Tag Archives: death

The Happiness Factor.

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16

I’ve returned from the netherlands, otherwise known as Nebraska. I’ve been feeling quiet and contemplative in light of the funeral, and I’ve been trying to work through my thoughts and feelings on life and happiness.

Prior to hearing the news, Big Guy told me that I should work to disentangle my happiness from either starting a family or starting a career. First, I was angry. Since I have not yet reached enlightenment, I haven’t managed to figure out how to derive my happiness from outside the normal sources that everyone else gets to experience – so it seems. I’ve been in the mind-fuck of a lifeless purgatory for well over a year now, and trying to find and derive happiness has been tricky.

Trying to disentangle all of this has been hard. Right now I am frustrated. I’m getting ready to pop the fourth dose of Clomid for this cycle knowing full well that a dark veil of depression is going to fall on my shoulders in the next day or so. It is going to be a dark and lonely place for several weeks as I ride out the emotional effects of this drug. Just when I feel like I’m returning to an even keel, to a happier place, I’m going to have to do it all over again.

I don’t have any distractions. I don’t have any friends here. I don’t have a job or duties to perform. Trying to volunteer has been almost as hard as getting or staying pregnant. I tried to start a support peer-led support group through RESOLVE, but they won’t return my emails, either. Day by long day I am faced with my reality and everything that it is not. It is the first thing I wake up to and the last thing before I fall asleep. My days are long and slow, my friends.

I was the kid that took 20 credit hours in college because I wanted a challenge and I wanted to be busy. Without either of those I was stagnant. I lacked motivation, and I didn’t work to my true potential. Well, now I don’t have any challenges, and I don’t have much to keep me busy. Things haven’t changed much. Because of this, I lack motivation and am quite stagnant. This doesn’t help the happiness factor, either.

But then my friend’s mom died. She was 54. Once again I was witness to the true fragility of life.

I want to be happy. I would love to shake off the pain, grief and disappointment of the past 20 months. Or, I would love to be happy despite it all. But I’m just not, and I can’t quite figure out how to be. I want to be happy because this is my life. My one shot. I don’t want to look back and think, “Wow, why was I so unhappy?” More importantly, I don’t want to die suddenly and unexpectedly and leave memories of a sad, shattered, and disillusioned woman that didn’t manage to do much of anything.

That’s where I’ve been in this past week, friends. Mired in a pool of unhappiness and self-reflection. Clearly something needs to change. I don’t get to change the obvious things: career, family, location, volunteer activities. The Universe has consistently barred me from walking down any of those paths. The only thing I can change is my attitude. If I am to be my only source of happiness, well, that is a grim thought. This brings me full circle. How does one disentangle happiness from career, from family, from life events?

(That isn’t a rhetorical question. If you have ideas, please do share.)

 

 

 

Back To Nebraska.

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Unfortunately, my friends, I’m off to Nebraska, again.  My dear friend’s mother passed, ending her three year battle with Stage 4 colon cancer.  I wish I could say that this is the only person I know that has died of cancer, other than my father, but I can’t. I know over 100 people that have died of cancer. Babies, old men, middle-aged women, teenage boys, breast, brain, blood, colon, skin, prostate, and others.  The cancer rate in rural Nebraska, the Bread Basket of the World, is shocking. That’s why I will never entertain the notion of living there again.

Cancer is an evil and pernicious affliction.

In other news, tests at 10, 11, and 12 DPO were negative. I’m officially not pregnant. Now, the struggle is going to be the Day 3 ultrasound for the all-clear to take Clomid Round #3 for Cycle #15 during Month #20. I’m gone all week, and I’m not sure my doctor will collaborate with a local OBGYN on the ultrasound.  If not, Cycle #15 will be sans the fertility drugs. After that? We are on to the IUIs.

Source

On Keening.

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Only once before have I broken out in a long, anguished wail of grief and pain.  I was nine years old and my beloved grandmother had died from a stroke at the age of 81.  As the ushers rolled her casket down the aisle of the church, my heart broke.  I cried. I wailed. I keened for the loss of my grandmother, whom I loved so much. Other than the first initial cry, I don’t remember it. This is the story relayed to me by my mother and sister.

It has been 23 years since that incident. I did not keen when my father was diagnosed with a malignant tumor, an especially pernicious brand of cancer, the size of a football. Not when I heard him ask my mother if she would still love him when he couldn’t be strong. Not when he passed as I combed his hair.  But I should have. I did not keen when my love, my partner, relapsed for the first time, vomiting in the bathroom sink. Or when he relapsed the second time, or the third, or the fourth. Or when I realized that he wasn’t “relapsing”, but simply an active addict. Not even then. But I should have.

