5/27/2016 0 Comments FeelingsI wasn’t sure if I would continue with this blog after the first post. However, I’ve received so many thanks so much support from men and women it seems I will continue. It seems so odd to me how many people have called me “brave.” It is sad that this experience is so taboo that it is considered an act of bravery just to talk about it. I hope one day that this is not the case. However, this post will be exceptionally difficult to share.
After my first doctor’s appointment I felt a surge of emotions I couldn’t even identify. Anger, self-loathing, sadness, emptiness. I felt like I cycled through the “7 stages of grief” hourly. I was shocked and disbelieving, I was angry and self-loathing. So many “What-if’s” floating around in mind. “What if we had started sooner? What if I was healthier? I need to lose weight right now.” I was guilty. I was so guilty and self-loathing. I hated myself and my body and my life. This was so unfair. My life’s biggest and most pervasive lesson has always seemed to be “life is unfair.” I could hear my father’s voice in the back of my head from when I was a teenager, “I know it isn’t fair. But that is life. We just do the best we can.” Instantly arguing with myself that “the best I can” never seems good enough. I would bargain with the universe. “Please, if I could have just one healthy baby, I’ll never ask for another thing.” I would feel depressed and lonely. Suddenly, I would convince myself that money is no object and we could totally afford IVF if it came to that. Then reality would come crashing down and I would begin to realize there would be no way we could afford IVF. Then the cycle would start again. This lasted for at least a week that felt like a month. I now understand why hygiene is the first thing to go when you are depressed. EVERYTHING is so overwhelming. I don’t particularly enjoy washing and drying and styling my hair on a normal day. But now, everything I do feels like I’m trudging through molasses in order to do it. Getting out of bed in the morning is the hardest thing I do all day. Every morning I wake up and ask myself, “Can I make it to the end of the work day?” Generally, the answer is yes. Some days I have to readjust my expectations. When the answer is “no” I ask myself, “Okay, can I make it to lunch? If I can make it to lunch and I still want to go home then that’s my compromise.” If the answer is still “no” I ask myself, “What can I do to increase the odds I will make it to lunch?” On those days, I wear jeans. So far, if I’m able to get out of bed and get to work things generally work out. All these doctor’s appointments have taken their toll on my sick leave so I can’t afford to miss any extra days. Then, when I get to work it generally takes some coercing to get myself out of the car. I have to be my best self at work because it’s my job to help other people. I have to wrangle all of my feelings, box them away, and store them in a place where they can’t get out until I get back to my car. Part of me wants to just leave those feelings there until they die. But I know that once they die they begin to rot and the stench will seep out in places I would least expect them. When you suppress negative emotions you also take the positive emotions with them. So, every afternoon on my lengthy commute home I unpack each feeling and let them wash over me. I take out the sadness, the despair, the anger and resentment, the jealousy and self-loathing and I feel each one until I can get back to “normal.” Then I try to find something that brings me some sort of sense of normalcy. I’ll watch funny videos or play mindless games on my phone. My cats have brought me more happiness and peace than I ever thought possible. (Spoken like a true cat lady.) This is a pretty exhausting process and some days I’m reluctant or don’t have time. I try to make time each day when I’m alone so that I don’t start storing them up. Although it seems my natural inclination is to lay on the couch until the apocalypse, I try to find friends to go out with during the week or on weekends to just feel like a person. Some people don’t understand this. How can something that doesn’t exist cause so many emotions? I don’t have an answer. I just know that it does. For at least the last five days, the neighbor’s directly across the street from us have had a flamboyant display of baby paraphernalia in their yard. There’s a giant pink banner proudly announcing the arrival of their baby girl at the end of the driveway and a giant poster board just off the side of their porch, which is delicately protected by a large pink beach umbrella, with a stork carrying a baby girl and an announcement with the baby’s name. The first day I saw this I was overwhelmed with anger and despair and had flashes of the scene from the movie Fried Green Tomatoes when Kathy Bates rams her car over and over into the back of a VW bug owned by two younger girls who stole a parking spot Kathy Bates had been waiting for. Luckily, this was a fleeting thought. Then I had to remember that they are just proud and overjoyed about their new arrival. I hate these feelings that come with this experience. Sometimes I will see or hear about people having babies that are not in the stage of life I am in. They aren’t married (which is fine) or they don’t have jobs or stable income. I see broken families and families with children who have all different fathers. I see families with 4 or 5 or more children. It just didn’t seem fair they could have children and I can’t. I would see friends announcing their pregnancies and be filled with jealousy and anger. “When is it my turn?” I felt horrible for these feelings. However, this is one emotion everyone who has reached out to me seems to share. One friend admitted to throwing her laptop across the room after seeing another Facebook pregnancy announcement. These feelings in these instances feel like the dirtiest of dirty secrets. Am I really begrudging someone for having the most joyous occasion of their life? I don’t want to be that person. Of course, I would never be truly begrudge someone for having a child. At least, I hope not. Of course I am genuinely happy for my friends. But, it is truly bittersweet. A friend who had been struggling with fertility who is currently pregnant posted on Facebook on Mother’s day that she felt a little guilty about being finally being pregnant and having the chance to celebrate Mother’s day. I knew exactly why she felt guilty and I know that I will feel guilty if ever I have the opportunity to be pregnant. No one should have to feel guilty. Every morning my school principal ends the morning announcements with the quote, “Make it a great day or not. The choice is yours.” I used to think, “What a great message to start the day.” Now I think, “Who has the audacity to think I can truly control the feelings I’m experiencing enough to make it a great day?” Can I really choose to have a great day or not? In a rare moment of clarity I experienced, I realized that I can choose to have a great day. I just have to adjust my definition of “a great day.” Now my definition includes: Was I able to go to work and be a functioning member of society? Was I able to interact with others without becoming overwhelmed with emotion unexpectedly? In a moment of jealousy, anger, self-loathing, or resentment, could I take control of this, recognize it, and attempt to be a rational human being again? On the days that aren’t felt to be so “great” I try not to beat myself up over them. I let them pass and know that in the next hour or day things will be better again. A friend shared with me this C.S. Lewis quote that really resonated with me: “There are far, far better things ahead than any we leave behind.” I know that even if we aren’t able to have our own child that we do have the option of fostering or adopting. I know that even if we choose not to go down that road that my husband and I will still love each other and we are capable of creating and maintaining a fulfilling life in other ways.
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Heather Joyce
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