Love is a Mystery

Yes. I miss him, too.

Nostalgia

I mentioned that I was out of town for work, visiting a place where I used to live. Here's the rest of that story.

When I moved to this place, I knew no-one within hundreds of miles. I was there to finish college. They had made an offer I couldn't refuse, so I packed up everything I owned (topped off, literally, by one reluctant cat) and drove four days across the country.

The day I arrived, it was pissing rain. This was a city—not a huge one, but still, I was someone who loved living in small towns and hiking in the desert. My first impression of this place was all puddle-filled potholes, red lights, and bus exhaust. I felt only a little less dubious than my cat. TWO YEARS. I would stay here the two years it would take to finish school, and not a moment more.

Then I met my ex. (Insert quote about how life is what happens while you're making other plans.) He had a child from his previous marriage, which kept him anchored there, even though, like me, he really longed to be somewhere else. I supported his decision—How could I not? His commitment to being a good, involved dad just made me love him more. But I wasn't sure I could stay with him in a place I had detested on first sight. Surely not for the decade it would take for his son to grow up. The sacrifice was too much; it felt like my heart would be crushed under the weight of all those years.

And yet I couldn't leave. The two things I wanted most were diametrically opposed. So my two college years passed in this state of uncertainty … then three years, then four … and then, finally, somehow, ten, plus one more for good measure.

Luckily, I didn't detest my new hometown that entire time. At some point, I accepted that it was indeed my new hometown. I even grew to love many things about it, like the climate in summer, the affordable prices, the parks and campgrounds not too far away … and, most of all, the people I met there. I made commitments at work and in the community.

Part of what I grew to love was just the comfort of putting down roots in one place, of knowing all the shortcuts around town and not only what business was on what corner but what used to be on that corner a decade ago. Layers of history and context enveloped me. Even so, I spent the whole time feeling like I was in some sort of purgatory, waiting, just waiting for the time when my real life would begin.

Eventually, my ex's son moved away and so did I, not back to the small town I had loved but to somewhere else that still doesn't really feel like home. Those are stories for another day. Until this most recent trip, I hadn't been back to the old town in three years, and the level of nostalgia and longing I felt on returning there was an absolute shock. It peaked when I met up with my ex at the apartment that we shared during my last and probably best years in town.

Oh my God, the nostalgia. It wasn't all about seeing him, since I've actually seen and talked to him many times since the bomb dropped. No, this was nostalgia about the place and time. I drank in every detail of our old home with reverence, starting with the utterly bland light fixture in the living room. This was not a fancy apartment. But I knew the history of every thing in it.

There was the coffee table my ex had gotten from his mother's old place, where we’d enjoyed many Sunday dinners before her dementia got so bad that she needed a nursing home. There was the couch he'd gotten from a cousin. Over the years, I'd met every relative who was a part of his life, however small, even the ones who lived farthest away.

Throughout the apartment were some things I'd left behind, from a desk to a single dish towel, which was threadbare now but still surprisingly familiar. Even more than the big things, like the pieces of furniture, these smallest details were the ones that threatened to drown me in waves of memory: the claw marks left on the cat's favorite windowsill. The smell of the kitchen cupboard, the wonky buttons on the remote control, the jet-engine sound of the heat, the crease in the bedroom carpet by the door…

The bedroom. I just stood in the doorway for a few minutes, my eyes filling with tears and my heart feeling like it would burst. I thought of all the years, all the joys and sorrows lived out in this single room. We had actually built this room right after his friend bought the place, adding a wall to split this smaller space off from the large living room. We had made love in this bed. We had argued and turned away in frustration, then reached out again. There was the mirror I had used to get ready for work each day. My cat had died in this room (an awful night). Eventually, another kitten had come along to hide under the covers and pounce on our feet. By the time I left, we had already outlasted four long-term tenants downstairs.

I opened the closet doors to inhale the wooly but clean scent of his clothes, then closed them again.

Such small things. I love them because they're his, and because they used to be ours.

And I miss them because, despite my impatience to get on with my "real life" all the time I lived here, it was as real as it's ever been. What I wouldn't give to be back there now, just to wind the clock back five years.

Five years ago, I was with the man I loved and, although it was not always smooth sailing, assumed I would be with for life. We were planning to have a child someday soon. We knew of no reason why we could not. I often felt stuck and tired of waiting (which, from my current level of stuckness and waiting, now seems quaint). But however far away my goals might have seemed at times, I still thought of them with joy and excitement, more than anxiety and fear.

