The Only Way Out is Through

Numbness

The day of the PGS news, my mother asked what I was going to do that night. I answered, "Take my car to the shop. The 'Check Engine' light is on." (Oh, the glamorous child-free life!)

"You're taking this well," she said, skeptically.

Since then, I've heard several times, "I'm worried about you." How's a person supposed to respond? Don't worry, I'm fine? That's not true. I'll get by? That's true but not effective. Blunt though I'm afraid it was, I finally just told the truth: "I'm sorry that you're worrying, but those are your feelings, and I don't have control over them."

Someone else said, "How sad that this happened after you'd gotten your hopes up so high." It made me realize that, no, my hopes had not been high at all. This result was always a real possibility, not a surprise. But it was still a shock. No amount of mental preparation can ward off something that feels like a physical blow. The shock is physical too, like the temporary deafness that follows an explosion.


Anger

The anger wasn't about anything specific. It was certainly not about blame, just a wounded desire to be left alone, plus rage at any perceived trespass.

And there were plenty. Like last year, after my miscarriage, the whole world had to burst into full fucking bloom right after my awful news. Oh sure, go ahead and rub it in. Even better, let's add Easter—a holiday focused on new life, symbolized by EGGS—followed by Mother's Day.

Pretty, happy flowers!

I hate you.
(source)

Is it weird that I'm developing a special aversion to tulips? They're just so obnoxiously big and waxy, so uniformly perfect, like something assembled at the Happiness Factory.

Anyway, moving on. The anger comes and goes. The worst was this Saturday, when I was calmly driving to the grocery store and another driver did something pointlessly, casually rude. These days—being acutely aware that there's plenty of random pain to go around—I cannot stand people who purposely inflict more, however small the offense. I wanted to KILL. I suddenly, vividly wanted to ram this driver's car into a wall, reach in, wrap my hands around his neck, and squeeze until his eyeballs…

Of course, instead of ramming the car, I pulled over and called a friend who reminded me of some things that work for her when she's at wit's end. There were no real surprises, no magic. I knew all these strategies already (work it off with exercise, get outside, be around people even if you don't talk to them, watch a silly movie…). In fact, the comfort was in the familiarity.

It felt like waking up after a nightmare as a child, going to my parents' room, and hearing the litany: "Do you need to use the bathroom? Do you want a glass of water?" It was grounding. By the time we hung up, I felt fully awake.


Sadness

One night I went to an AA meeting. The speaker told a long story about how she'd abused her son while she was drinking and using. He was born addicted to methadone, and things went downhill from there (though she remembers little of it) until she got clean when he was 12. After her, other people spoke about their own parenting regrets and, in some cases, how close they and their children have become since those days.

Sitting there and listening was hard. I came close to walking out. You know: They can have kids they don't even want?! I can't deal with this right now! But yes, dealing with my own resentments—the one part of all this that I could control—was exactly what needed to happen. So I stayed put. Slowly, surrounded by these people who were facing their own difficult truths, my focus drifted inward toward something I'd been avoiding.

Underneath the armor of numbness and rage came an image of a box inside my chest. It was sturdy, with thick sides, sharp defensive corners that literally made my chest hurt sometimes, and a lid that was clenched firmly in place. But tentacles of my darkest, slimiest feelings were starting to curl out experimentally.

The time has come, I thought. OK, right here and now. Release the Kraken! Mentally and very deliberately, I removed the lid.

Whatever is here, let me feel it fully. The only way out is through.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

It took me two full days to cry any tears at all, and then I cried over someone else's story in a book. It was written by the woman whose husband killed five Amish girls and wounded five more, then killed himself, in a Pennsylvania schoolhouse in 2006.

She wrote about how a group of Amish people came to the funeral she and her children held for her husband—the shooter! For religious reasons, the Amish are opposed to having their photographs taken. Yet they not only came to console her for HER loss, but they quietly put themselves between her family and the hordes of reporters, giving her the gift of privacy by sacrificing their own. And they weren't just impartial neighbors. That line of people standing shoulder to shoulder included the parents of EVERY ONE of the girls her husband had killed.

It took my breath away. It still does. Although our situations have nothing in common, I know we share at least this one essential thing: like them, I still want love, not bitterness, to win.

Grief Isn't Pretty

No, it's not. It's a wild, scary, messy, and personal ride, especially that first day after bad news. And I'd hesitate to write about the details of it here, except that I'm so afraid of the faucet drying up. So why not? Here's a play-by-play report of my Sunday:

10:30   I'm waiting for a call from the RE, but turn off my phone while at a church service. It's a small service in someone's home. I'm able to focus on it only because I don't have much hope about what the RE will say. Mostly, I'm numb. I've been through this before.

