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.

Insomnia

It's back. To be honest, I'm not sure how much is really inability to sleep, and how much is fear of the thoughts that will go through my head before sleep can take over.

Today was a hard day. July 4 is for parties, picnics, parades ... families. Somehow I have a harder time being childless on this holiday than on Christmas, when I can always get together with extended family, and when there's so much commercial hype and buildup that I'm over it by late November.

At least tonight's insomnia led to something sort of productive. I now haz some Pinterest boards. (I was on there already, and spend most of my time in the Humor section to help stay sane, but wanted a separate place for this stuff.) Enjoy!

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.

Stick It

A while back, a single friend and I had a funny (and healing) talk about the stick-figure family trend. We both felt rubbed the wrong way by the stickers, then a little embarrassed by our own apparent envy, but then still annoyed. They present such a small and conformist slice of life. Can we get more creative here?

How about stickers of a woman surrounded by doctors and syringes (a picture of our own infertility treatments at the time)? It could work for other medical problems, too! What about the unhappy couple, backs to each other, both on their phones to someone else? Or the happy but long-distance couple, stuck on opposite sides of the car?

Don't get me wrong; I truly don't wish troubles on anyone or expect anyone to wear them with pride. But we all have some. The people I respect and envy most tend to be the ones who acknowledge it and keep moving forward all the same.