Six Weeks

Six weeks today. Wednesday. Still not done. Yesterday the flood gates opened worse than any time in the past six weeks. I have never had an experience like yesterday. And today I’m exausted and raw and feel generally like an open wound.

Friday we visited friends, the wife of the pair is due January 20th. I had anxiety attacks as the evening approached and didn’t think I would be able to bring myself to go. I force myself to ask about her pregnancy. I haven’t seen any of her ultrasounds. I don’t touch her belly and don’t inquire about movement. I can’t even stand to look at her big belly sticking out. I drink a beer and calm down, easing into the evening. Finally left alone, I ask if she is ready, and she’s not. I would be.

 Monday, at work, a friend confides that his wife had a positive pregnancy test over the weekend. I fight to hold back tears and my world comes crashing down. Finally. I am so angry. I am so terribly sad. He is so excited, talking about stockings and showers and such, then in another instant expressing trepidation over being excited in the first place. “Eight percent is a lot”, I mumble. “Hmmm?”, he replies. “Nothing”, I mutter. But inside I am screaming—don’t be excited, don’t be happy! Eight percent is what they told me: congratulations, you’re in good shape, only an 8% chance you’ll lose it now. FUCK YOU. Eight percent is still a lot.

Skip says to be angry. He says to be sad and to be all the emotions I am feeling. I need to experience them, he says, to get through them and to the other side.

The bell releasing fourth period rings, just now, and my friend is leaving to meet his wife for a confirmatory doctor’s appointment, their joy overflowing. Here I sit, still bleeding, with a shredded uterus and a broken heart.

Where amI?

Today is five weeks.  Five weeks since the whole damn affair started; since there was no heartbeat, no blood flow, just a blank sac on the ultrasound, an odd black oval in a sea of old-tv snow. 

There was no heartbeat on a Wednesday.  I spent a weekend+ in a daze, waiting for a “confirmatory” ultrasound on Monday.  Skip said read, so I buried my head in a book and didn’t look up, didn’t think, didn’t leave.  I was just there in body, my mind recessed to somewhere far away; debilitated and unable to make even the simplest decisions.  A long weekend spent in limbo, knowing there was something dead inside of me that needed out, but not allowed to start that process.

Monday was confirmed and a D&C scheduled, then cancelled.  We opted for a natural miscarriage.  Because I was on progesterone, to try to make the pregnancy survive in the first damn place, we were told it might take a bit to get started.  So we spent another week waiting.  Again, in a stupor, barely functioning.  Our lives on hold.  Not a smile to be found, barely able to force one for our daughter’s sake.  Showering and eating and necessities for a four year old, was about all we could handle.  Get up, go to work, care for child, go to bed. 

Finally, Saturday, it started.  By Wednesday I was writhing and in need to serious pain meds.  That following Saturday the pain had abated enough to come off the Percocet, but the process continued.  Thanksgiving approached a vacation we needed and had longed for.  But the miscarriage was supposed to be done, and it wasn’t. 

And tomorrow is five weeks total, two-and-a-half of miscarriage.  I think it’s almost done.  I got blood drawn and my HCG levels are down from 12,000 to 2,000 over a two week period.

I spent a lot of time waiting.  While waiting I had to be strong, unfeeling.  I knew there were physical aspects coming and I knew I had to survive that process, and couldn’t break down.  As the time increased, though, the depression began to creep in.  Not debilitating, but depression all the same; the way it tints every aspect of your life.  The way songs no longer make you sing and the sun no longer makes you smile.  Everything is dull and blurry at the edges.   

The trip to Georgia, a week of family, was all that kept us motivated; the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel.  It was my focus throughout the whole process.  But then the miscarriage continued into the trip.  And don’t get me wrong, the trip was good, just not what I had built in my mind.  I was supposed to have weight automatically lifted from my shoulders.  I was supposed to find my smile, enjoy my country songs, laugh.

It actually seemed a relief to come back from the trip, more than anything else.  This event has taken, now, five weeks of my life, and I need my life back. 

So, where am I now?  That is the million dollar question.  I’m partly worried and partly relieved. 

