As for physically… May 15, 2012

The problem with an infertility/RPL blog, in which no one is in active treatment, and all we’re doing is desultory timed sex followed by rage and ick as The Period turns up, also anxst and wailing, is that it’s not the most fascinating read in the universe. Where’s the narrative arc? Where are the engaging new characters at the doctor’s office, the dramatic tension, the crossed fingers, the do-or-die all-or-nothing flinging oneself at medications and surgical procedures, the did-it-work, the will-it-stick?

I feel I ought to apologise for just circling this stake at the end of my tether for, oh, months now. Since the surgery in November which was so amazingly pointless.

Me, I am losing weight very slowly – partly because I caught this dreary cold and I kept the (really quite startlingly painful) sore throat at bay by a steady diet of tea and ice-cream for several days, and partly because it’s the luteal phase and I ALWAYS gain up to five pounds during my luteal phase and I ALWAYS lose it again during the first three days of The Period (not least because I can’t eat a damn thing). However, I am losing weight. And hope to be able to call Miss Consultant and get myself on the NHS IVF waiting list again by the end of May. Fingers crossed. Positive endearing grin and thumbs-up gesture.

It helps if I remind myself I’m losing weight to meet silly arbitrary NHS rules, rather than because I need to be thin or I’m Not Worthy. I remind myself of this three or four times a day, at length, and then chant my favourite little mantra: ‘All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well’ several times.

This kinda gets blown out of the water when I read/hear/see anything about women noticeably larger than I am getting pregnant, especially if they have several children easily, or, equally, if they had no trouble getting reproductive medical assistance. Not because I grudge these women their children or their good doctors at all – like I said, weight is not and should not be a Human Worth Issue. But because, if they can, why can’t I? Why?

At least I have the moral satisfaction of knowing that endometriosis and adenomyosis are nothing whatsoever to do with one’s weight, and are just as likely in thin women. As are blood-clotting disorders and auto-immune issues. So there, to those who insist that all I need to do is lose this arbitrary smidgeon of weight. So. There.

All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will bloody buggering be well, Goddamnit.

Anyway.

I’ve spent the past two days (four if you count the somewhat miserable weekend) at home, because this stupid cold came with a stupid low-grade fever and a stupid persistant cough and my boss is immuno-compromised and has a tendency to shriek and send people home again if they come anywhere NEAR her with a cold. It’s given me time to sit about doing absolutely nothing, and of course that gave me a chance to have a good panic about missing so much work again (The Period is due on Sunday, therefore I’ll probably miss the first two days of work next week as well, not least because I think my boss’s reaction to collapsing and vomit will be even less equanimous). And suddenly, mid-anxst, it occurred to me that I’d be actually not that bloody bothered if I lost my job. I mean, it’d be a pain, and difficult to find a new one, but really? I could finally sort out the books and the paperwork and work on my novel and finish my poetry project and keep the house a bit cleaner and cook more often and finish H’s winter pullover (the one on teeny needles, as H doesn’t like bulky sweaters) sometime before Christmas 2014. Gosh. Mellowness. On that subject at least.

I make no sense just because, OK? OK. May 13, 2012

So, yes, thoughtful pause has ensued. Sorry about that. Well, I’m sorry about that if you were in any way wanting to read more of my ramblings and fossickings (you strange masochistic person, let me clasp you to my grateful bosom). If you didn’t care, well, then we’re all staring at each other in a confused fashion, because you are, aren’t you, reading this? And yet you don’t care? How odd you are. Hello!

Anyway. I felt rather as if I had painted myself into a corner with the whole ‘Let’s Talk About FEEEEEEELINGS!’ thing, and so I had to do what everyone who paints themselves into a corner has to do – that is, sit on the radiator kicking my heels until the paint dries. Meanwhile H’s post has brought all sorts of fascinating people out of the woodwork to comment. It’s gratifying and astonishing. (Apologies if you never thought of yourself as the sort of person who lurks in woodwork. Do you prefer shadows? Corners? Having been sitting quietly over here all this time?)

