Day 9.

Today is day 9 on medication. The first full day on full strength (the doctor had me start at half-strength to try & keep me from getting smacked with side effects). I feel… better. Not great, not amazing, but better. I’m starting to see things I’ve ignored/pushed aside these last few months. I’m actually looking forward to tomorrow, this weekend, next week. Tasks are no longer insurmountable obstacles, but I’m still getting out of the habit of not doing them.

I’m re-learning how to live. & I’m OK with that.

So far, so good.

Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass; it’s about learning to dance in the rain.

– Vivian Greene

Chemistry.

The face of depression isn’t always a sad one.

In fact, I’m willing to bet that no one other than McDreamy could tell you that I am depressed. I’ve even managed to hide it from him for a long time. I managed to hide it from myself for even longer. Probably because my depression doesn’t manifest itself as sadness most of the time. Yes, I get sad, & I cry over stupid things, but mostly, I’m angry. & tired. Oh, so tired.

I don’t remember the last time I wasn’t tired. I’ve tried sleeping more, sleeping less, different mattresses, sleep aids, et cetera, infinity. Nothing helps. I’m always tired, unless I don’t get decent sleep & then, I’m exhausted. Small, easy tasks are insurmountable obstacles because I can’t possibly have the energy to do a load of laundry when it takes everything I have to stay awake & breathe. I want to do things, I just simply can’t.

I’m so forgetful. McDreamy can ask me to do something, & within minutes I’ve forgotten, so it doesn’t get done. I start something & it takes 3 times longer to finish it because I get distracted & forget what I was doing in the first place. I can put something next to my purse so that I “won’t forget it!” & then walk right out without it.

& then there is the anger. Or, THE RAGE as I call it. It bubbles up inside of me so quickly, at the smallest thing. Sometimes, I can squash it back down, but most of the time it takes over before I even realize what is happening. I have zero patience. I feel like a crappy parent to Zola more & more often; her issues make it challenging to do things with her, & my fuse is so short that I avoid playing games or doing crafts with her because OH MY GOD, YOU AREN’T DOING IT RIGHT, & DO I REALLY HAVE TO EXPLAIN THIS AGAIN?!? I know how horrible that sounds, trust me. Which is why I avoid doing things with her that I know will trigger it. There are a lot of times that I just have to walk away. I hate hate hate it. I feel like I’m turning into MY mother, which is the worst possible fate in the universe. I KNOW what it was like growing up with her; I know what it felt like to be her daughter. I don’t want that for Zola, & I don’t want it for any other children we may someday have.

Once you combine all of this together, I feel like the biggest failure on the planet. I can’t keep my house clean, so I fail as a wife. I can’t get pregnant, so I fail as a woman. I can’t be interactive with my daughter, so I fail as a mother. I can’t hold my temper, so I fail as a person. Everything I do is wrong, no matter how hard I try. I want to be a good wife, a good mother, a good person. I try so, so hard. But it isn’t good enough.

It isn’t good enough because my brain chemistry is out of whack. The chemicals in my body are betraying me, every day. They are causing these feelings, this little voice telling me that I’m not worth it. They are causing the bone-crushing exhaustion that envelopes me & keeps me from doing the things I so desperately want to do.

& this sounds like excuses, which is another reason I’ve put off getting help for so long. I (& that little voice) had convinced myself that I was just a lazy, mean bitch. I had convinced myself that this is just how I’m made, that if I really wanted to, I’d get up & do the dishes. If I really wanted to, I could have more patience. That if I wanted to, I could stop being so lazy, so angry, such a failure. That surely, I must be doing something wrong.

Well, I was doing something wrong. I wasn’t getting help. But that’s about to change. Because I’m going to fight chemistry with chemistry, & be the person I’ve dreamed of being.

Bring it on. I’m done being depression’s punching bag.

Infertility.

McDreamy & I had a talk this weekend. He wanted to know where we are, TTC-wise. His exact words were, “I just need to know where we are. We used to talk about it, but we aren’t talking about it anymore. If we know we need help, why aren’t we getting it? This is me, wanting a baby.”

I cried.

I have a lot of excuses as to why I haven’t gone back to the RE yet. Want to hear them? Ok, you talked me into it.