Friday morning I woke up really early, while on vacation.  Friday night I woke up about 3:30am and couldn’t fall back asleep for a long time.  Saturday night I was up for two hours in the middle of the night.  Sunday night I was up from 1:30-4am and then back up again at 5am.  Monday night I was up for about an hour.  This is a sign of hypomania for me. 

I’ve been a bit worried.  I haven’t committed any social faux pa’s and I haven’t been overly hyperactive.  I have been a little irritable, but that could be from the lack of sleep and the extra stress from work since I missed 5 days while in pain. 

But, I’ve been challenging myself.  Where am I?  Perhaps, just maybe, this isn’t a hypomania but this is just what I was looking for—to get my life back.  Maybe it’s not hypomania, but just normal.  I spent four weeks depressed.  Four to five weeks before that were spent in the throes of early pregnancy; tired, hungry, and just generally out of sorts.  So, there is a chance that this is just what normal is, and perhaps I don’t remember.

I’m not medicated.  I’m not sure where I am.  But for now I’m just keeping my eyes open and staying aware.  We’ll see what happens next.  And while it’s very frightening to think that I may be cycling, it’s very exciting to think that maybe I’m just experiencing normalcy again.

Blah

I need to write something.  I need to think something, feel something. But I can’t.  I have it all closed up so tightly.  Early mornings, just as I waken, a stray thought enters, but I push it quickly out.  I can push out the thoughts, but when I’m alone, like now, the void, the sadness, is overwhelming.  How can emptiness be overwhelming?

Contentedness is so often overlooked.  But not by me.  I was fat on contentedness.  Six pounds fatter, in four weeks, to be exact.  Now I’m just fatter.  Fatter with a dead embryo hanging out in my uterus.  I am not content now.  I am empty.  Just a void.

A big fucking black void that makes my breath catch in my throat.  Like there’s no breath left.  This loss consumed it all.  And now I don’t know how to breathe.  I don’t know how to talk, or think or feel.  And so I just duck my head and read, or clean, or smoke.

I don’t cry.  Five or six tears now, as much as I have managed, for the most part.  I know I need to.  I need to talk, and scream, and cry, and collapse.  I don’t know why I can’t.

When this is all over, when my body has finally rid itself of this, then what?  For now I’m distracted, forcing myself to stay strong in order to get through what is left.

I want to punch myself in the head and scream at myself to feel something, ANTYHING!  But I can’t feel and it’s driving me mad.

What’s in a dream

What is a dream?

Is it a stream of thoughts from your conscious life, unimportant, bobbling around your head, bouncing off the edge and floating by again?

Is it your subconscious mind whispering your needs, wants, anxieties, and fears, leaving you sweaty and panting?

Is it interpretative, to be decoded by a book of dream symbols; red signifies anger and black means death?

Is it your memory sorting out random photos from an overloaded mind, archiving some and discarding others?

Is it a glimpse into the future, tapping into that 75% of our brain we don’t use and transmitting a psychic flash into what we may become?

Loss Of A Childhood Dream

I can remember that as a child I dreamt of becoming a figure skater.  Later, I dreamt of becoming a teacher.   I am currently a teacher and I don’t care much for figure skating anymore.  There are some childhood dreams that are purely imagination, the good ones.  Then there are some childhood dreams that are more likely attainable.  The latter aren’t bad or boring dreams and reaching them brings a sense of fulfillment; a sense of success.  This was my dream and I made it come true.  It would be a much more exciting story if I fulfilled the less attainable dream, figure skating, but it brings much happiness to have become a teacher.  Teaching is what I expected to do, the dream I would fulfill; figure skating was a fleeting fun idea.

I have three brothers and my parents are still married.  We had multiple cats and a dog or two running around…goat, bunnies, and ducks (mean ass birds).  There was always someone around, something to do.  If there wasn’t a person to play with or terrorize, there was an animal to hang out with.  I have very fond memories of my childhood home, to say the least.  Yes, there was squabbling galore.  We got on each other’s nerves.  There were four kids, spaced three-ish years apart, all selfish and needy, as kids are.  We were all crammed together and no one had their own space.   But five out of six of us are still very close today.  We are a family.  I know my brother’s would stand behind me if I asked, and I would do the same.

If my childhood dream was to have many kids, so that my children could experience the strength of sibling bonds, so that I could experience the joy of being a mother multiplied, and I couldn’t do that, well what then?