11:30   Checking voicemail. Now I'm shaking so hard that I can barely punch the keys. Wanting so badly to hear joy in the RE's voice, but instead hearing the expected, "I'm afraid I don't have good news." He asks me to call back. Why bother? I think. There's nothing more to say now, is there?

12:00   After playing phone tag, we finally talk. It's another discussion about how donor eggs are probably my only hope, followed by another discussion about how at least I don't have cancer, just infertility. He's not insensitive. He's a caring guy and he tried his best. But when the only comfort someone can offer is to remind you that at least you're not dying … well, no, there really is nothing more to say.

12:30   I sit in a rocking chair in the host's living room, frozen except for the rocking, rocking, rocking back and forth. I can't think of one single thing that I want to do, that I'm actually capable of doing. I feel like a rat who's reached a dead end in a maze and just sits down, staring blankly at the wall. One wall is as good as any other.

12:35   Everyone is in the kitchen sharing lunch, so the room is empty except for me and one friend who wants to help but can't, so just sits there staring at me in a most awkward way. It makes me feel even more like a trapped rat. "I don't want to leave you alone." Please, leave me alone, I think, but I can't work up the energy to say it in a tone of voice that I won't regret later on. Even with you staring at me, the fact is that I AM alone with this.

12:40   Since there's nothing I want to do, I just do the next logical thing: join the people in the kitchen. I'm not capable yet of putting on a mask, so when they ask what's wrong, I explain that I've gotten some bad news. They ask with alarm, "Are you alright?" I answer truthfully, "No, but I will be eventually. Thank you for asking."

12:45   I listen to their conversation and eventually join in. At my little table alone, two women are discussing the different treatments they've had for breast cancer, and a third describes an awful genetic disease that is threatening her nephew's life. I am NOT alone, I realize. Not in this moment, anyway. Pain is not what makes me unique; it's the one thing that I share with absolutely everyone.

1:30   I go to the nearest park. I want to throw rocks and beat my fists against the ground, but the part of the park that's normally quiet is now full of parents pushing strollers. And beaming grandparents. I call my parents to give them the bad news. I am so sick of having nothing but bad news to share with the people I love.

1:45   As I watch the happy families strolling by, spending a Sunday afternoon in this most ordinary way, it feels like I'm standing at a pastry counter. I'm gazing through glass at a bounty of exotic, fabulous desserts, which I can admire but never actually touch. It occurs to me that the rest of my life may be like this: the world reflecting my failures back to me, every day, everywhere. It's the worst kind of self-pity. These are just thoughts, and I know better than to believe everything I think. But in this moment, I can't help it. I'm afraid that this feeling will never end.

2:00   I have to go someplace where I can have my impending breakdown / freakout in privacy. So I find some deeper woods and let it fly: pick up the biggest rocks I can lift and hurl them with all my strength. Pick up branches from the ground and smash them against trees, raining arrows of wood down on the forest. I rip the red thread off my wrist. (Long story short, it's symbolized healthy ways for me to seek refuge and maintain hope, and I've worn it since New Year’s Day.) Now I fling the bright thread into the dirt, grind it gleefully down with my heel, even jump up and down on it in a frenzy of destruction. I think of Stephen Crane's poem "In the Desert": "It is bitter, bitter … But I like it, because it is bitter, and because it is my heart."

2:30   It's a full-on, self-indulgent, two-year-old-style temper tantrum. Once it blows over, I sit down, panting and sweaty, on a swing. Yes, there is a deserted playground in the middle of these woods. Everything is mocking me, I'm telling you. For a while, I just swing mindlessly back and forth, and cry.

2:45   Then I start to look around. I notice how TRASHY these woods are, with litter poking through the weeds everywhere. What a bunch of pigs! Incensed, I start gathering the junk. Normally, I wouldn't pick it up with bare hands, or go charging off into brier thickets wearing sandals and white slacks. But what the hell. It's not a day to be rational. It's not a day to question anything that manages to rouse my energy, only to act wherever action is still possible. So I snatch up handfuls of discarded Coke cans, water bottles, candy wrappers. I leave behind the condom but pick up the paper that I realize, with a stab of pain through my chest, is a child's school homework. These PIGS can have children, I complain under my breath. These PIGS can have families, I rant. And me? I guess I'll just be the old busybody who devotes herself to cleaning up THEIR mess!