1) Because I don’t always ovulate, we haven’t had as many chances as other couples. We just need more chances.

2) The RE wants to do 3 cycles of meds + timed intercourse before pursuing testing. His reasoning is the same as excuse #1. We are OOP for all treatment, BUT testing is covered, so I’d really prefer to do testing first.

3) I don’t want to have to take off work to have testing done (because some of it has to be done on specific days of my cycle, which obviously can’t be scheduled).

4) I don’t want to have to take off work to have ultrasounds, etc. during treatment.

(Side note: neither of these work excuses are because of money/time lost. They are because we are an extremely small operation & I obviously have an inflated sense of my irreplaceability)

5) Maybe there is some cosmic reason I haven’t gotten pregnant yet. (Yes, I hate this excuse, too)

6) I don’t want to admit that I can’t do this. That I need help. Yet one more thing I suck at (this excuse usually surfaces during one of my less-productive mood cycles, when dishes are stacked in the sink & the laundry has taken over the couch).

7) We are OOP for all treatments. It is a lot of money for even the chance at a baby. There are no guarantees. There are so many other things we could spend the money on, if only I can get pregnant on my own (well, I need McDreamy, but you know what I mean).

But really, the biggest reason, I think:

8 ) I will be officially labelled as infertile. Probably to likely unable to conceive without medical help. Maybe just plain unable to conceive.

I’ve known for a while that I have infertility. I’ve talked about it before. But really, until it’s written on a medical chart? I can pretend it’s only a possibility. I can refer to excuse #1, without being labelled “in denial”.

Have you ever heard of “borrowing trouble”? Until that word is written on my chart, I can convince myself that I am borrowing trouble, succumbing to my attention-whoring ways. I have no right to get angry when people say, “Just relax!” The sting I feel when people ask when we are going to have kids isn’t real, I’m just being sensitive.

But here we are, 18 months into this whole baby-making thing. With no baby to show for it. Not even a line on a test. I remember when I first started posting on the baby board I frequent, I met ladies that had been trying for 2+ years. I couldn’t imagine being in their shoes. I couldn’t imagine trying, month after month, for that long. I couldn’t imagine the pain, the disappointment at seeing red at the end of every cycle. Seeing negative after negative test. But always hoping.

We are quickly hurtling towards the 2-year mark. I’ve been on the board for almost 3 years now, & it is strange to me to think that some newbie may look at my signature & think, “Wow, I can’t imagine trying for that long.” 15 cycles have come & gone. I’ve stared at countless negative tests, willing a second line to show up. I’ve overanalyzed symptoms, convinced myself that THIS month, things will be different.

Life can either be accepted or changed. If it is not accepted, it must be changed. If it cannot be changed, then it must be accepted. – Winston Churchill

I think I’m ready to change it.

Well, that explains a lot.

A couple of weeks ago, I was going through a stack of papers my mom saved from when I was in 6th grade. I found a short essay I wrote entitled “If I Had Three Wishes”. Here it is, in all of it’s glory (spelling & grammar mistakes intact).

“If I had three wishes, they would be…”

My first wish would be for [name omitted] to be my sister. We are just like sisters. We fight like sisters, we talk like sisters & even my mom says we look somewhat like sisters.

My second wish would be to be more responcable. I would think of things helpful to do on my own so Mom wouldn’t yell so much.

My third and most important wish would be to keep my grades up & go to vet school. Then I could give kids discounts so they could get their animals shots & other things cheaper. Especially animals that were rescued from shelters & pounds.

First, I would like to point out that even at the tender age of 11, I didn’t write out “and”. I wasn’t using ampersands (but who actually writes an ampersand, anyway?) but I was using the little + sign instead of writing out the word.

But what this post is really about is the bolded portion. I wanted to be more responsible so that Mom wouldn’t yell so much. I was given three wishes – I assume we were told they could be anything we wanted (except additional wishes), & I chose this. As an 11-year-old girl, I used 1/3 of my wishes on a trait that should be learned, fostered, & nurtured.

I didn’t wish for chocolate milkshakes for breakfast, or a pink bike for my birthday. I didn’t wish for new shoes, or to wear makeup like the older girls. I didn’t wish for the newest, coolest CD, or the latest & greatest jeans that were surely all the rage.

It makes me sad.