how are they supposed to get to the jobs they’re going to need to pay for college when we’ll be busy paying off our projected IVF debts until we’re in the ground?)

ANYWAY.

I’m feeling hormonal. (Here I go again stating the obvious – tsk tsk!) I know it’s T minus a handful of days before my period, which means yet another month where I get to writhe in pain with absolutely NOTHING to show for decades of suffering. And, just to add insult to injury, all those supplies I have to buy every month aren’t even tax deductible (an oversight? me thinks NOT!) – despite the fact that I have to waste hundreds of dollars a year on something that has as yet to show me ANY kind of tangible benefit.

The good news, though, is that I ran some errands today and everyone I came into contact with was very friendly! I admit that I went out of my way to be super nice as well, but it’s just an awesome feeling when the worst thing I can say about my day is (a) people drive like idiots, (b) there are entirely too many baby bumps around (uhm, hello? it’s autumn – kindly keep your damn fecundity to spring where it belongs and has a choke-hold on all us IFers for months. THIS time of of the year should belong to US! HMPF!!).

The plan is to watch a movie together tonight – which I always enjoy because I almost don’t care what we watch so long as DH is snuggling on the couch with one of the pups and I can feel at peace with the world. Plus, it means I can “steal” some popcorn from him because he loves me too much to say “get your own damn bag of popcorn!”. Ah, the gift of perspective – so nice when I can honestly say that, despite the ups and downs and some teeth-grinding in the car earlier today, I’m happy as a clam.

In other news, today my little blog hit 50 followers – YAY! Thank you for being out there and making me feel like, for all my rants and sometimes (ok, often) irrational fears, anxiety and frustration, I was right to listen to some of my fellow IFers who encouraged me to start a blog. Namaste! 🙂

A Car is NOT a Baby

Is it me or has everyone jumped on the bandwagon and is using babies, kids and mommies as their running theme to push advertise new products? Evidently, no one needs a new deodorant more than a heavily pregnant woman inexplicably sporting high heels (something that I still think defies logic) or a new checking account. I had no idea that pregnancy makes you especially stinky or that some women experience cravings not for food but for a new financial institution – I guess you learn something new every day! And if those seemingly benign ads haven’t already made your stomach turn, then there’s always the ones with the soft, sweet music playing to black and white vignettes of mommy and baby – or some version thereof. Johnson & Johnson, of course, reign supreme in the ram-a-pitchfork-through-my-achy-breaky-heart niche.

It seems that we, of the infertility world, are not the only ones obsessed with babies.

Did I say obsessed? I mean, interested in. Yeah. That’s what I meant. Enthusiastic! About! BABIES!!

(I’m trying not to grit my teeth right now).

So it’s not bad enough that you can’t go to the grocery store without an onslaught of celebrity and pseudo-celebrity “baby bump watch” gossip rag covers assaulting your senses – no, instead, now your damn tv is also in on it! And it’s not just the obvious tv ads – it’s also the sudden infusion of All Things Pregnancy in what seems like EVERY. DAMN. SHOW. ON. EARTH. Because apparently it makes perfect sense to develop a plot line where life is created by combining the genetic material of a werewolf and a vampire (The Vampire Diairies/The Originals). Or derailing a plot line by giving some teeny boppers who haven’t even made it to college yet the enormous responsibility of parenthood, then killing the “dad” which causes the “mom” to have a miscarriage (Revenge). And even when you reach into the past to watch something on DVD, you run into the forgotten episodes involving Andrea Zuckerman of the original Beverly Hills 90120 exclaiming that pregnancy is not at all blissful because morning sickness sucks. Which, in my humble opinion, is why you should wait to have babies until you’re no longer such a baby yourself – but that’s besides the point.