3:00   I am being ridiculous. I feel maniacal laughter starting to bubble up from a place so deep it hurts, from some well I'd thought was finally, totally dry. WTF, I think. Who else would turn a temper tantrum / pity party into Litter Cleanup Day? But OK. I'm not questioning why right now. I crash out of the woods, arms overflowing with trash, march up to a dumpster, and throw it all in with one final CLANG of disgust. Then I wipe my filthy hands on my pants triumphantly. Because it is bitter, and because it is my heart. Then I walk slowly back into the woods to retrieve my red thread. It's frayed and faded now, caked with dirt. Carefully, I fold it into the pocket of my ruined pants.

4:00   Back home, I still have some anger to burn off. I want to give the anger as much free rein as is safe, because I fear it less than the depression that's sure to follow. So I put on my iPod and run at top speed for three miles, with my angry playlist at top volume. Yes, I actually have an angry playlist ready to go for occasions just like this. It starts off with Hole's song "Violet," which is perfect for today. The chorus, if you can call it that, is Courtney Love screaming, "Go on, take everything! Take everything! Take everything! Take everything!"

4:30   Ouch. I am not used to running at top speed. I've been sedentary, especially just two days after egg retrieval. Now I feel like throwing up. I think about filling the Vicodin prescription I got on Friday, not so much because of physical pain but because I'd prefer not to be fully conscious now. I've never abused painkillers, but I've taken them before (during my miscarriage, most recently) and know that feeling when the buzz hits. I want it now—want it to hit me right between the eyes like a cattle prod. That's why I need to throw the prescription in the trash.

5:00   Instead of taking pills, I take a nap. I love naps.

6:00   Email the church leader to thank her for her message this morning, which was basically about keeping our hearts open despite our fear. Even with all of today's drama, her words have been percolating through my mind all day.

7:00   Dinner. This time it does not involve salmon, kale, avocado, pineapple, or other "fertility foods." It involves sugar. Sugar and a lot of chemicals I can't pronounce. Also caffeine. After weeks without my beloved coffee, I brew my third cup of the day and raise it high in a middle-fingered salute to the universe.

8:00   Start writing about today's news.

To be continued. I'm still careening from fury to despair, from the most embarrassingly immature self-pity to moments of totally unexpected grace.

You know that saying about how what doesn't kill you makes you stronger? That saying makes me gag. Here's what I believe: what doesn't kill you … doesn't kill you ... and some days that has to be enough.

Going All-In

As the gamblers say, I'm all-in now.

A couple of weeks ago, I made the biggest purchase of my life: a package that includes up to two fresh IVF cycles and two FETs. I went for the whole package because my odds are grim, and it's discounted almost 50% this way.

That's me: weighing the odds and trying to be careful. I am SO not a gambler. In fact, the most money I've ever gambled before was $2 on the nickel slots in Las Vegas. Yeah, seriously. It was a family trip years ago, and my 80-year-old grandmother spent more than I did. Throw in a few raffle tickets over the years, and there you have my whole financial risk-taking profile.

So lately I've been waking up with a start at 3 AM, panicked over the numbers in my head. No, I'm not on the verge of moving into a cardboard box. I just have such minimalist habits that, first of all, numbers this big scare me on a gut level.

Source: Baby Dust Boutique

Some background: in my last apartment, where my partner and I lived for years, my half of the rent was $200/month. (The place was basic and we did major work on it.) I've lived without electricity or plumbing. Never had cable. Kept my last car for 15 years. I've even been cutting my own hair since the unplanned DIY hack job haircut in February has gotten so many compliments (which cracks me up, by the way).

To a point, of course, living simply is great. It's enabled me to have the options I do. But I don't want to cross the line into a stinginess that spreads beyond my wallet into my whole personality. I want it to be about honoring my priorities, not about pride or self-denial. You know? As cold as it is to go around bragging, "Look how much I have," it can be equally cold to go around bragging, "Look how little I need from the world."

Pride and self-denial are tempting when I'm feeling especially bitter. Didn't get something I really wanted? "Well, I've lived without it this long already, so I'll get by. Who cares? There's not much point in caring anyway." What a joyless way to live.

-----

A few months ago, I had lunch with a relative I don't see often but have always especially loved. I finally told her about TTC, being pregnant, the whole story. It's not like I had meant to keep it a secret. It's just that TTC is usually a private process ... and who knew it was going to take YEARS? But now that it has indeed taken years, it's starting to feel more and more like a wedge between me and the people who don't know. They ask what I've been doing lately, and what can I say? Nothing much that feels authentic.