What I wouldn't give to go back.

Then I wonder … what good things am I overlooking in my life right now, because I'm so eager to go back, to go forward, to be anywhere but here?

ICLW Thanks

As my first ICLW comes to an end, I'm already looking forward to the next. It's been enlightening, healing, busy, and fun. I found some wonderful blogs to follow and got so much food for thought. In fact, there are ideas for many more posts swirling around in my head now, along with topics to research, questions I should remember to ask my doctors, etc.

I even managed to, you know, keep up with the commenting part. It shouldn't be a surprise, but secretly I wondered how this week would go, since it turned out to be busier than expected when I signed up. And, as always, the regularly scheduled depression was there to interfere.

I tried to comment on every blog that I read and to go down the list randomly, not just picking situations that seemed to have the most in common with mine. And I'm so glad. Before, I might have turned away from those who wrote a lot about their supportive spouse, pregnancy, or existing children. (Sorry—it's just a self-protective thing.) I might have resented women whose TTC odds seemed better than mine. And I would have missed out.

Because here's what I learned: we're ALL struggling with pain and fear, just in different forms. Yeah, we know this. But it's one thing to know intellectually and another to read about it in depth, day after day. Those people who "have it better" than me in one way or another? They also spent everything they had on multiple IVF cycles / have a husband who's away from home on military deployments / have a child with a serious birth defect / have a high-risk pregnancy / fought infertility for a decade / need major surgery to correct a uterine problem / lost babies to miscarriage and stillbirth / just lost someone else they loved / and many more situations than I can list here.

So I bow to those people—to all of you—for living through what you have and for sharing your example. Thanks for getting me out of my own head (see link above!) and making me feel at home.

ICLW Welcome

If you're here as part of International Comment Leaving Week, welcome! (If not, you're still welcome! And you might want to check out the ICLW list, since it includes a lot of great blogs.)

This is my first month of participating. In fact, it's my first month of blogging, so I should probably introduce myself. You can read the basics of my infertility journey here, and my first post explains why I started writing about it.

Because things have been difficult lately, my posts are going to be on the serious side. Please don't hesitate to comment, though. Serious does not equal unfriendly. I really like connecting with others, and I still like a good laugh (even if I'm usually not the one to initiate it these days).

Thanks for stopping by.

(source)

A Small World

I wasn't around this past week because I've been out of town for work.

That phrase doesn't sound quite right. It makes me picture the impersonal glass and chrome of airports, rental cars, and conference rooms. In this case, though, it meant something much different: a seven-hour drive across familiar countryside, bitter cups of gas-station coffee in my lap. At the end was a place where I had lived for many years, which I hadn't seen since the spring of 2010. I've always had some strong and mixed feelings about this town.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. The part I want to tell now is the simple part, the part about meeting with my boss, who still lives in the town I left. I didn't think our meeting would be simple. I wanted to explain why I had been missing work, to reassure her that I wasn't just losing interest or, conversely, battling some deadly disease. I wasn't sure how much to say or how to say it. I just knew that this conversation was one that would be best to have in person.

She didn't know the whole story about my years of infertility treatments, three months of pregnancy, or two weeks of miscarriage. She DID know about my breakup and, therefore, had probably assumed that parenthood was now the last thing on my mind. How to bring the subject up?

I didn't have to worry. As soon as we sat down at the restaurant for lunch, we fell right into talking about the subject that was foremost on her mind: the recent loss of someone dear to her. It had been painful and awful for everyone involved. Two months later, she was still in shock. I knew the feeling: desperately wanting not to think about something so painful, but knowing that for now it is the ONLY thing, so needing to think and talk about it anyway.

My boss (I’ll call her E.) asked about the time I spent volunteering with hospice. It was something I did briefly years ago, partly as a way to honor my grandfather (the one in my last post), who had done the same thing himself. I had no great insights to share. I hadn't changed the course of anyone's life or death. I just showed up when I could to change the sheets, hold cups of drinking water to dry lips, and sit with families in the kitchen, keeping watch. That's all I could do with E. We just sat together at our little table as the snow drifted past outside.

We talked about grief, of all things. She seemed grateful to be able to talk about it, and frankly, so was I. It felt real. Then slowly and without any false cheer, the conversation turned toward a baby who had just been born into her family. This was the time; it was clearly my turn.