And even though I know all of this stuff is not real life but fiction in so far as none of the aforementioned are “reality tv” (which is also anything but real but falls into a different category of “fiction”), I found myself getting annoyed, for a split second and thinking – wth, I can’t have a baby and they’re trying to sell me on the Immaculate Conception involving something that’s supposed to be DEAD? SERIOUSLY?? Or the fact that, apparently, after losing your bf/baby daddy AND your baby, you still manage to get a flawless blowout and strut around in your best designer duds spouting venom on command. The only thing that I’ve realized from all this is (a) some fiction is BAD fiction; (b) some people really don’t deserve to have babies. Even if they’re fictitious.

But let’s get back to my original point about commercials that variously make me bawl or want to reach through the tv screen like a Poltergeist/Freddie Krueger and strangle whoever is constantly assaulting my raw, wounded heart by reminding me NON-STOP of how, apparently, everyone in the world – including the fictional and, oh yeah, technically dead – can make a baby and I can’t.

My favorite one – and I mean this with a heavy sense of sarcasm – has to be the most recent commercial by insurance company Nationwide. It starts out with a larger-than-life baby sitting in a driveway, being hosed down by a guy…I’ll let you check this out for yourself in case you haven’t seen it already:

Admittedly, if I hadn’t been so taken in my this GINORMOUS (and, fyi, super cute) baby filling my entire screen, I might have clued into the fact that maybe, just maybe, this wasn’t about an actual baby at all. But all I could see was the baby – I felt like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights. Something inside of me cried because I just wanted to take it and hold it (you know, after I dried it off and flicked the guy with the water hose back to whatever rock he crawled out from under). The physical enormity of the baby suddenly represented, in the most painful way, years of hoping – and feeling my dreams crushed as I lost a little more of my soul with each passing year. The proportion of the baby vs the guy is how I feel about motherhood and infertility at this point – and how something that should’ve been a normal development in our lives, our marriage, has become the biggest “bundle”. Not of joy, but of pain.

Needless to mention, it’s a metaphor: it’s about how this guy’s car is HIS baby – and how Nationwide is going to give him the best deal/protection/peace of mind in case of the inevitable snafu. But I was – I was totally blind-sighted. I actually thought, ok this is about how a baby is a huge responsibility, how it’s part of every living breathing moment of your life, and how you’re going to want the best of everything to protect your little bundle of joy. At the end of the commercial, I was torn between rolling my eyes and wanting to send Russel Dunbar to whoever came up with this to tell them “Someone thinks you’re an a$$face – and ya kinda are.”

Sorry, Nationwide – a car is NOT a baby.

Numbers and Letters

The other day it occurred to me how, once you are firmly entrenched in fighting the battle of IF, your life is almost back to where you were as a child: learning to speak. Only this time, it’s a “language” that make little sense to your average layperson – a language that requires lengthy explanations, hours of research and ultimately makes you feel almost as tired as you did cramming for finals in high school. Or worse – because now you’re older, you’re less naive, you’re not bouncing around happy-go-lucky thinking about back packing through Europe or trekking through the Himalayas. You’ve got baby on the brain 24/7 – and everything seems ridiculously hard to understand for some reason. Your heart is pounding, your head is hurting – so many conflicting theories, so much data. So, so many heart-breaking stories. In dealing with infertility, it all becomes about numbers and letters as you get bombarded by lab results full of values and acronyms that mean nothing to you – and God forbid anyone take the time to explain anything to you beyond the bottom line of “good” or “bad”.

For some reason, your brain seems to shut down periodically. You were never that good with science and math. Now all these numbers – even though they’re not equations – are scary. They’re a big jumble and these stupid figures, black on white, are what may well determine whether or not you will ever become a mother by anything approximating “traditional” means (in this case referring to biological offspring, since there’s obviously nothing “normal” about IF). Your palms get sweaty at the RE’s office, you nod your head as you try to understand what exactly is going on – and taste blood as you bite your tongue because you will not cry in front of this stranger who just told you at your first appointment that, based on your lab results, you may need to use donor eggs. You want to scream, I don’t understand this, any of this, why is this happening to me??? – but you don’t because that’s not how you were raised. You try to remain outwardly calm while your hands dig into the sides of your legs. Every part of your brain is screeching like a wounded animal.  