Maybe I also waited to tell this aunt because she's childless by choice. I knew she'd be supportive in the end, but didn't know if she'd really "get it." Oh, was I wrong. I started explaining about in-vitro fertilization and how it all works, and she interrupted to ask, "Oh, you mean IVF?" She knew all about it. And when I talked about wishing I could go to a certain clinic with very high success rates (and very high prices), she basically said, "You only live once, and this is important to you. Go for it!"

I stuck with my old clinic in the end, but I loved her attitude. This is a woman who lives in a small cabin in the woods and knows all about simplicity. Yet she was the one whose warm heart made me rethink what I really want to put first: frugality for its own sake, or generosity in service of my values (as Carolyn Hax describes so well), even when it scares me a bit. Talking with my aunt reminded me that I can never truly be self-contained, even if I try. And why try? There are things I can give to and things that I need from this world―not lots of material things, true, but sincere relationships, expansiveness, hope.

-----

So I'm taking a leap of faith. Meanwhile, I'm realizing that what keeps me up at night is not so much worries about the future―although they're certainly there, too―but brooding about the past and how my IVF money "should" have been spent. It should have helped me buy a home. I should be in that home right now with my partner and our child. Then I wake up all the way and look around. And here I am.

I heard someone say once that acceptance means giving up all hope of a better past. Clearly, there's no other choice, is there? So count me in. Whatever the outcome, count me in all the way.

Two Years

As of this weekend, it's been two years since I've had any alcohol. Actually, I've gone longer than this in the past and don't want to make a fuss. But it's a big enough deal that the date has stayed in my memory, and seeing May 18 roll around again has me in a reflective mood.

Two years ago was a dark time. Nine months before, the bottom had dropped out, and I did what people instinctively do when they're falling: throw their arms wide to grab onto anything that might help them stay upright. One of the first things I did was give up all alcohol, because even in the chaos of those days a few things were clear:

• I had a history of using it as a tool to get through this or that difficult time. It was becoming more and more of a habit.
• If there was ever going to be a time when I could go back to drinking with happy, social moderation, this was not it.
• To drink—a depressant—on top of depression was clearly a Very Bad Idea.

Sobriety was just the start. I also volunteered, went to church, exercised, took classes, went to various support groups … threw myself into getting out, feeling better, learning and growing from the challenges…

Oh shut up.

Still, nine months out, I felt like shit. So one day I shrugged and bought a bottle of scotch. Why not? If staying sober wasn't helping, then maybe alcohol hadn't been hurting after all. Clever logic, right?

I have friends who can tell a similar story, and this is the part where they say, "Then I drank for ten more years." Apparently my level of pain tolerance (or addiction, or whatever) was nowhere near that high. I drank for two more months, and that was plenty. At least I hope it was enough, because I never want to go back there again. When I need a reminder, I tell myself, There's nothing in my life so bad that taking a drink now couldn't make it worse.

How bad was that time? Sorry, I have no exciting stories to tell about run-ins with the police. What it was instead was just the bleakest, emptiest monotony. I went to work, I did what needed to be done, but the best part of my day was the unconscious part. That's how it feels when you've given up.

The unconsciousness and numbness really were a relief. There was one evening when I wrote a letter to my ex. I'll never forget writing the word "heartbroken" … then pausing, and realizing that what I actually felt at that moment was … nothing at all. Perfectly numb. A miracle—I'll drink to that!

But the numbness didn't last. Getting and staying there meant passing through waves of raging bitterness—which were totally out of character, by the way. I'm the kind of person people describe with words like "gentle" and "so calm!" Still, two years ago, there I was sitting in a park on a lovely spring day, watching smiling families as they walked by hand in hand. And oh, how I hated them all. In my memory of that day, my vision was even shaded red by the miasma of hate.

That same weekend, I came across this paragraph in the book Alcoholics Anonymous: "It is plain that a life which includes deep resentment leads only to futility and unhappiness. To the precise extent that we permit these, do we squander the hours that might have been worth while..." To put it another way, holding resentments is like taking poison and waiting for someone else to die.

The word that stuck in my mind, and echoed there for weeks, was the single word "futility." This path that I was on? It was the definition of futility. Luckily, the unexpected fall had been so abrupt and steep that I could feel the drop and catch glimpses of what lay ahead. Long story short, I was able to throw my arms out and catch my balance again.

This time I did a few things differently. I tried to stop comparing my insides to other people's outsides (those "perfect" families in the park), and spent more time around others who'd been through really painful things and were willing to talk about it. Lo and behold, we've almost ALL been through really painful things. I could let the pain harden my heart with bitterness or try to let it soften my heart with compassion.