I thought I was over this; I really, really, honestly did.  We made decisions and I was happy.  Then my friend got pregnant and it hit me like a sucker punch to the gut.  I thought I made peace with that and then summer came.  The summer has been tough as I have been immersed completely in the SAHM culture.  Every park we go to, every movie, every swimming pool and zoo, I am bombarded by pregnant women, newborns, and multiple child families.

It kept building and building and finally erupted today.  My fucking problem is that I ignore the sadness until it explodes.  I dealt with it while it was in my face and when it wasn’t in my face I pushed it out completely.  And now I’m forced to deal with it, which I should, but I had to throw myself off a cliff to get here.  Regardless.

I talked with Skip and I cried, and I cried and I talked with Skip, and so on.  To make a long story short, I came to the conclusion that I am mourning the loss of a dream.  I believe that I accept the fact that I probably won’t have another child.  When a person you love dies, you mourn.  You accept the death and move on with your life, you have to, but you always mourn the loss of that person from your life.  Isn’t it the same if the person was your dream?  My dream, what I was supposed to do in life, was to have a family like mine; to provide children with the love that I received and cherish still.  I’m just fucking sad.  And I can live with that.  It is a plausible explanation for the depth of my grief.

I’m ignorant in that I assumed, took for granted, the idea that I would be able to have lots of kids, that I would be Bionic Egg Woman like my mother was.  I just always believed it would happen.  The idea that it wouldn’t happen only crossed my mind once, in sex-ed class when I learned about scarring from STD’s.  Honestly.  Maybe that ignorance is my lesson; assuming I deserve something just because others have it.

I believed it was my right to have children.  An Ani Difranco song comes to mind, I believe the name is Board Room (perhaps Bored Room, as a play on words).  The gist of the song surrounds powerhouse corporate men with god complexes, and in it she says “I can make life, I can make breath”.  I am a woman.  I can make life.  It is my right and I am powerful because of it.  Maybe I’m the one with the god complex.

A right is not a guarantee.  My nation says I have a right to life but that doesn’t mean I’ll get it.  I have a right to be happy but there are plenty of unhappy people.  I have a right to wear my hair short but that doesn’t mean I won’t get called a dyke.  I have a right to have as many children as I wish.  Apparently this doesn’t mean that I will.

I guess I shouldn’t count my chickens before they hatch.  Pun intended.

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We’ve decided to try another OB.  I have trusted my doctor because both my daughter and I are alive and healthy.   But all he has done is push drugs on me without any concern for the causes of my infertility.  He refuses to order an ultrasound after performing both a cesarean section and a D&C on me.

All this means is that we want to know why.  If I know for certain that I can’t have children then I can move on with certainty.  At least I’ll know with more probability what the future holds.  If there is some reason to hold out hope, we’ll figure it out then.

Summer

UGH.  It’s been a tough summer.  But, as Skip has pointed out multiple times, a better summer than the last.  I need routine and continuity and, I suppose, to be helping someone.  My self-worth is strongly attached to the work I do-teaching itself, but more so to the work I do under the table, with the girls.  Working with these kids often breaks my heart but much as I need my breaks during the summer, not working with them leaves me empty, without purpose.

The aspect of this that makes me hang my head in shame is that during the summer I have the most important child to help: mine.  I have never wanted to be a SAHM; vehemently never.  I struggle with this during the summer, beating myself up for not wanting this.  I pour so much love and attention, worry and heartache, time, into “my” kids during the school year.  Then I become frustrated and bored when dealing with my own child during the summer.  Surely I am an awful mother.

Nah, I don’t really believe this.  I believe that being healthy is the best I can do for her, and for me being healthy means having a job that I love and am successful at.  If I am healthy, the time I spend with her, no matter the length, will be rich and full of love.

Unfortunately, I don’t love my job so much anymore.  I really, really don’t like the subject I teach.  I have tried, for several years, to get some minor reprieve from the subject and the age, to no avail.  I got the company line and was shuffled out the door.  In addition to the lack of love for my specific subject, schools in the US are in bad shape right now, and particularly in my state.  We are under appreciated, under paid, overly stressed and none of these issues gets any attention.  We don’t value our kids as the future leaders and so we don’t value those entrusted to teach them.  It is a sad state of affairs, both for teachers and the future of our nation.  No one cares about our nation, though, only themselves.  However, that isn’t what I wanted to discuss.