I don’t know how you can explain or make someone understand exactly how awful it is to be in this kind of situation. I don’t know how you can even start a conversation with someone and explain to them what it feels like when someone tells you, point blank and without feeling, that your chances of having a biological child with your husband – something that most people not only take for granted but don’t even think about beyond the moment at which they’re ready to “make a baby” – are very slim at best. I don’t know how to explain to someone what it feels like when the same person mentions donor eggs to you like it’s the most natural thing – like someone didn’t just make you feel like you were hit by a freight train in the space of 30 seconds, before moving on to act like carrying a baby that, biologically speaking, is half your husband’s and half some other woman’s is totally normal while you’re trying not to have a mental image of your husband sleeping with someone else because you know that, obviously, that’s not how that happens – but none of this is rational because your heart is bleeding and you feel like you’re having a brain aneurysm.

I don’t know how to explain any of this to someone else because I can’t imagine how anyone could be so dense that they couldn’t understand how not being able to have a biological child with the man you love feels like the end of the world.

I thought about this as I was reading someone’s “TTC timeline” – and almost snickered (subconsciously) when I got to her AMH levels. I felt like saying, consider yourself lucky – mine is #$^&%#$#$#~!!! I didn’t, in the end, because I suddenly thought – whoa, I bet this is what the proverbial “sizing up” between guys in the locker room is rumored to be like, only in reverse. “Yeah, but your AMH is higher, so my situation is worse. No, your FSH is better than mine, so my situation is gloomier. Yeah but your estradiol levels are much better so…” 

OY.

At what point did I become this person who flinches are even a hint of a pooch or reading the “stats” of someone’s IF and/or TTC journey? At what point did I become so bitter, so judgmental – like this black gremlin sucking the joy out of my soul? I took a long, deep breath and thought – yeah, this is not the kind of person I want to be. Because that’s not the kind of mother I want to be – and if I’m going to get serious about creating life, one way or another, I’m not going to get into a pi$$ing match over numbers and letters. NOT. GOING. TO. HAPPEN. I don’t want to be this angry, bitter and resentful person for the rest of my life – because no matter what happens, I know that I have much to be grateful for and my husband deserves a wife who doesn’t stare daggers at random strangers or randomly yells at the computer screen. Which I totally don’t do, of course. 

Ahem.

I’m sad. I’m scared. I’m freaked out, anxious and terrified. So many bad things had already happened in my life before we even got to that first appointment with the RE – and when I thought we were finally going to be in “good hands”, in turned out that we weren’t. Maybe we could’ve sucked it up and stuck it out, but as much as I wish we were further along with this process – how could I not? – I’m glad we didn’t stay with this person who I had no faith or confidence in. You don’t expect a doctor to be a magician; and in this day and age, you don’t expect them to treat you like family. But when it’s so apparent that you’re just a number with dollar signs attached, and the person is lacking any kind of sensitivity in dealing with such an obviously emotional, raw situation? I know someone else might have made a different decision, but there was no way I was putting myself through the rigors of IVF and all the befores, afters and in betweens with someone like that at the helm.

In the end, though, the decision to stop seeing the RE was one we obviously made together because, when it came right down to it we both didn’t like him. We didn’t make a big scene – we simply requested our medical records. You would’ve thought we were asking the CIA to hand over classified information for all the huffing and puffing that ensued – most of which I initially had to deal with, until I got fed up and let my husband handle the situation. Which, thankfully, expedited the whole ordeal. Still, when we did finally get them, I had the distinct impression that there were things missing, notes perhaps deliberately omitted or “misplaced”, lab work that didn’t show up (just like they couldn’t bother to call after a biopsy or lab work). What little there was had sloppy notes scribbled in the world’s worst hand-writing and in short-hand, so was basically useless to us – again making me wonder whether there was deliberate intent behind complying with their mandatory requirement to release our medical records while, essentially, giving us NOTHING. I may have started bawling when I realized this.