So, on to the meanwhiles. Meanwhile!:

Item – I have H’s cold! At least, I think it’s H’s. It could be anyone’s. I live in a big city and people cough and sneeze so very inconsiderately (did I ever tell you about the chap at work who was about to hand me a book, felt a sneeze coming, lifted the book to his face and sneezed right on it, wetly, and then put it in my poor little cringing bare hand? I wish now I’d had the strength and swiftness of mind to put my hands behind my back and GLARE at him). I was clearly feeling out of sorts on Friday, and woke up yesterday morning with my throat on fire. On. Emmineffin’. FIRE. And a fever. And now I have ear-ache. Which is an embuggerance.

Item – It’s six dpo and I don’t feel comfortable stuffing myself to the gunwales with anything more punchy than paracetamol and tea. Which sucks. I rather wish I had the insouciant gumption to just shout ‘the hell with it!’ and snarf 400mg of ibuprofen and a Beecham’s flu powder and a large ginger-wine toddy and possibly a thumbnail of cocaine and all (is cocaine any good for colds?).

Item – To my horror, my astonishment, my despair, and my utter horror, I had a screaming weeping melt-down on Friday. Because it was the 11th, I think. Because while I am no longer in active mourning for that particular pregnancy, or, I think, any of the others, as such, I still feel bitterly cheated out of four years of pregnancy and motherhood. I still feel I should have a three-and-a-bit-year-old, and these past four years have been an intermittent torment-by-denial. And because it’s Mother’s Day (not in Britain, mind you (we have ours in March, before Easter), but for most of the rest of the planet and therefore for The Internets) and because I will be 37 in a couple of weeks and I have not a single living child about me. And because I have been going through The Period Designed By Abyzou, for years now, every month, and the only reason for me to go through this physical torment is in the hope of pregnancy. Which isn’t happening. Fucking fuck fuck fuckitty fuck.

Item – Speaking of which (The Period, not the fucking) H and I cancelled and rebooked our traditional end-of-May holiday this year because we counted on our fingers and saw the dates we’d already booked might be invaded by Said Period, and therefore Would Not Be A Holiday Experience. And then of course panicked that Satsuma would uncooperate and delay The Period by a week and Fuck Up All The Things. She didn’t, bless her, she ovulated when I usually expect to ovulate, and I was quite surprised, because I have trust issues when it comes to Satsuma and I will have them forever. Sorry, Sats.

Item – You know how you have visions of your life, and life goals? H did, bless him. I had life goals too, when I was in my late teens and early twenties, you see. A) I was going to be a professor and writer, B) I was going to have at least one kid, preferably two, to whom I’d be the coolest, adorablest, most thoughtful and loving mother in the whole Goddamn world, and C) I wasn’t going to have the sort of fucked up, emotionally dishonest, unsupportive, unloving, cats-in-a-sack, serially unfaithful marriage that is common in my family, and I’d rather be single than deal with an atom of crap at any point at all in any of my relationships. A has gone down the crapper, B is going down the crapper, I am left with C. I need to re-write C – indeed, to a large extent, I have rewritten C. I’ve kept the bit about not having an emotionally dishonest, unsupportive, serially unfaithful marriage, indeed, I’ve put that bit in 16-point bold. But I’ve had to radically redifine ‘crap’ and exactly how much an atom of it is, though, you know, to leave room for people being tired, or sad, or depressed, or angry, or grieving, or having a bad day, or a blind-spot about other people’s bad days. When I am in a state, I regress, and my ‘atom’ shrinks and becomes oh, so much less forgiving, this is true. It is also true that the pain of the sad slow demise of A and B makes me even more unreasonable than necessary about C. I fear I have lost everything and become completely utterly blind to all the other things I am any good for, or have achieved. On Friday, for example, I was loudly and weepily announcing that I have achieved nothing, nothing at all in my entire life, while H looked at me with compassion, and also with startled incredulity. I had actually completely forgotten that I had three degrees (two post-graduate), a good marriage, a job, a talent for cooking, knitting, and writing poetry, and quite a few good friends. It’s madness. I am quite mad.

Item – Anyway, H has his first appointment with the counselling service next week. Which makes me feel like an elephant has scrambled down from my shoulders. There’s still a clan of them camping out on my chest and all around my living-room, yes, but the one on my shoulders about H’s state of mind was giving me a crick in the neck. Hurrah!

Item – Yes, I know. Get my own counsellor. Stat.

On Sidling May 7, 2012

It has been suggested that sidling is an ineluctable trait of men. So, do I even need to change?

May will have to accept that I’ll never be amazingly empathic or good at understanding people and their emotions, but should she just take me as I am – infuriating (to her) habits and all? It would certainly be easier* to not make an effort and just try and get on.