Because of the bitter pill of the upcoming year, I have chosen to just ignore my job completely.  Well, as is usual, this has caused all hell to come crashing down on me.  I haven’t been sleeping.  I have been easily tearful, frustrated, and generally nasty.  I just realized, yesterday, that I start back to school next week.

I have to take a better attitude about the upcoming year.  Perhaps I am approaching the topic in the same way as the selfish culture I criticized above.  I am more worried about myself, my problems, than the education of our children.  So, I have been working on putting my shit aside and re-realizing that the kids are the ones who are truly suffering.  They are being set up to fail.  I need to address this issue, rather than whine about how much I hate what I teach.

More pertinent to this blog, though, is addressing the dysfunction that got me to this place.  Skip says I have to evaluate my mental health every.single.day.  I think this is key.  I am very, very good at disguising issues, refusing to acknowledge their presence until I am weeping at car commercials and not sleeping at night.

It’s all about habit, ya know.  My brain is in the habit of ignoring issues until they are problems and ignoring problems until they are catastrophic.  Daily evaluation would solve this problem.  I haven’t ever stopped taking my pills, like some do when they feel “cured”, but I might as well have been.  How is ignoring the mental disease exists any different than discontinuing the pills?  It isn’t.  It is, in both cases, assuming you no longer need that which has kept you stable.

I am notorious for solving a problem when it arises, feeling good for a week or so, and thinking I am fixed and that life is just a big party.  I went through a period where it was doom and gloom, knowing that I would never be free from this damn disease and wondering what the point was in trying at all.  Then I believed I could control it if I tried hard enough.  This worked and, I guess, I thought I no longer had to pay as much attention.  My therapist doesn’t ever say that I will be disabled for the rest of my life, instead he repetitively tells a story of a depressed woman sitting in dog piss all day and then deciding she wouldn’t ever be depressed again, and hasn’t been.  I hate the damn story and have told him on more than one occasion that I am not that stupid bitch; I wouldn’t sit in dog piss all day.  Then I started believing that I could be this woman (minus the dog piss) and could be free of this dreadful disease.  I imagined a life in which maybe I wouldn’t even consider myself diagnosed BPII.  Hey, maybe I would even find that this was a misdiagnosis and I’m not even ill.

And, if truth be told, I have never had the strength to “check-in” every day.  Or I never took the time?  Both, I suppose.  But I like feeling healthy, and I sure as hell like sleep, so I am going to start trying to do a daily assessment.  Habit.  It all comes down to habit.

The Mind of a Child

My daughter has been preoccupied with death for six months or more.  She talks about death daily and usually multiple times a day.  It began when a child at her school lost a grandmother.  We try to be as honest as possible with her about death, but still soften the ideas so they are more palatable for a three year old.

Skip and I have been digging into literature about reincarnation.   I have mentioned the spiritual answers we are searching for.  Regardless, we do not discuss these ideas in front of the Munchkin because we believe she should discover spirituality on her own.  We do not believe in pushing our views, or modern societal views, onto her.

One of the ideas expressed in Weiss’ books is that children have the clearest view/memory of their past lives, and that society continually dismisses this seemingly nonsense conversation as imaginative play.  Even more so, this information is suppressed by society so that, as we age, we lose the awareness of these past life memories and knowledge.  So, following this logic, Skip and I just allow her to talk freely.  She often discusses brothers and sisters, her children, us as babies, and so forth.  She tells entire stories surrounding these people, their lives, and their deaths.  Often, the identities of people carry on from week to week, which could lead one to believe that these are, in fact, people she has known before.

So, on Sunday 07/19/09, she was discussing death while sitting in Skip’s lap.  She said something about her own death, though I don’t recall the exact statement at this moment.  Skip asked her a question and her reply left us both with mouths agape.  She began talking about how “we die and then live again and die and then live again and then die a lot of times”.  Then she said that when we [the three of us] die, we could all hold hands and go to swim together and then live together.  Skip asked her how many times she had died and lived and she replied: many times daddy.