I told her that the main focus of my personal life lately has been on having a child. No puzzlement from her, just a nod. Then she told a story that blew me away. She mentioned another one of her long-time employees, a woman I had met a few times over the years, and said, "I don't think I'm speaking out of turn here, because she has always been open about it. Around the time when she first started working for me, she was single. Circumstances in her life had just worked out that way, but she really wanted to be a mother and was running out of time. So she had her son with the help of a sperm donor. That was 18 years ago. She met and married her husband later on."

I was dumbstruck. Not only was E already familiar with the concept of single mothers by choice, but she had already hired one, ANOTHER one, back when almost no-one had heard of such a thing! Even in a company as small as mine, I would not have to be the first after all. I would not have to be the odd one out.

I had teared up a little before, when we talked about grief, and now I felt it happening again. I told her a few more details, but not a lot; there was no need to say much. She got it. She just got it.

Again I thanked her for allowing me to work flexible hours recently. It's one of my few perks. As I said, it's a very small company, so we've never had paid health care or even paid days off. But I wouldn't want to work anywhere else, and this meeting—this reminder that we are people to each other first, and business roles second—was a lovely reminder of why.

Redemption

When my grandfather died a decade ago, I cut off most of my hair. Sitting on the bedroom floor, crying but calm, I plaited and cut off two 20-inch braids that had taken my whole young adulthood to grow. It was a way to honor the impact of his loss—the first loss that really knocked me flat. It was a tangible way to split After from Before. Not that I thought of those words at the time. In the moment, it just felt necessary to DO something. As it turns out, cutting hair in mourning is an impulse that's certainly not unique to me.

Afterward, my hair evolved into an edgy kind of pixie cut, then eventually grew out again to its default look: natural waves down to the center of my back. That's how it has remained.

Until a month ago, when I found out that my pregnancy—my new and fragile hope after so much time TTC—was about to end. Then I cut my hair again. This time there was no ceremony, no thread of love and thankfulness woven through the grief, as there had been with my grandfather. There was just me, wild-eyed with sharp scissors. I hacked so impatiently that some handfuls of hair I grabbed were much too thick to cut. They ripped and tangled, leaving crazy tendrils behind.

It was only a decade between these two events, but a decade with enough letting go of dreams that I now felt desolate. What was left? In that moment, looking forward, it was hard to see purpose ahead. I was a thousand years old. A medusa, a crone carrying a dead baby in her womb. It was only right that my outside should match the inside.

Then my eyes caught and held their own reflection in the mirror. That was enough. I looked like an animal with its leg caught in a trap, trying to chew its way loose. How could I add to this injury? I let the scissors fall.

But by now, hair filled the sink. I fought to keep from throwing up as I gathered golden handfuls of it into the trash. Then I wrapped my head in a scarf and was too ashamed to uncover the damage for days.

Finally, I unwrapped and washed it, brushing out the last handful of loose strands. I let the snaky tendrils dry. Then I looked in the mirror, afraid, and was amazed by what I saw: lots of hair still falling past my shoulders, plus a new, soft cloud of waves around my face.

It was beautiful.

Freed from their former weight, the sides had more volume and curl. My hair was so thick that, even with literally half of it gone, there was still plenty of it left. You know that saying about how struggles "build character"? My hair has plenty of character now.

When I look in the mirror, I still relive that awful day. I'm also able to laugh—believe it or not—at the absurdity of hacking half my hair off in an effort to look ugly, and then somehow looking better afterward. I have failed at THIS TOO.

Most importantly, when I look in the mirror now, I relive that moment when I let the scissors fall. It’s a constant reminder to be gentle, toward myself and toward anyone else who is in pain.

I Don't Want Spring to Come

This morning the whole country turned clocks forward an hour for Daylight Saving Time. Now it will be light out until 7 PM. Also, the temperature is supposed to reach over 60 degrees today. I know what all this means: spring is right around the corner.

I hate it. I dread it. This was when I was supposed to start feeling the baby move. The "supposed tos" and "should haves" are only going to get more painful as spring and summer go by.

Although I didn't think about the timing of this pregnancy at all while TTC, it could not have been more symbolically perfect. The positive beta results came back just a week before Christmas. I've never gotten a better gift. And this was a gift I could pass along to others, like my parents, who were thrilled. I'll always remember the serene drive to their house on Christmas Eve, on the back roads past the country church with its nativity scene, listening to "Silent Night." I had one hand on my belly, tears of wonder and gratitude in my eyes.