This post attempts to set out my feelings as to why I don’t think this will really do – in doing so I’ll reveal a bit of my life story to explain the context  of my behaviours and where I’ve come from to be in this situation.

May is already unhappy because of the craptitude the universe has thrown at her. My role, as a spouse, should not be add to her burdens by making her unhappy with me too, but to comfort and support where I can. I also feel this is an important part of my identity. It’s scary and difficult having the sort of person I think I am pointed out to be failing to live up to that, but it leaves me a clear choice: accept I’m not a supporting and caring person or become one.

I said in my last post that I have a problem with strong emotions and a reason why. However, I think I need to learn not to react with fear and self-stifling when they occur – just because they are strong doesn’t mean that they are extreme. This I’m hoping will be dealt with by some counselling, which I must confess I have still to arrange.

The other big issue is difficulty letting go and dealing with the other main ‘self identity’ I’ve had since childhood around what constitutes success in life. As a teen I planned by the time I was 35 to have a highly-paid job, own a house and sports car (impractical, I know), have a wife, family, etc. sort of ‘on way to be a millionaire’ type plans. While this is probably common in teenage boys, I think I took it probably a bit too seriously in my binary sort way. Careers advice centered around pay and not really what I would find interesting; luckily there were promising looking ones that I had the skills for – actuarial for example. This was re-affirmed when I got a very good A level exam results in stats – it wasn’t until well into my university course I realised how much I hated stats… bit of a blow. Second blow was not quite getting the degree mark I thought I ought to be able to (this also unfortunately meant that when May didn’t either I wasn’t as supportive and sympathetic as I should have been, probably still being slightly bitter). Third blow was not getting onto the bank graduate scheme – joining a bank on a guaranteed generous income and fast track to management (because of degree mark, I think).

So, I moped out of university into life. May was finishing her degree and actually getting to spend a year abroad**, while I had to pick up temp jobs and then enrolled onto a university sponsored ‘business course’, which I didn’t really enjoy. It was all very humiliating. I eventually found a proper job, very entry level – but at least in a tech industry I enjoyed. Fast forward a couple of years, just when all seemed to be going well (second job by now), a management change above me meant I was forced to apply for my own job – and obviously failed to get it because I was ‘tainted’ by previous management. This fourth and probably biggest blow (to me) meant that May and I had to give up the flat we had moved into together just a few months earlier (don’t miss the flat, but it was the principle of independence). May’s mum and dad extremely kindly offered accommodation within reach of the big city, but it took me six months to secure another job (I think stretching their generosity a little – there were a couple of comments towards the end of our stay – although May’s siblings have since made that look like the briefest of inconvenience). During this time I felt a complete and utter failure and once again humiliated. I was unable to support May in any way because I was stuck in my own misery – just at a crucial time for May, when with her PhD was going pear-shaped.

When I got a job we moved back in together into a flat in the big city. May’s PhD collapsed (through no fault of her own – I squarely blame the tutors) and left her bereft as I was enjoying the excitement of a new job – leaving her rather abandoned (again). We muddled on and I kept on reassuring May that I was happy to support her while she sorted her life out – however, that didn’t seem to happen. May got into to a very depressed state – to a worrying degree (which causes problems now – causing me to be scared of encouraging her giving up her job even though it is really annoying). We did, however, manage to get married during this time – so I carried on supporting May financially. We then started TTC, but in quite a casual way, I certainly wanted kids (and still do), but was in no rush as my plan meant we should really buy a house first. May did get a job (part-time initially), but unfortunately I think this just made my child-hood ambitions kick in again – perhaps we could get on the housing ladder after all, perhaps I could make this work out. So when another part-time opportunity came up at May’s work I persuaded her hard to take it too (me being controlling – a trait I have only just come to acknowledge recently). I supported her through her second post-grad degree and the miscarriage – but this was purely in a practical way, rather than emotional support (seeing the pattern yet?).