Let me reiterate strongly, this is ABSOLUTELY NOT something we have ever discussed in front of her.  She came up with this all on her own.  What other explanation can there be for her explaining this concept this way?  Is it a sign?  I truly believe that it is.  C’mon, she’s three!

Summer

Just wanted to say that there will likely be few, if any, posts this summer.  Oddly enough, I am busier in the summer than during the school year; but with different tasks.

As an update, I am doing well.  Summer’s have always been difficult and although I am doing much better with this particular summer break, it is still tough.  Just trying to stay busy, which is the best summer medicine for me.

I have been reading some books by Brian Weiss.  His first book, Many Lives, Many Masters, hooked me.  I may be beginning my spiritual awakening but the logical part of my brain is fighting it.  I also believe it takes a lifetime to truly accomplish your spiritual enlightenment and that those who take religion/spirituality at face value are simply choosing to not question their own minds.  However, the ideas in his work are very powerful in finding peace(regarding mental health), love (unconditional towards all), and an ability to accept death (overcoming the associated fears).  Very powerful.  I am planning on reading How to Practice from the Dalai Lama next to try to solidify these ideas of peace and living in the present.   Well….I am also kind of leaning towards continuing to reread the Stephen King Dark Tower series.  Hmmmm, enlightenment or death and destruction.  Gonna be a hard choice!

Later.

Forgiveness…..the best medicine?

Travis,

When we met I was a young and naïve 22 year old.  You were coming up on 30.  I was inexperienced in adult relationships, the first comprised of three years in college which turned out to be a friendship more than anything else.  You had been engaged and un-engaged twice and had much more life experience than myself; an athlete that had traveled across the globe competing.  In short, there was a vast difference in our knowledge.

You were an emotionally and physically abusive partner to me.  You preyed on my inexperience.  You preyed on my insecurity.  For that, I have harbored many dysfunctional emotions.  And I have been dysfunctional, for years, even within my own marriage.  I have not fully trusted anyone since our relationship.  I have judged harshly, prematurely, and with great anger those around me.  I have hated you and wished you dead.  I have wished the relationship to never have existed.

But, recently, I came to a very powerful conclusion.  It isn’t your fault, not completely.  You are physically the one who separated me from those I love and you who completely controlled me.  It was you, physically, who pushed, squeezed to the point of bruising, and downright physically bullied me; it was you who held me under water by my neck to prove that you had ultimate control over my life.

Ultimately, though, it isn’t your fault.  You didn’t know any better.  You had no one to show you how to be a man.  Your dad was, obviously, a shit of a man.  He was a man who left his wife and his young boys to fend for themselves.  Your mom did the best she could but she couldn’t, alone, provide you with the skills you needed to become a man.  He was absent and so she had no example to draw upon.  You had no idea how liberating a functional relationship can be.  You didn’t have any idea of how much your life could be improved by a caring woman.  You didn’t know that a smile from someone you actually felt love for could lift your day, your week, and your life.  You didn’t know that you weren’t whole.  You didn’t know unconditional love.  You never knew what it was like to know that someone would love you in your worst moments, just because they believed in you and they loved you so deeply they could not live without you regardless of pain.

You simply followed the path that had been given to you.  The betrayal of a parent to a child is about the worst betrayal there is.  It takes a lifetime of conscious, difficult introspection to fully understand and learn from this deep a betrayal.  I know a little bit about this now.

And I think your pain at the reality of your family was some of the reason you took me away from my family.   You couldn’t stand to see what a loving family is; were jealous, essentially, of what I had and you did not.  You couldn’t bear to be around us.

And when I left, the defeat, once again, crushed you.  People have been walking out of your life forever, one after the other.  So when I did, you exploded again.  You couldn’t stand to lose.  I know this is why wrestling is so important to you.  It is a sport in which you, and only you, are responsible for winning.  You have complete control over the situation.  You depend on no one to achieve, to win; unlike the rest of your life, in which you had no control over wins and losses.  In which you lost and could do nothing to change that fact.

The abuse after the break-up was almost as bad as that within it.  You harassed me until you ran me out of town, crawling back to my parent’s house with my tail between my legs and my heart and trust broken.  You couldn’t stand to see me day after day at work and know that someone once again exited your life.  You were hurting, badly, and would go to great lengths to ensure that I was as well.  And, frankly, you knew you had lost something special and someone who could have helped you to heal.  You were crazy with that thought.  You don’t like loss in any facet of your life.

