When You Least Expect It

Other things happened lately, too. For one, I haven't written about my taxes yet.

In 2013, I was very organized until springtime and the miscarriage. Before that, each receipt got filed promptly in its own labelled folder. After that, any mail—any thing, really—that didn't need immediate attention got thrown into boxes and shoved in the corner. This spring I've felt like an archaeologist, uncovering all the receipts and reliving 12 months of huge ups and downs.

There were receipts for the two pregnancy ultrasounds where I saw and heard a strengthening heartbeat, followed by the devastating one. Then paperwork from all the tests the clinic asked me to repeat because another year had passed.

Mixed in with those memories was the detritus that I couldn't be bothered to care about, like junk mail from eight months ago. There were abandoned self-improvement projects and notes about events that I didn't attend, because time, energy, and/or money always seemed to be too short. In the bottom of the last box, I uncovered a spring sweater that I'd long ago given up for lost.

Once they were excavated, I could transfer all these memories to black-and-white spreadsheets. Then it was time to meet with the tax preparer. When I brought up medical expenses, she was dubious at first, warning that now (in the US) people can deduct only the amount that's more than 10% of adjusted gross income—a pretty high bar for most families to reach. Let's just say that I am waaaaaaay over that bar. It's mind-blowing. Panic-inducing. It can't continue, obviously.

We actually had two meetings, because this has been the most complicated, stressful tax year ever. On the plus side, yeah, huge refund. Of course, now the chances for an audit are also high. I'm making sure to get everything super organized. (Tax tips: All my doctors have been happy to provide itemized receipts for all 2013 expenses, which have been very helpful. Also, did you know that you can deduct for mileage driven to and from medical appointments?  It added up to 2,355 miles for me last year!)

Before getting into those details, I had to explain some things about my situation. I braced for possible judgment, because the tax preparer was gray-haired and (I'm embarrassed to say this) "looked conservative." Of course, everyone in a tax office looks conservative; it's the uniform.

No judgment, though. Instead, she leaned forward and asked softly, "Have you tried [name of my previous clinic]?" It turns out that her son and daughter-in-law went through 13 years of TTC, including many years with undiagnosed PCOS, and my previous clinic was the one that finally helped them to have "their miracle twins."

We commiserated about the healthcare system and about infertility. She lived through it, too, in a way. "The night before my daughter" (as she called her DIL) "had her amnio during the pregnancy, I stayed up all night worrying. I just couldn't help thinking how awful—and how possible—it would be for them to make it all the way to that point and then have something else go wrong." How possible, indeed. She knew exactly how it felt.

She was wonderful—going out of her way to be helpful and, more than that, kind at a very stressful time. When we said good-bye, after three hours of crunching numbers and trading stories, we held hands for a long moment as she wished me well. "I’ll pray for you," she promised. I thanked her through tears.

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.

Sympathy Cards Suck

Is it just me, or does anyone else have a problem with mass-market sympathy cards?

Because I had a problem last night. I was browsing (i.e., trying not to have a meltdown) in the "Sympathy / Cheer" section of the card aisle in the grocery store, with "Jingle Bell Rock" blasting on the speaker system. (By the way, why is that necessary? After two or three weeks, the nonstop Christmas carols can be an affront to anyone who's not able to have "the most wonderful time of the year"—in other words, plenty of people.)

I was looking for three cards: one for a relative who lost her husband suddenly a few months ago and is still hurting, one for my mom after her second major surgery in three weeks, and one for my best friend, who just got some horrible news yesterday.

I want to rant and rave on these people's behalf. I want to hug them very tight. But there's no card that conveys those feelings in the card aisle at Giant.

What I want to know is why sympathy messages have to be totally stiff:

With heartfelt condolences.

Because nothing says "heartfelt" like formal words that no-one uses in daily speech.

May you be surrounded by comfort and love at this difficult time.

What's up with all the passive voice ("be surrounded by")?

OK, clearly illness and death are serious. We want to honor the gravity of what's happened. But with language straight out of a legal contract, with the "I" and "you" and therefore the relationship removed, what's left feels so distant. I wonder how much of the formality comes from respect and how much comes from avoidance of anything awkward or sad.

On the giving side, these cards don't feel authentic. On the receiving side, I question how comforting they are, too. When someone wishes you to "be surrounded by comfort and love" when you're not, does it feel as presumptuous as hearing "Have a Holly Jolly Christmas" felt to me last night?

Of course, I can and will add a personal note to each card. The most formal cards are probably intended more for people who don't know the recipient well, so I guess they'll always have their place.

It would just be nice to have a few more options with less flowery wording and more real emotion involved. Maybe we could call them sympathy empathy cards. Anyone want to start an Etsy shop with me?

Empathy vs Sympathy

This little video is just right:

"Empathy is a choice, and it's a vulnerable choice, because in order to connect with you, I have to connect with something in myself that knows that feeling. Rarely, if ever, does an empathic response begin with 'At least...' The truth is, rarely can a response make something better. What makes something better is connection."

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.

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.

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.

Endings

I just sent a card, signed with love, to my ex's ex-wife.

It's not as strange as it may sound. She's never been a problem to me. She and he had a child together and live in the same town, so they've maintained a friendly (not close) relationship, as grown-ups try to do. They were married a long time ago. She ended it after recognizing that she was a lesbian. In fact, at the very same time that he and I started dating back in the 90s, she started dating her wife. Now the two of them are separating.

Yet she looked beyond her own problems to mail me a short but heartfelt and handwritten sympathy note, signed with love. How unexpectedly kind. So I sent her one in return.

No more unhappy endings, please—not for me and not for anyone.

Dignity

"As you face loss, hurt, and conflict, invite a sense of your own dignity. Sit up, stand up tall. Have respect for yourself, and patience and compassion." (Jack Kornfield, A Lamp in the Darkness)

I like this quote, so I've been thinking about what it means to have dignity … and I'm honestly not sure. At what point does "invite a sense of your own dignity" become "pretend that you are fine when you are not"?

I'm pretty sure that dignity does not just equal decorum, which means conforming to all the rules of polite society. Dignity has more to do with honoring a person's worth, which is something inherent, I guess. But what does that mean in real life? After two pain pills and a sleepless night, these distinctions seem pretty obscure. They still seem important, though. I need some kind of guidelines to follow.

Staying in pajamas all day does not conform to the rules of decorum, but when is it actually undignified or unhealthy? Does it matter whether I've consciously chosen to be gentle with myself, or whether I've just given up? And wouldn't scolding myself for feeling defeated be undignified in its own right, if dignity requires patience and compassion like the quote above contends?

See? It's confusing. When I get caught up in these questions, my mind eventually drifts back to the days right after getting the bad news. I found myself responding to everything with an attitude of "So what, who cares?" I'd look at my unmade bed and think, "It doesn't matter." I’d look at work piling up and think, "I don’t care."

Then it felt very important to stop, even physically put a hand over my heart, and acknowledge, "I DO CARE."

No, these things can never mean as much as my baby's life. I may act on them (the work) or not (the bed). In any case, I cared enough to notice them.

The point is that the part of me that cares (to whatever small degree) about other things is still alive, and it wants (to whatever small degree) to stay that way. Maybe that is dignity.