When I started spotting on Saturday, I started keening.  It is the only word to describe the pain and the grief that flowed out of me.  The sounds I made as I wailed against the injustice of another fucking miscarriage; I keened.

It is safe to say that infertility has brought me to my knees.  More so than my father’s death at 24 or my partner’s addictions. Or even the self-inflicted anxiety and terror that I experienced throughout my PhD process. This journey has resulted in self-loathing, disgust, derision, scorn, anger, contempt, disappointment, pain, grief, and sorrow, to just name a few. These aren’t new emotions. I have experienced all of them at one point or another, but never together in a tidal wave of emotion.  Keening was the only way to release, the only way to move the grief.

I used to be afraid of expressing pain and grief. It took years of therapy to come to that conclusion. Now, well, infertility makes every day a day of pain and grief. I’m no longer afraid to show these emotions.  In fact, I don’t think I could bottle them up if I tried. Case in point: We went to the coffee shop Sunday morning.  As we sat in the piazza behind the shop, we talked about the impending miscarriage and I cried. Openly and in front of a lot of people.  I didn’t care. I didn’t even think to put on my sunglasses to hide my seeping, red, bloodshot eyes.  I didn’t even notice.

Hope.

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Four hours past the D&C and I am no longer pregnant.  Not even close.  However, I feel strangely light and, dare I say, hopeful? My body can DO this.  I can ovulate and my uterus can nurture and support a baby.  My endocrine system can actively and productively participate in healthy hormonal transitions that result in a pregnancy.  This will happen for us.

I will be honest.  I didn’t expect this. I’m not prone to eternal optimism or an ebullient state of mind.  I’m more of a glass half empty type of person.  I consider myself a realist. As a result, I expected unending grief and pain, pessimism, sorrow and despair, and, perhaps, this all will come, in good time.  However, right now I feel hopeful. I’m really happy I got to experience pregnancy, albeit only six weeks of it. For a brief moment of time, I was a mum.

Let me be clear.  I woke up from the anesthesia crying.  I don’t remember waking up, more of a realization that I was crying.  My next thought was, “Good-bye, baby.”  And then…wait for it… “I want a bagel and lox.”  And then I cried for a bit longer.  By the time Big Guy was allowed into post-op recovery, my tears had dried, and I was again focused on the bagel and lox.  This event feels incredibly tragic and sad.  It took us thirteen months to conceive, and it may take another 13, 18 or even 24 months before we conceive again.  As I’ve alluded to before, we are returning to Go, but today there is a difference.  Three months ago, during lucky cycle #10, I was devoid of hope and confident that my endocrine-challenged body couldn’t pull this feat off, but today I am hopeful.

I think our spirit baby is just waiting for a good time, a good sequence of DNA, a good little vessel for its soul.  Some maintain that an active meditation practice allows a mother to communicate with her spirit baby.  I think a meditation practice could be really helpful.  It will allow me to work on quieting my mind and finding peace in the here and now. Now that I know my spirit baby is hovering in the ether, I think I may start. That sounds nice.

This Shit Stinks.

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I woke up early this morning for no good reason.  I am scheduled to arrive at the surgery center at 9:00 am, D&C scheduled for 10:00 am.  Perhaps when they suction out our baby my heart will go with it.  Nah, that’s not for real. My uterus doesn’t open into my abdominal cavity.  Plus, it would have to get past the diaphragm.  We all know that isn’t happening.*

In an ironic twist of fate, our house stinks.  See, we rent a small beach house and there is another studio apartment in the backyard.  Our backyard neighbor has befriended a neighborhood tomcat, which we will call Tommy.  Neighbor is lonely and a bit sad, so I can’t protest much when he feeds Tommy.  However, we have started collecting other animals, namely a possum that we will call Pete.  Pete lives underneath our house.  Possums are omnivores and Pete, despite his love for cat food, has killed an animal and stored it in his underground cubby.  Below our house.  Turns out decaying animal flesh smells a bit like rotten cabbage.

As you may or may not know, pregnancy comes with a bionic sense of smell.  Well, my pregnancy isn’t viable, and we don’t get to have a baby.  However, my bionic sense of smell lives on sans viable fetus. In a nutshell, this shit stinks.

 

*However, it is possible to remove one’s gallbladder through the vagina, so I guess anything is possible, right?