At the start of the new year, I heard the baby's brand-new heartbeat. It was loud and insistent—BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!—reminding me of a newborn's first cry. It seemed to announce to the world, "I AM HERE!" More tears of wonder and gratitude.

I would have felt the baby's first movements near Easter. My belly would have started growing visibly at the same time all the leaves and flowers spread out toward the sun. I would have worn cute little maternity clothes, which wouldn't have cost much.

Then in August, in the fullness of summer, I would have given birth. People joked about the misery of being nine months pregnant in the summer heat, but I love summertime. And August is the one month when no-one else in my family has a birthday. The baby would have had it all to him- or herself.

Those were my daydreams. Now I just want to stop the clocks at winter, because it's still winter in my heart. I have different daydreams now. When I see Easter lilies in the stores and sunshine filling the sky, I close my eyes and think again of "Silent Night":  Sleep in heavenly peace, Sleep in heavenly peace.

Source: ForestWander Nature Photography

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your shoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and
purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
it is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you every where
like a shadow or a friend.

(Naomi Shihab Nye, "Kindness")

Empathy

This beautiful video (courtesy of On Being) reminds me of the Ian Maclaren quote:
"Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle."

May I never be so consumed by my own battle that I forget.

Winter in My Heart

One Month Out

It's been a month since that awful, silent ultrasound.

No, I'm not "over it" yet. In fact, you don't want to know how many times I snooze the alarm before dragging myself out of bed each day.

AND—I'm learning to say "and" instead of "but," which brushes off the truth of everything that came before—tonight I took a shower (the one I had no time for in the morning) and made a big glass of green juice. It has kale, broccoli, cucumber, celery, and apple in it, and it really is THAT green. It actually tastes pretty good (light and refreshing) for something that looks like it came out of a swamp. I made juice all the time when I was TTC and pregnant. Since then, I haven't done that or really any other healthy stuff.

The thing is, making these commitments to health again feels like I'm also committing to TTC again … which, of course, is true. The clock is still ticking and there's absolutely no time to waste. The idea of trying again, so soon, is what really feels overwhelming right now.

AND … all the same … here are the commitments I've made tonight:

• Cut out the physically unhealthy habits. That means all junk food of any kind, including the tasteless chips with only five ingredients.
• Add back as many healthy habits as I can without feeling too resentful. I'll get back on the prenatal vitamins, and I'm still looking forward to that kickboxing class. But no, the hippie deodorant can wait until CD1.
• Put together a list of follow-up questions about maternal testing for my OB. Our appointment today got rescheduled due to the snowstorm of the year half an inch of slush outside.
• Put together a list of TTC options and questions for my RE. 
• Take a close look at my finances, which will determine which of the TTC options are even possible now.

Oh, that last one is a killer. I've been avoiding it because (especially on top of the pregnancy loss) it's so depressing and scary. If you'll excuse me, I'm going to go throw up that glass of juice now…

I am a Walking Cliché

In the grocery store last night, I felt like a walking PMS cliché. I used one of the self-checkout machines so that no-one would see the contents of my basket: a pint of ice cream and a bag of chips, topped off by a Diet Pepsi (to magically cancel out the calories in the other stuff).

Do I actually have PMS? Who knows? My last period started 21 days ago … and then lasted for 16 days. After the miscarriage, I have no idea when it will reappear.

I'm just eating this junk because it's a small pleasure, and pleasures are scarce lately. Also, I was so very health-conscious for months without a break. I gave up coffee (which shocked my friends), gave up soda, gave up sugar and most carbs, ate more protein than ever before, drank more water, made fresh juice from organic vegetables, switched to a "natural" deodorant that worked half as well and cost twice as much … I was so careful. And what did it matter in the end?

I just came across this story, which really hit home:

At twelve weeks you are supposed to be safe … You have walked in the world differently and you have no idea how no one has noticed.  For weeks you have wanted everyone to know about the little life growing inside you but at the same time you have loved it being just you two … You have touched your non-existent belly to comfort the baby inside ... You have become a better person simply because THEY deserve a better person. You do everything you can … And then you find out nothing you did worked, nothing mattered. The spinach you ate, the walk you did briskly (but not too briskly), the vitamins you took, the good thoughts you made yourself think. All the love in your heart…

Someday I hope to have enough love for myself to take the actions I was willing to take for my child. Even now, I still do sometimes. The chips I bought last night were the tasteless kind with only five ingredients, for whatever that's worth. And tonight I bought veggies for juicing for the first time in a month. I really had mixed feelings about it. I haven't done anything with them yet except throw them in the fridge and shut the door.