It wasn’t quite enough though – despite our joint incomes we were about five years too late to get something affordable in the big city… the housing market in the UK in the last ten year has just been crazy-stupid and I certainly can’t blame that on May, but I still have a feeling of what if/if only… for example, if May had got a job too rather than letting the ill-fated PhD peter out – would this have made a difference? This is not something I’ve consciously considered until now, but I wonder if subconsciously it’s been unfairly festering. I think it chimes with something May said the other day about me holding our relationship to ransom over this “ideal” (quite materialistic one, which May doesn’t really share) of how my (our?) lives should pan out. It really isn’t helpful and needs to change – as I said I need to let go, accept it didn’t happen like the unrealistic grand plan/pipe-dream and appreciate and enjoy what I do have.

So, this brings us up to the start of this Nutsinmay blog. The RPL has been tough, no doubt, but as we were talking about it last night – I have managed to let go. That is easier for me I’m sure, not going through the physical symptoms – but it did lead to May feeling abandoned (again) for a while as I barreled along with the rest of life. We have since come to a better mutual understanding of where we are on this issue, but I think for a time while I was happy to give May the space to grieve I had sort of gone through that very quickly and therefore wasn’t an emotionally supportive as I could have been.

Where does this leave us/me? Well, I don’t think all of this can be sorted by counselling, but there are definitely head issues that need sorting as well as certain behavioural things. The account above shows that where I have failed to live up to reasonable expectations of both May and myself over the years. I’m not proud of it.

Over the years May has suggested and encouraged me to read quite a few self-help books, which I have to a greater or lesser extent tried – a couple even resonated and helped a little – probably giving her false hope. One ‘error’ I feel May possibly made is thinking that she could somehow change me. You can never change someone else, however, you need to engage with them in a way they understand so they realise and accept they need to change themselves. I think this may have finally been achieved.

Change – whatever that ends up being, I don’t know yet – will be slow, I’m sure, (and as I said at the top there are probably some things that will never change) but it has to start somewhere. I think it should start here and now.

May, I’m sorry it’s taken over fifteen years.

*in some ways, at least until the marriage self-destructs.

**not as idyllic as that sounds really, but that’s not my story.

Lesser knowledge May 6, 2012

Item – I’m letting H have the final (well. Final for the moment. Finalish. Non-final. Punctuational) word on the matter of feelings and expressing them and to whom and how and why and whether it’s any help at all to do so or not or what. It seems only fair. He says he’ll post tomorrow. At the moment he is emailing my mother about private IVF and has therefore earnt all the brownie points a man can earn in one evening.

Item – Meanwhile, we’ve both been busy and/or stressed and/or royally pissed off at work. H for good reasons involving tight deadlines and screwy budgets and peculiarly demanding but under-informed clients. Me for stupid reasons involving my giving too much of a crap about whether procedures are followed correctly, having to share an office with people arguing with each other about seniority, and my boss’s absolute, persistant, four-years-and-counting obsession with the fact that every now and then I am ten minutes late for work. I am working up the nerve to tell her I’m not paid enough to be responsible for the train company’s maintenance schedules on top of my own work. As it is, I have a fairly unpleasant panic attack every single morning that the trains fuck me about. My boss claims that my being ten minutes late ‘on such a regular basis’ (I think she means, every few weeks the trains fuck up for a week and I’m late maybe twice that week) makes me look like I ‘don’t care about work’. This is what bothers her. I should be glad it’s not my missing three days of work a month, I know, but I work late several times a week even on days I’m not late. I volunteer for extra training and responsibilities. I take on procedure-writing duties. I give talks on library skills. I am generally acknowledged to be the go-to expert of the team on four different subjects-areas. I can, and have, catalogued a seat-cushion. I ‘don’t care about my work’ indeed. I am so offended.

Item – But she’s right, you know, just a tiny bit. I do my job to the best of my ability because I’d feel scuzzy taking the money if I didn’t, and because I do care about my particular field of expertise, but yes, I’d dump the whole lot tomorrow and skip chortling into SAHM-land, waving my last pay-check like a jolly little flag, if only I could.

Item – Oh, and H has another bad cold. Another! He’s only just got over the one that arsed up our holiday at the end of March. I’m going to complain to the management, so I am.

Item – I, meanwhile, am not having bad colds. I am having desultory hay-fever (the one good thing about the utterly craptastical weather we’re having this Spring), so my eyes, nose, lips, and throat all itch all day long, and, err, that’s it. Oh, and I will now give myself horrible gas and diarrhoea if I eat wheat, it seems. I get a mild stomach-ache if I so much as eat the wrong brand of soy sauce. Oh, Universe, just why don’t you sod off.