But I started thinking that I’m here for a reason – writing this blog, trying to connect with other women going through some version of the same thing. I’m here not just to tell my story, say my piece, vent, cry and soldier on – no, I’m also here to learn, to grow as a person. Because sometimes I need a big kick in the you-know-what – and because my whole life has been a long, messy winding road of low self-esteem and self-loathing, the whole “I am woman, hear me roar” sometimes has to come through the inspiration of someone else’s words of encouragement. I will not let this get the better of me. I will not let infertility define me as a person, or my life as a whole.

So, for all of you out there – thank you for being there, thank you for sharing your story, your feelings, your heartache and answering my many questions. Thanks to you, when we finally get to a new RE and they start throwing all those scary letters and numbers at us again, I can look them straight in the eye and say: BRING IT ON!

Running With Stabby Nachos

Sometimes, there are moments in this stupid IF journey that feel like someone kicked me in the face without so much as a “Hello, I’m going to rearrange your visage for free!” My heart skips a beat, the familiar constriction in my throat is a foreboding of impending tears. But I’m trying to turn a corner on a lifetime of guilt and self-loathing, of feeling like everything under the sun is somehow my fault – no matter who or what may be the real root of it.

So when I checked my email and received a reply that wasn’t meant for me because, you know, some people still haven’t figured out how NOT to reply to the entire list that the original email was addressed to – I was confronted with the following:

“I didn’t know babies snored.”

A perfectly innocuous sentence, one would think – right? Nothing to get upset about, make a fuss about, certainly not worthy of a meltdown. But for a split second I kind of wanted to put my fist through the computer screen. WHAT. THE.  !!@#(*@##$^&#%#%$. !!!! (Look at me getting creative and trying hard not to swear. Yay me! Of course, what I really need at times like these is my very own Russel Dunbar – someone who can tell others that they “kinda are” total a$$faces. OOPS.)

For anyone who’s what we in the “industry” – bwahahahaha – like to call an IF veteran*, my reaction is probably not at all surprising. If you’ve been TTC for 2 months you’ll probably fail to grasp why I didn’t just think, awwwww, how cute – snoring baby! Must tweet! Oh, no – not cute or sweet to me. And not because, obviously, I would SO think it was cute if this was MY baby snoring. I can imagine myself perched over a crib, or gazing down at a little drooling mini-ME slobbering and snoring like my grandfather after a copious meal – and yes, if I were in that situation, with MY baby in my arms, I would absolutely think it was cute. I’d probably chuckle. I’d marvel at how otherwise irritating or annoying things are so much less so when done by babies. I’d sigh contentedly because, finally, I’d know the bliss of motherhood.

Instead, I was sitting there all by myself – and the only snoring I was hearing was from one of my dogs. Don’t get me wrong, it’s kind of cute in a way because she has the weirdest way of sleeping sometimes – but those 5 words made me feel like someone had spat in my face. After chewing tobacco. Yeah, think about that for a minute.

For a split second, I was so irate that I wanted to fire back a reply to the person – someone who knows me, knows my situation, and therefore should OBVIOUSLY have realized that this was not information that would be happily received by me, especially in relation to the baby of someone I’m not on speaking terms with. I wanted to email back and say, could you PLEASE stop using modern technology if you haven’t grasped the basic concepts thereof and are apparently unaware that you’re launching emotional grenades my way? Or should I just block you? Because, you know – this stuff is NOT good for my waistline.

But of course I knew that I was overreacting. I knew that it wasn’t intentional. The person in question doesn’t even get how absolutely horrific the mere possibility of a life without biological offspring would be – having not been confronted with this issue personally – and therefore also has absolutely no idea that the tiniest, most seemingly insignificant sentence, picture or event can cause an emotional earthquake.