Finally, I let myself grieve. What with one thing and another, I had pretty much tried to skip that part. Ironically, I'd been afraid that grief (rather than "I'm over it" denial) was the force that might drive me to drink. In fact, as intense as the grief felt with all the band-aids finally ripped off, I was afraid that it would KILL me.

It didn't, of course. Two years later, I'm still here, dealing with circumstances that look pretty much the same. I can feel stuck and impatient, wanting to get somewhere better faster, wanting to turn away from the realities that are here. But turning away from the pain also means turning away from the love and longing at the source of the pain. Then I think of how things might look now if I'd continued down that bitter, escapist path, instead of facing the wave with my wits mostly intact.

Motherhood would be off the table completely—I would know better than to try taking care of someone else, and wouldn't have the mental focus to navigate all those steps and decisions anyway. My health would probably be damaged. Many good people would not be here in my life.

However down I still get now and then, the main thing I'm feeling today is grateful for the people who've been with me through this time, even the ones who are still strangers, who will never know how much they've helped just by offering a map for others to follow. Wherever it leads must be better than the dead-end path that I was on. Remembering the nihilism of those days, I picture the ancient maps that showed the sea full of serpents ("Danger! This way there be Monsters!") with the edge of the world beyond.

Back in my initial hurry-and-get-over-it phase, I kept a bulletin board in my bedroom. It was full of inspirational quotes, lists of things to do, and so on—all good stuff, just way too much of it. Today, there's a single piece of paper posted in the middle of that big, blank space:

Choices

They're two lines, which start out almost parallel and slowly diverge. They're a reminder to do the right thing in this moment, and to trust that those little actions add up, even if the big picture won't become clear until much later on.

I'll end with a quote from Parker Palmer on his own struggle with depression:

I had missed the deep meaning of a biblical teaching that I had always regarded as a no-brainer: "I set before you life or death, blessing or curse. Therefore, choose life" (Deuteronomy 30:19). Why, I wondered, would God waste precious breath on saying something so obvious? I had failed to understand the perverse comfort we sometimes get from choosing death in life, exempting ourselves from the challenge of using our gifts, or living our lives in authentic relationship with others.

I was finally able to say yes to life, a choice for which I am grateful beyond measure, though how I found that yes remains a mystery to me.

It remains mostly a mystery to me, too, with the path becoming clear only one step at a time. So I'd better keep walking.

Hello, Blank Page

"For some reason, just before I take a look inside myself I always think it's going to be fun." (Alan Alda, Things I Overheard While Talking to Myself)

OK, I know that this is not going to be fun. I was planning to write a fun blog—maybe one about renovating the old house that my partner and I planned to buy, or maybe one about parenting (the project I looked forward to the most). I pictured myself learning things and spilling over with eagerness to share them. I was ready to jump in and get my hands dirty, literally: I would hang drywall and change diapers. I would take pictures and lovingly document the building of our life together.

That was the plan. In reality, the home is not to be, my partner of more than a decade is gone, and I'm miscarrying the much-loved baby who took years to conceive. Yes, right now. After 12 weeks of pregnancy, miscarriage is far from a quick thing; it's been going on all week. So no, this is not going to be fun.

And my first impulse is certainly not to write about it. My instinct, like most people's, is to escape from pain—to lock the door and turn off the phone, have a stiff drink or five, and smash things, then hide the baby keepsakes in a shoebox in the back of the closet somewhere.

And then … what? It's a dead end.

That's how I grieved the loss of my partner and home. Not only did escaping from the pain not work, but the efforts just hardened my anger and grief into bitterness and despair.

My heart, as I picture it now, is not like a faucet with separate controls for hot and cold. There is only one source, so to turn off the grief is to turn off all potential for joy as well, to turn off giving a shit, and even to turn off the energy I need to get out of bed and get through the day.

If it sounds like I'm still learning things and sharing them, however much the lessons differ from the original plans, I should warn you that trying to sound in control is a habit and a defense. The truth is that this is as lost as I've ever felt.

One new thing I've done this week, though, is to stumble across other people's blogs about baby loss. And that's how I came to be here, starting a not-fun blog of my own. Other people have put the unspeakable into words that are raw and still somehow beautiful. To borrow a line from The Velveteen Rabbit: "Once you are Real you can't be ugly, except to people who don't understand." These other people's writing has been one of my few comforts this week. Maybe it's been a comfort to them, too?

If anything is guiding me now, it's this thought: I don't want to freeze up with bitterness and despair. If I have to feel these things, and apparently I do, then let the feelings stay fluid. Let me do what I can to keep the faucet open, if that makes any sense.