Item – Given that my immune system has spent the past five years becoming thoroughly unreasonable, H and I are investigating various private providers of IVF who also do immune testing for RPL.

Item – And I showed H how to access my cycle charts online – you know, my ovulation/menstruation charts, which I keep religiously because I am one of the few people I know for whom charting really works in that I actually need to know when to expect my period so I can barricade the doors etc. and charting gives me at least ten days’ warning which is so freakin’ cool also unpunctuates me utterly – where was I? Yes. I showed H the charts, and he had a good look, and worked out what he was looking at (all the little green squares and cross-hairs), and then he drew my attention to a couple of cycles in the past year that looked worryingly like chemical pregnancies. Yes, I know. I worried myself sick those two months. But I didn’t get a positive pregnancy test for either of them, therefore I have not drunk and seen the spider*, and therefore they don’t count. I refuse, I categorically refuse, to up my count to nine. I won’t. They didn’t happen.

Item – H is getting over his mental block about IVF. He even said, today, that he was coming to terms with the fact we probably weren’t going to get pregnant naturally again. General feeling that we are sidling onto the same page again, though alas, poor H, what a thing to have to come to terms with.

*…How blest am I
In my just censure! in my true opinion!
Alack, for lesser knowledge! how accurs’d
In being so blest! There may be in the cup
A spider steep’d, and one may drink; depart,
And yet partake no venom (for his knowledge
Is not infected), but if one present
Th’ abhorr’d ingredient to his eye, make known
How he hath drunk, he cracks his gorge, his sides,
With violent hefts. I have drunk, and seen the spider. A Winter’s Tale, II.i.

Sometimes you love people not because, but anyway. April 30, 2012

So, last week, I went out to dinner with my Mum and my step-Dad. They invited H and me to a nice restaurant in a bit of a surprise! Last minute! way (H and I had made other plans, but hey, nice restaurant won). It’s how my Mum rolls. Anyhoodle, I particularly wanted to see step-Dad as he had been very unwell and I hadn’t seen him since he was unwell and so the last time we met he wasn’t feeling at all sociable, poor man.

By and large, the dinner was very nice. I was feeling a tad gastrointestinally fragile, so I ate things like grilled chicken and salad while H fell gleefully face-first into something involving cream, more cream, truffles, and gorgonzola cheese, but it was nice grilled chicken *sigh* and yes, well, anyway, I wasn’t there for the food *sigh*. We all chatted amusingly about art and opera and travel and plans for the summer and how Thingamajig was these days and had anyone seen Whosis lately? It was all going so well.

And then, apropos of absolutely nothing at all that I can think of in retrospect, step-Dad leaned back in his chair and said ‘what do you think of all this about letting gay people marry?’

Now what he meant was, what did I think of the current Government consultation on whether to extend the right to have an actual (non-religious) marriage to gay couples, rather than only a ‘civil partnership’? And what I think is, yes, unequivocally, absolutely, gay couples should have the right to marry, to marry in town halls, and to marry in any church or synagogue or temple that is happy to marry them, and I think all this fudging about with ‘civil partnerships’ and pretending they’re ‘equal but different’ (they’re not entirely equal, and what is this, anyway? Separate but equal water-fountains and toilets for whites and coloureds? No. Just, no) and that it’s only ‘a matter of semantics’ is bullshit.

I didn’t put it quite like that, but I said that if the consultation came down on the side of ‘yes, let’s do this’, I for one would be pleased.

Step-Dad looked baffled at this. But surely, marriage is a traditional, centuries old tradition that needs protecting?

Protecting from what? It’s spent centurites being about power and property and legal ownership of assets and children and treating one half of the human race as a chattel and breeding stock. How is that worth protecting?

He changed tack. He said, ‘well, I think marriage should be about having children, so it’s not appropriate for gay people.’

There are so many things I could have said to him at this point, starting with ‘BULLSHIT’!, progressing through ‘And this from a divorced childless man’, veering back for another round of ‘BULL. SHIT.’, segueing into a rant on bigotry and intolerance and human rights and equal rights, passing through next-of-kin recognition problems in hospitals and old age and so on, thumping right down into ‘and gay people do TOO have children!’ But what I went for, in the end, I hope calmly and evenly and without a wobble in my voice, was: ‘Well, in that case, H and I should never have got married.’

Pause.