So I thought – hah, I’m just going to write my annoyance away somewhere else. Because, lately, I’m finally starting to realize more and more that all the things I’ve carried around with me for years – it’s not always about me. Sometimes, it’s not my fault – it’s not me. It’s someone else who’s being an idiot, who’s being inconsiderate, who doesn’t have the wherewithal or brain power to think beyond the tip of their nose because it doesn’t affect them personally. My husband has been trying to tell me this for years – bless his heart, he’s always been my biggest champion and has been working overtime for a decade to repair the damage done by people who shall remain nameless. So, rather than lash out, stomp my feet or shove a big cupcake in my mouth (although, the truth here is that I don’t have a cupcake and I’m to lazy to make one from scratch. Ahem.), I thought to myself: yep, that’s just typical of someone who doesn’t THINK. BEFORE. THEY. ACT. And If I’m going to feel that way about someone else, maybe I should apply the same standards to myself.

At this point, you may be wondering what any of this has to do with the headline of this blog post. Honestly? Nothing at all. You see, when I sat down to write, I was feeling really annoyed and irritated – and for some reason, the expression “running with scissors” came into my mind. But I was already starting to turn the corner and kind of laughing about how something as silly as a snoring baby had almost derailed my self-composure (yet another lovely side effect of long-term IF – the gift that keeps on crapping on your doorstep)…and somehow thought about the hilarious story that floated around years ago and had been forwarded to me by a friend. It was a parody about the “feud” between then BFFs Nicole Richie and Paris Hilton, which referenced Stavros Niarchos III, heir of a Greek shipping magnate, incorrectly as “Stabby Nachos”:

http://gofugyourself.com/the-simple-fug4-10-2006

I still remember being in tears from laughing so hard the first time I read this (snorting and guffawing may have been involved) – a perfect (albeit fictitious) soliloquy of vapid reality tv “stars”. I will admit that, even though I think Paris Hilton is just awful, I kind of thought The Simple Life was a little bit hilarious – although very obviously staged – and Nicole Richie may have been the only “celebrity” I didn’t hate for being pregnant. Because, you know, it was either motherhood or death by anorexia. Plus? How cute was her daughter Harlow? And I will say that I just ADORE her fashion style since she became a mom.

ANYWAY. 

My point is that writing is cathartic and sometimes finding the right way to put your feelings into words – even if it’s in a diary that only you read – can act like a pressure valve. Plus, laughter really is the best medicine – you know, so long as the source isn’t excessive schadenfreude.

And you know what? I feel better already. 🙂

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(*NB: I’m not sure I “technically” qualify as a “veteran” since I haven’t yet gone through a litany of ARTs. But since I have been on the TTC rollercoaster for what seems like FOREVER and am starting to feel as old as dust, I’m going to consider that my honorary badge. Sad, but true. )

Absence

So…It’s been two weeks. And before you sit there with bated breath, wondering if this is a happy or not so happy news post – it’s neither. At least not for me personally. I’m not pregnant, I still have never been – so I guess the silver lining is that I’ve also not had a miscarriage. At least not so far.

But that’s sort of what caused my absence: miscarriage. Not mine, obviously – but that of someone I don’t even really know. A woman I’m “friends” with on an infertility site – and I use the word loosely because I don’t want to overstate the relationship since, again, I obviously don’t really know her – had recently finally gotten a well-deserved BFP (for you newbies that means Big Fat Positive, aka PREGNANT. Yeah, I know – the lingo is overwhelming at first – but trust me when I tell you that you’ll be throwing it around like a well-roped lasso before your next-door neighbor can say “Yeehaw!”).

Of course I was kind of jealous. OF COURSE! I mean, we still haven’t made any real progress in finding a new RE – partly because we have other issues that we’re trying to deal with – so OF COURSE I’m frustrated, annoyed, anxious…wondering if DOR as already turned into POF and I’m just not aware of it, asking for a punch in the face the next time someone does lab work and I’ll be begging someone for a Costco size vat of Valium to bring me down from the meltdown that would ensue.

But I digress.