Travis, I have spent the last eight years harboring anger and hate and distrust in all areas of my life.  Remember the day that another woman called you, in the midst of my wanting so badly to be happy with you and feel love from you?  That was the day my anger began, the day I lost my youth and naiveté, and began to hate people.

I don’t harbor that anger anymore, I won’t.  I have spent the past 8 years, six of those with my husband, trying to purge myself of you and the distrust associated with your name.  I couldn’t find the answer, the key to unlock the pain and let it go.  Then one morning I woke up and, unexpectedly understood.

I’m not angry with you anymore.  I don’t hate you and I don’t wish many reincarnations of misery on you.  I am simply sorry that you were mistreated by your father, by life.  I hope that your wife (?) can guide you toward healing and growing.  I hope that your child (?) can demonstrate to you the beauty of unconditional love.  I hope you can use introspection to learn to be a better man and that you will not continue the cycle of betrayal any longer.

I have learned that we are here solely to learn something, to be taught.  Through close examination of our lives, and living in the present rather than drowning in past pain, we can move toward self-actualization…peace.  What are you here to learn Travis?

May you be happy.  May you be healthy.  May you be well.

Ripple Effect

Let me start by saying that I absolutely, positively, undeniably fucking hate the new Windows.  I have no idea where a damn thing is, where it goes, and who I should shoot when I look at it for ten thousand minutes and still can’t figure out how the hell to save a document.

I hate change.  I’m really bad with it.  There has been quite a bit of it.  It’s been a bit…frustrating, yet enlightening.

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Despite some agitation here and there, I’m doing well.  Lots of processing going on in this house.  Overwhelming, but important all the same.  Let’s not forget, though, the point being made in the section above.

I am still only on Lamictal.  I had a pdoc appointment yesterday but I never got called back before I had to leave to pick up the munchkin.

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I hate that I sometimes have to wait so long between posts; writing this blog helps me to process.  It helps to the extent that I no longer feel that I have processed an idea until I post about it.  There are about a gazillion of these ideas/theories/conversations bouncing around in my head right now.  For now, I’ll just work on the last session with my therapist with a little bit of Ellis thrown in for good measure.

The idea of posting about the sessions in therapy comes from Gabriel over at Salted Lithium.  It is a really fantastic idea and stealing it from him has helped me tremendously.  Salted has been a huge resource for me through several rocky years now, so if by some improbable alignment of the stars someone ill is reading this blog, you must leave and go read Salted Lithium.  Come back if you want, but reading his while trying to recover is a must.

Anyway.  The theory I need to process.  The Ripple Effect (as called by Tenn, and it’s a damn good title) is the idea that our beliefs, emotions, and actions work in a way that is akin to a ripple in a pond.

The pebble is excessive emotion and/or emotional response to (and I’ll pull in Ellis on my own accord) an affront to some irrational belief.

The ripples are the dysfunctional reactions or behaviors that follow this plunge into irrationality.  The ripples will continue to radiate outward to the edges of the pond.  They then move inward again…and outward, and inward, outward, and so on.  Unchecked, these behaviors, spurred by irrational belief, will continue to rule the mind and body.

Now, what I usually do is try to put a band-aid over the spot the pebble punctured and then pretend the ripples don’t exist.  Only to find out, later and in a worse state, that I have to deal with the damn pebble/belief anyway…the ripples didn’t stop moving because I “fixed” the entry wound.

What has to happen, to stop the ripple, is dealing with the problem, the irrational belief.  Change your belief system, change your musts, and the pebble no longer enters with such force, the ripples are barely visible, if at all.

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I’m getting healthier.  That’s my mantra right now I guess.  I have made a tremendous amount of progress in just a few weeks.  That is not to say I’m fixed…cured.  There is no cured in this business.  There’s functional, there’s healthy, and there’s dormant.  I’ve always been mostly functional; I am a professional and have had a good career, though not well networked.  I am becoming healthy.  They would fuss at me and say I am healthy, but I am not ready to make a hasty statement.  I do know I have not felt this…sane, for lack of a better word, since before TD.  Since college.

Later.