My mother leapt in on my side of the debate with a light remark about it being so lovely when old people get married, and they’re hardly going to have children.

‘Well, why do they need to marry?’ said step-Dad (disclaimer – I call him step-Dad, and he and my mother have been living together for about 15 years now, but they aren’t married. But he was married once, for a few years, in his youth, and that went… well, it went).

‘Because people want to make sure that the person they care for most in the world can be legally part of their family,’ I think I said. I’m not sure. I was getting a little rattled now. And my mother nobly dragged the conversation off course into shallower, less murky channels and dinner sailed smoothly on.

And I am still utterly bloody livid about it. I knew step-Dad was a bit of an old-fashioned Conservative with a small ‘c’ as well. I knew he had been well-off all his life and had a tendency to a ‘let them eat cake!’ attitude due almost entirely to ignorance and slightly sclerotic empathy skills (I blame boarding-school from toddler-hood). I knew he had a knee-jerk tendency to think of non-white people as ‘foreigners’, but he’d always been so very pleased to meet them all, if occasionally bemused to discover they’d actually been born in Birmingham. And we know gay couples. We have gay family. He’s got gay friends, no, really, he really has. He’s not particularly religious, he’s, I mentioned, childless and divorced, he’s watched his nearest and dearest make 87 kinds of screw-ups out of their own relationships (infidelity multiple and serial, divorce, remarriage, re-divorce, children legitimate and illegitimate and even unacknowledged, runnings-away with the pool-boy, shacking up with a cousin). And yet, here, in 2012, he dares, he dares, not only discriminate and belittle the love and commitment of gay people, but to assume I would share this, this, this nonsense of an attitude. And for such colossally, hugely, hypocritically cretinous reasons. Tradition. Child-rearing. Feh.

And, yes, the ‘marriage is for having children’ comment stung like a mofo. I admit it.

Oh woe, woe is me April 29, 2012

It’s been a bitch of a week.

Item – H and I are still less than charmed with certain aspects of each other’s behaviour right now (all the other aspects are adorable). H is shilly-shallying about booking an appointment with the counselling service, and I am being self-righteous about it despite the fact I have done absolutely grand fuck-all about finding a counsellor of my own, because do as I say, not do as I do, that’s why. Meanwhile, H is in a permanent low-grade sulk, and I haven’t had sex for nearly a month, and I can’t begin to unpick how the two are related.

Item – For the record, I’m not the one who’s avoiding sex round here. That is not our relationship dynamic. I am given to understand that we are unusual, but there it is. I want more sex than H does. When stressed, he avoids sex and seeks cuddles. When stressed, I avoid cuddles and seek sex. I am basically a bloke with tits. Apparently. Especially according to the Relate website which is one of the most patronising, stereotyped, unhelpful, and just plain scientifically, biologically, and emotionally wrong things I ever did read on the subject. How the hell do they think reading that makes a woman with a higher-than-her-partner sex-drive feel? How isolated, abnormal, freakish, lonely? How do they think it makes a man whose not as randy as his partner feel? Eh? Did they think at all? And these are the number one people supposed to help relationship issues? No. Just, no. Not going to a Relate counsellor. Not now, not ever, not if it was an ultimatum. No. Jesus. Seriously. It’s 2012.

Item – On Wednesday, I struggled through the day at work with increasingly unpleasant, err, gastrointestinal distress. I wondered if I’d eaten one of the many (many many bloody Goddamn many) things that I now appear to be allergic to (the HELL, immune system?). I was well enough to go out to dinner with my parents that night, but the next morning, well, basically, I was just about ready to leave for work, and The Lower Bowel, It Objected. I spent hours of that day in the bathroom. Hours. (About 50 minutes in, I thought ‘and that is why they invented iPads’).

Item – Anyway, my digestive track appears to have got a grip again (hahahahahaHAHAHA). I said to H, perhaps this is actually some kind of IBS? and he pointed out that, technically, he has the IBS niche in this household covered, thank you, so I’m back to recounting my allergens and glaring suspiciously at labels. I can’t see us doing IBS as a joint hobby working out very well.