The truth is that while I’m not really a “community” type of person as such – and yes, I know, it’s not a pc thing to say but I’m just more comfortable one on one than I am with a ton of people – this has become very different in the face of infertilty. I think it’s because, when you get to my age, my situation, when you’ve been through what I’ve been through, you sit there feeling just slightly desperate. Pathetic, even. You want to slink away, your proverbial tail tucked between your legs because you feel like less of a (wo)man. You want to scream, cry, punch someone, punch the wall, race down the highway just because, you know what, if the universe isn’t going to give you a baby, then why should you care about anything else in the world?

It has been hard for me not to scream at people who procreate like bunnies and then do ridiculously stupid things like, oh, I don’t know – teeter totter around in mile-high heels because, oh that’s not stupid at all; or strap themselves into the maternity version of Spanx so that they can constrictor-boa the crap out their unborn child in the name of whatever ill-conceived notion of “fashion” they have (and I won’t even say anything about priorities because, hey, someone who’s concerned about looking fat because they’re pregnant is clearly a grade A moron). Or people who exclaim that pregnancy is sooooo boring (so please stop showing me pregnant teenagers on tv – because, really? I don’t need to convulse with projectile vomit). Or that their baby number ten thousand isn’t the right gender (no problemo – fork it on over!). I’ll spare you the apoplectic maelstrom of profanity that this creates in my head. Let’s just say that if and when I have a child – or, miracle of miracles, more than one healthy baby – I’ll be converting to a new religion: eternal gratitude. Shiny happy people indeed.

Anyway. The exception to my poorly veiled disdain – bordering on hate at times – for people who have ZERO concept for how blessed they are by never having to experience the raw, excruciating pain of primary IF sometimes falls away in the most unexpected ways – and this was the case when R. got pregnant. Even though we’ve never met, I was incredibly happy for her – I wanted to give her a hug and say, YOU DID IT! She deserved a slice of cake, her feet put up on cushy pillows while we – including the rest of her IF sisters – took in a chick flick marathon during which she smiled calmly and refused a glass of wine for the first time. (Yes, I have an active imagination – and yes, in another life I probably would’ve been a screenwriter for chick flicks. But that’s neither here nor there.)

I periodically checked in, not wanting to be to pushy because – again, we’re not friends in real life and I thought, maybe it’s a little lame to be living vicariously this way. But it was kind of like a beacon of hope for me. You see – R. and I are pretty much in the same boat. We’re more or less the same age, have the same problems with infertility. So her success? It made me think that I, too, had a chance to be successful. It made me feel less frustrated with our current situation because I thought, ok – it can still happen for me. It happened for R.! THERE IS HOPE! And let me tell you something: for a woman dealing with primary infertility in her mid to late 30s, hope is like Pringles – once you get a taste of it, you can’t get enough. (I was going to say it’s like crack but – well, I don’t know anything about drugs and it seems somewhat inappropriate to reference crack in the presence of baby dreams. Ahem.)

So when I saw her post that the second ultrasound had been silent – no heartbeat – I felt my own heart almost stop. I choked up as I read her post. I tried not to cry. I was angry. I was FURIOUS. As I read, I felt my heart breaking for her – through the words, it was as though she was telling me what had happened to my face…and somehow, I almost felt like it was me, like I was the one. I know. I know it sounds stupid, crazy – maybe even selfish or self-absorbed. I wouldn’t blame you at all for shaking your head or thinking I’m an idiot for feeling this way. But I was absolutely devastated for R. – not just because of what she was going to lose, what she was going to have to go through (which is absolutely unimaginable to me) – but also because it was like, in that moment, the tiny little flicker of hope was extinguished. The success story that I was pinning my own hopes on…gone.

And then, of course, I felt like a horrible person. I was angry at myself because I thought, why am I making this about myself? I wrote her a heartfelt message, telling her how sorry I was – and my words felt so hollow. Not because I didn’t mean them, which I did of course. They felt hollow because I thought – it doesn’t mean anything; it doesn’t help. It doesn’t change the situation. It doesn’t make her wake up the next day with this nightmare behind her any sooner; or, better yet, having woken up and this actually having been just a nightmare – her being able to shake it off with a shudder and think, thank God it was just a dream. It made me realize that, as much as I’ve always relied on words to express myself – and I do, believe me – there are times when no words can be enough.

