So, while I am recouping, please... enjoy just one more bleat from moi. Just in case you miss me while I'm gone (which could only be a day, let's face it).
The below quoted blog entry was written last Thursday. The Thursday that was. The day I really did think I had it all worked out and zen. And by late afternoon, the shock, then the acceptance aside, the little bit of anger started to creep in. And this is what I wrote. I saved it as a draft, for surely nobody wanted to hear it.
But then I thought.... "hang on, this blog is about me-me-me!!" It always was. So I'll put it here and maybe just one person will nod and say "yep, I hear you cos I'm there too".
You never know, do you, and I'm nothing if not sharing.
And before I go, just for the record, I am not feeling like this (below) this week. It's always underlying, sure, but that rawness has given way to acceptance once again. It is interesting to diarise it and I am glad I am adding the entry instead of hiding it away and pretending I don't feel this way sometimes. That's just not real of me.
I know I have harped about this before. Not just here but also (moreso and for longer, early on) at the old place. And I have tried ever so much to not whinge and bang on too much for fear of raining on anyone's good day, should they happen across my self-imposed bleat fest.
But I have to say once again, this miseryguts of a ttc journey history is just here to stay. Granted, it is not the monkey on my back that it once was. Largely thanks to the LGBB over there. And also to the swearing off of ever actually officially "ttc" again. HOWEVER... it overshadows me every day in everything I do. I have mastered the surface stuff, sure - I can carry out a conversation now without discussing my bodily flow, cycle length, brief foray into charting (and IVF and PGD the same year), blow-by-blow of each miscarriage, their length and severity - but there is a pall cast over my life that contains all these memories on a cellular level and sometimes? Well, sometimes I just ain't all Pollyanna about it. I've spent more of my adult life getting pregnant, being pregnant, or losing a pregnancy than not and considering this is my 33rd year and my 30's felt more lucky than my 20's (though, granted, I was bleeding at my 30th bash - having failed our first IVF cycle just days before), I was hoping I wouldn't be pursuing this unusual 'hobby' (whatever you want to call it) into this decade of my adulthood. It seems I can't avoid loss even when I wasn't even inviting or tempting it.
Yes. I'm angry today. I hear anger is good. Anger can bite my heiny. I need an IV-push of chocolate. STAT. Ah, that's better. Typing it out is good. But so is Easter chocolate from the dear husband.
Today, during a rather surprisingly blind-sighting emotional low, is one of those times. I trust I will be back to my usual self momentarily. But sitting here with familiar pain stirring in my loins, my mind is fucking with me. Is it staying, is it going. Are those clots important, given that I am roughly five weeks pregnant. Of course they are. This time, the pain is not so raw. But the survival instinct response in me initially goes into false hope and woeful "oh well, next month" territory. WTF? I wasn't even trying. And I do NOT mean that in any offense to people who are and who can't. Far from it. Steve and I, I guess you could say, have been/are the infertile couple. We're the infertile "kind" who get pregnant at the drop of a hat. Now isn't that enough to fuck with the best of them?
I spoke some months ago (could have been even a year or more) about the fact that the implication from well-meaning family and friends and Joe Bloe's in the street was that I needed to just get on with it now. After all, I had the take-home baby. They weren't necessarily saying 'end of story', but I did feel an overwhelming sense to take my seat and stop disrupting the class. Could've been my sense, but it was what I felt at the time.
I am probably what you could call the product of embittered childlessness left on the boil for too long. The turning point started the year after Ella died. But I didn't truly notice it until after I'd had Lolly. I'm trying desperately to unravel myself back to the point where I allowed myself to finally be wounded so badly that I started putting up these layers of utter misery and woebegone bullshit, so that I can replace them with better foundations and "cheer up for mercy's sake". But I can't do it too fast or I'll rip off the scab with the healing plaster (ewww) and that wouldn't be good.
I feel like getting all Scarlett and vowing "As God is my witness, I'll never get pregnant again" with a shaking fist to the sky as I stand in silhouette. But I can't promise that either. So I am in a no-man's land of sorts. I still don't feel like I truly fit with people who have not had great difficulty conceiving. I sort of fit the mould of bereaved parents but another side of me feels removed from them too. And now that I have this blessed sweet-cheeked, honey-coloured doll-face child who I kiss too often and gaze at most of the day - yes, still, up close, right next to her (how stifling that will be for her when she is 12 and her mum is goofy-grinning at her very loveliness) - I also don't even fit with the crowd who allegedly want what I have. But my head is still there, in that life of struggle I am used to, somewhat. It doesn't ever leave, not fully. Well, it hasn't left me yet, anyway.
This is healing stuff, I know it is, all jokes aside. It's all progress. Muriel Heslop's dad says you can't stop it. Apparently not.