Item – Therefore on Saturday we were at the shopping centre (mall to you transAtlantic types) looking at toasters (we rock so hard) when I noticed a lacuna in my vision, and people’s heads getting peculiarly (horribly) distorted as they stepped into it. I blinked. Now I had two lacunae. BUGGER. Migraine. H bustled me into the nearest chemist and I choked down two liquid ibuprofen capsules while standing in the queue to pay for them – the sooner I can get aspirin or ibuprofen down me when the aura starts, the better chance I have of heading off the Skull-Crushing. We went back out onto the main concourse and I considered the overwhelmingness of the noise, and the visual distortions, and the growing sea-sick feeling, and decided I was going home. We live about 10 minutes walk from said shopping centre and I had about 20 to 30 minutes before Mjölnir plunged out of the stratosphere into my parietal lobe. H would have to look at fish in the supermarket without me. And off I wobbled out into the rain. I bumped into the main doors (twice, like a pinball), four passers-by, a bus-shelter, a bollard, and the table once I’d got home, but I made it, and had even constucted a nest consisting of blankets, pillows, blinds drawn, and lap-top playing factual literary programmes from Radio 4 (no laughing, is vital) very very quietly before the first great crushing onslaught. I am a very lucky migraneur. I wasn’t sick, and though it felt like someone was scraping out the left side of my skull with a sharpened melon-baller for a few hours, it had faded considerably by 6pm, after the application of paracetamol and more ibuprofen. I still can’t say long words without buggering them up, and I’ve corrected the spelling on everything I’ve written today at least twice, but the headache! Is! Mild! Yay!

Item – So today H decided to up the ante and poison me by feeding me taramosalata. I was about two mouthfuls in when it dawned on me that taramosalata is, in fact is supposed to be, 40% breadcrumbs. I love taramosalata. H knows I love taramosalata. He got it for me as a treat while I was lying in the dark remonstrating feebly with Matthew Parris for dissing W.H. Auden. BASTARD SON OF A BASTARD BASTARD’S BASTARD. The gluten, that is, not H, or Matthew Parris, or even Auden. H also bought me tulips, so he can stay.

Item – My step-father said something on Wednesday that made me so boilingly cross I don’t know what to do with myself. Which is awkward. As I love the man dearly. But I think it needs a whole post to itself, so I shall post this one and go see if I can make tea without pouring boiling water into the filter jug and then milk into the kettle.

Another broken biscuit assortment April 21, 2012

Item – Right. I went back to work. There was a lot of it. I did it. The people who picked up the emergency slack for me while I was Indisposed refused all my offers of shift swaps and so on, saying I’d do the same for them. Which is true, but they don’t have Inner Organs of Recurrent Doom, so I don’t get the chance to do the same for them. Not once an emmineffin’ month, anyway. Am verklempt. (As H pointed out, it doesn’t hurt that I always go back to work after an Indisposition, disgustingly pale with fetching navy-blue under-eye pouches. I think they all treat me very gently for a couple of days in case I really do actually shatter into a gadzillion shards and the whole office has to be evacuated for clean-up).

Item – H, whereas, is coming down with another cold, and is skulking in the study in his dressing-gown and a slight fever. Poor bastard. Stress really does hold your immune system’s head down the pan and pull flush, doesn’t it?

Item – I think, finally, I have come to the conclusion that H and I really are not going to get pregnant the fun private way anymore. 12 cycles since I was last pregnant (actually, 13, but we carefully didn’t try for one of them as I was having surgery, so it doesn’t count. Clearly, that was the cycle we would’ve conceived Baby Einstein Prime Minister Nobel Prize for Literature). We’re back to being infertile, as well as recurrent miscarriers.

Item – You will see from the Ticker of Shame down there on the right, the combination of holidays, bereavement, The Chocolate Festival, and anxst, has embiggened my bottom, and we’re back at square one. Excuse me one moment… [AAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH]… So. Anyway. Given that I have Officially Lost All Faith in my body’s ability to produce an egg with any sperm-related social skills at all, IVF it is. And I have to lose a few pounds again (again (again again)). So close, and yet so utterly fucked up.