After that, I just felt so empty and deflated. I was sad, tired – I’ve been having a hard time sleeping for a month or so anyway, and nothing seems to be getting me back to a normal pattern. I tried reading. I tried getting some fresh air. I tried re-organizing things. I did 4 loads of laundry one day. I spent two days virtually attached to the couch, watching tv. Constantly having this dull ache in my heart and a tug of war in my head: the paralyzing fear of never having been pregnant and what my already-low AMH from a year ago might mean for me pitted against the guilt I felt for taking someone else’s tragedy so personally.

Eventually, these past few days, I’ve been feeling a little better. I thought about how I’ve spent so much of my life feeling bad about myself. Always questioning how other people perceived me thanks to certain somebodies I won’t mention; never feeling good enough, pretty enough, smart enough. And in dealing with infertility, it seems like just another way that life is telling me that I’m a failure. But I thought to myself: I’m an adult. It’s MY job to rephrase the crap in my head. Who gives a fig about what someone else said? What someone else thinks? I’m not a bad person. I’m considerate. I go out of my way to try to be nice to others, to be empathetic, kind and polite. I’m not perfect, I’m HUMAN. At what point did I accept that external values should define me?

So you know what – here’s the truth. I HATE that I have to deal with infertility. It feels like it’s just another way that I suck at life. But I also know that there are tons of women who deal with this – women who are young and healthy, women who are in worse shape than I am, women who are single, divorced etc. In the grand scheme of things, I have to believe that I’m going to get through this and that infertility is not meant to define me. I’m not going to be one of those people who call themselves an “infertile” – to me that doesn’t even make sense. It’s something I struggle with, not something that’s part of my character!

Anyways. That’s it for today’s offering. I know it’s not especially original or poetic – but it’s from the heart. Thank you for believing in me when I didn’t.

A Crack in the Glass

This weekend has been one of reflection for me. I’ve spent a lot of time reading about the struggles of other women who, like me, face the uncertainty of what life has in store for them as they muddle their way through, trying desperately to cling to a sense of themselves instead of letting infertility redefine them in a new, hollow sense of “normal”.

I wanted to wallow in self-pity. I wanted to go and buy myself a self-indulgent cinnamon roll (or three), scarf it down while fat tears rolled down my face, burning in my eyes as I pretended, for a second, that processed sugar could melt away my pain. But I didn’t. Not because I suddenly had a great proclivity towards nutritious food (I’m still working on that), but because I thought to myself, this is what I’ve always done, what I’ve BEEN doing: feeding the pain. Stuffing food on top of it until I’ve shoved it so far down that it’s been replaced by guilt or self-loathing – at times, unbelievably, a preferable choice over the constant screaming in my head that reminds me of the very real possibility that I may end up being one of the unfortunate ones, the ones who never make it across the finish line. No baby. Not now, not ever. Too painful to contemplate – especially when I realize that I miss my husband when he’s at work but am secretly glad for the time alone, when I can cry without seeing the pain in his eyes as he sees my misery, unable to do anything to help me. Sometimes I look at my husband and I think, why does he stay? Why does he still want to be here? I’m broken. There’s no 24-hour repair shop, no super glue, for this.

I took a stroll down memory lane as I sat in an arm chair and opened a journal I kept in 2008 – a burst of color, full of vibrant life, appointments and parties, social events, names I don’t even recognize anymore. I sat there and let my eyes rove over the pages, slowly going through the first few months of the year – the year that I know we wanted to get more serious about “trying” but that eventually started a cascade of personal tragedies in our lives. I stopped when I got to April – having wandered past entries for cards sent and received, birthdays celebrated, pictures glued in haphazardly because it didn’t matter if it wasn’t perfect. My life was messy, and I loved every minute of it.