Maybe tomorrow. One day at a time.

Taking in the Good

Lately I've heard several people talk about the importance of gratitude. I wish that counting my own blessings made me feel good in the way that these people described. When I think of the best things in my life, what I feel instead is FEAR: Oh please, don't let me lose this, too! I couldn't stand it! The fear is paralyzing. It makes me feel like there's nothing to look forward to.

How to let the good stuff sink in, to feel gratitude in my heart as well as think it in my head? I'm trying to do what Rick Hanson and Richard Mendius suggest in their book Buddha's Brain: savor the good and even neutral moments as they come up, in a vivid and physical way, to balance out the negative bias of memory.

Buddha's Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love & Wisdom
by Rick Hanson, Ph.D. with Richard Mendius, MD

They explain how our brains evolved to pay more attention to negative experiences than to positive ones, because the negative ones usually had more impact on survival. As a result, our baseline state is one of vigilantly scanning for threats. Also, our brains tend to detect negative information faster than positive information, then emphasize it more in memory. Hanson and Mendius explain how these changes happen neurologically. Then they summarize:

Your brain preferentially scans for, registers, stores, recalls, and reacts to unpleasant experiences; as we've said, it's like Velcro for negative experiences and Teflon for positive ones. Consequently, even when positive experiences outnumber negative ones, the pile of negative implicit memories naturally grows faster. Then the background feeling of what it feels like to be you can become undeservedly glum and pessimistic. 

Sure, negative experiences do have benefits: loss opens the heart, remorse provides a moral compass, anxiety alerts you to threats, and anger spotlights wrongs that should be righted. But do you really think you're not having enough negative experiences?! Emotional pain with no benefit to yourself or others is pointless suffering. And pain today breeds more pain tomorrow. For instance, even a single episode of major depression can reshape circuits in the brain to make future episodes more likely (Maletic et al. 2007).

Oh great, another thing to fear. But they do have a suggestion. Instead of "thinking positive"—sweeping negative realities under the rug while reading a mental list of all the reasons we should feel happier—here's what they suggest:

The remedy is not to suppress negative experiences; when they happen, they happen. Rather, it is to foster positive experiences—and in particular, to take them in so that they become a permanent part of you… 

Turn positive facts into positive experiences. Good things keep happening all around us, but much of the time we don’t notice them; even when we do, we often hardly feel them…Whatever positive facts you find, bring a mindful awareness to them—open to them and let them affect you. It’s like sitting down to a banquet: don’t just look at it—dig in! 

Savor the experience. It’s delicious! Make it last by staying with it for 5, 10, even 20 seconds; don’t let your attention skitter off to something else. The longer that something is held in awareness and the more emotionally stimulating it is, the more neurons that fire and thus wire together, and the stronger the trace in memory (Lewis 2005). Focus on your emotions and body sensations, since these are the essence of implicit memory. Let the experience fill your body and be as intense as possible...

Finally, there's this:

Positive experiences can also be used to soothe, balance, and even replace negative ones. When two things are held in mind at the same time, they start to connect with each other. That’s one reason why talking about hard things with someone who’s supportive can be so healing: painful feelings and memories get infused with the comfort, encouragement, and closeness you experience with the other person.

My Soundtrack

Is Nothing Safe?

The other night, during my regularly scheduled insomnia, I gave up and got out of bed. Time for a diversion. I just wanted to sit back, watch some pretty pictures, and drown out the thoughts in my head. PBS should be safe and simple, right? Oh look, there's a program about snowy owls.

The program was fine at first ... except that I forgot the part about how climate change might be a small problem for arctic animals (cue the ominous disaster music). But that wasn't the worst part.

The owls had chicks. One was born much later than the others, and because it was smaller, it never had the strength to muscle in and get its share of food. So it wasted away, slowly, over many minutes of the video, first shivering from cold and then finally not moving at all. The mother couldn't provide more food (remember that climate change thing?), but she lovingly gathered the chick under her wings and tried to keep it safe. It died anyway. And then—and this is where I LOST IT—the mother and siblings basically shrugged, said "oh well," and ATE the chick!

OK, I know that things like this happen. I'm normally not such a delicate flower. But it occurred to me that PBS / NPR often puts warnings at the beginning of stories that include, say, bad words that might offend someone. Well, where's my warning, PBS?!