I closed the journal and felt like I was in an empty hall, hearing the echoes of my past. The deaths that came, without warning. The people I thought were friends who turned away – too busy with their own lives, it turned out. Or maybe it was because I stopped being who I had once been. Maybe it was because they saw death reflected in my eyes. First, I felt nothing. Then I was hurt, angry, and felt betrayed. Where were the people whose children I’d comforted, whose birthdays I’d celebrated, whose pregnancies I’d cheered for?

Now, looking back, I think it wasn’t anyone’s fault. I couldn’t function, couldn’t cope – too many lossses in such quick succession. I couldn’t talk about it – still can’t – because I thought, who wants to hear about it anyway? Who would understand? Just like a woman who’s had a miscarriage talking to a young girl in college, or a women in her 80s whose friends have all died trying to explain the passing of time to a child. We can’t understand the experiences of others, and empathy – I’ve learned – isn’t something that comes easily to many.

I tried to fake my way through it. I tried to smile, “get back out there”. But I felt nothing. Surrounded by people, I felt as alone as on a deserted island. As someone who’s not religious, I found myself struggling to such an extent that I contemplated, not once, but several times whether I should talk to a minister. I needed…something. I knew, deep down, that God, religion, wasn’t the answer for me – but there was nothing else, either. I had no child to keep me connected to the cycle of life. All I saw, all I see, is death.

I’m supposed to reach out to others. I’m supposed to try to make new friends, to connect with other people. But I don’t know if I still have it in me. I feel like I’ve been trying to climb the same mountain forever, the end nowhere in sight, and every little progress I made the proverbial “one step forward, two steps back”. You’re not supposed to admit defeat. You’re not supposed to ask for help. You’re supposed to smile, take medication if necessary – but, as a woman, you must function at all cost. You must keep smiling, through the tears, through the pain, no matter what. It’s what you’re expected to do. We’re daughters, sisters, wives, friends if we’re lucky – and we’re expected to shoulder the burdens passed onto us as well as our own. Where others feel no empathy, no sympathy, no guilt or remorse, we pick up their lot and carry it too. We question our place in the world, our lives, our relationships – are we good enough? Are we worthy? Maybe if we just try harder. Smile just a little wider.

But after a while, there are signs of strain. I remember reading something about how continued, long-term stress actually frays the muscles of the heart – or something to that effect – and I had a mental image of electrical cables being severed, sparks flying, injuries ensuing. My heart is hurting. It has been hurting for so, so long. I’m not doing enough to heal it because I don’t know how anymore, I don’t know how to make it better. We retreat into ourselves when we hurt, and eventually, it seems, people just forget that it was ever any different. They forget that we were once vibrant, engaging people – interesting, loving, funny. I was funny! I was hilarious! I laughed all the time – unabashedly, unreservedly, without apology. I was open to meeting new people because it was my favorite part of being alive: the promise of new ideas, new friends, new adventures.Now all I see are strangers all around me.

Tonight, I thought I’d have some iced coffee. I had already poured the dry contents into my very favorite glass and was boiling water, which I use a little bit of to dissolve everything first before adding milk. I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular as I poured just enough into the glass…and heard a loud, unmistakable crack. I held up the glass, and sure enough, the boiling water had obviously caused it to crack. Now, this isn’t an ordinary glass – it’s a pretty hefty, thick glass, so I was shocked that it had cracked in the first place. But as I turned the glass in my hands and saw the extensive crack – splitting the bottom and running clean upwards diagonally about 2/3 to the top – I had another epiphany. The water was like a metaphor for all the crap that’s been happening in my life – all the drama, the ups and downs – and the closer it got to the boiling point, the more I was getting to my wit’s end. And when I poured the boiling water into the glass, it was like all the things that have happened in the last 5 years came together in a visual display of my broken heart. 

But then I realized something else. This is my favorite glass. Obviously, I’m mad that there’s a huge crack in it now – but as I ran my hands over the crack, over and over again, I marveled at the fact that the glass remained intact. In fact, no liquid spilled out at all.

And I realized that there may be a crack in the glass, but if it’s strong enough to hold together – so am I.