Item – Next quest (to go along with the Salad, You Shall Eat It one), actually do more of the things that cheer me up, and a lot less of the things that piss me off. To which end, a list -

Things that cheer May up:

1. Knitting – I have raging Knitting Attention Deficit Disorder, caused, or so I like to think, by having to jam projects in and around commuting, work, and being tired and vague (this last being pretty much a full-time job in and of itself for the likes of me). *sigh*
2. Reading – I don’t read as much as I used to. I always think there’s something better I ought to be doing, and that reading would be self-indulgent, and then I fribble my spare time away on nothing very much and just think! I could’ve been improving my mind with a good book!
3. Writing – The more I write, the happier and more balanced I feel. And yet, it suffers from the same sort of fribblage that messes with my reading time. And, also, an ugly feeling of ‘there’s no point writing anything unless it’s brilliant, and it’s not going to be brilliant, so don’t write’. What is this crappy inner monologue in my head for and how do I turn it off?
4. Cooking – This happy habit came completely unglued in the Recurrent Miscarriage Years of Soul Destruction. I used to do most of the cooking, I enjoyed it, and I was pretty good at it. Now H does most of the cooking. It started because I would go through weeks and months of being utterly flattened with apathy and depression after each miscarriage – I’d get home from work every evening so very tired I could barely eat without crying with exhaustion – and then I’d miscarry again just when I was starting to get a grip and perk up. And now, my periods make me really ill and weak, which doesn’t help. My plan is to do more of the cooking at weekends, and do more of the sort of thing that can be put in the fridge/freezer for later in the week, which will still allow me to be completely apathetic on Thursdays but take the pressure off H.
5. Art galleries and museums – I work in a big city. I could really truly go to a museum for a quick brain refill during my lunch-break. Why don’t I?
6. Films – OK, we don’t do too badly on cinema-going.
7. Long walks – This, we fail on miserably. But I like them!
8. Restaurants – A couple of times a month, H and I go out to brunch. It makes me happy. As does meeting H for dinner in town after work but before cinema. As does saving up to treat ourselves to a special meal somewhere fancy on a birthday or anniversary. Again, this sort of thing falls victim to Depressed Apathy. I hate Depressed Apathy.
9. Sex – Specifically, the sort of sex we have because we’re both in the mood for sex, with absolutely no reference whatsoever to the time of the month and whether or not we can just do what is sweetly referred to by our American friends as ‘heavy petting’ instead. That might be one good thing to come out of setting our sights on IVF, ironically. Better sex. (You said ‘come’! Teeheehee!)

Item – Another thing that makes May happy, in a weepy, over-joyed, hopeful, heartful sort of way: Long-time blog-friend and all-around witty, lovely Liz at Womb for Improvement is, well, she’s… you know…

Item – It’s been a bit of a week for pregnancy announcements. I have another good friend, who I know has been trying for well over a year and who was starting the whole sad grind of going to doctor’s appointments and having tests, also struck lucky (yay!). So that was nice.

Item – Booze I can no longer have because I have developed allergic reactions to grapes, wheat, barley, rye, and, clearly, fun: White wine, champagne, rose wine, sherry, brandy, beer, Guinness (I was totally a Guinness drinker, from the age of 16), lager, whisky. This is why I’m obsessed with gin. It’s the only thing I can still drink. (Yes I know gin is sometimes made with wheat mash. It’s triple distilled, and has pretty much no wheat proteins left in it by the time it’s bottled. Also, many British gins are made with corn and sugar, so. Here endeth the lesson). For those of you bouncing with eagerness to mention rum – the first time I got pukathonic drunk it was on rum & coke. Rum is dead to me. Tequila, I could get behind.

Item – Nobody ever gets my clever references to Milton and his ilk in my post titles. I feel such a colossal dork. But your indifference will not stop me! I have a mind not to be chang’d by place or time. And again I say:

For who would lose,
Though full of pain this intellectual being,
Those thoughts that wander through eternity
To perish rather, swallow’d up and lost
In the wide womb of uncreated night?

Abash’d the Devil stood April 17, 2012

Unlike yesterday, I didn’t forget to take my mid-morning dose of tramadol today, so I am feeling a lot better than I felt yesterday afternoon (to whit, like a wolverine was tearing my lower abdomen to pieces with knife, fork and jack-hammer).

Not that I like taking tramadol. It makes me feel unpleasantly like being drunk (“What’s unpleasant about being drunk?” “You ask a glass of water.” – Douglas Adams). And mefenamic acid makes me feel sick, heartburny, and sleepy. And diclofenac makes me feel like I’m trying to drive my body from inside a box of cotton wool in the next room. I’m amazed I can still spell. Can I still spell? I may be hallucinating correct spelling right now as I type, and not a word of this is making sense.

Anyway, given that the pain is under control (that is to say, I have backache, and an ugly dull bruised feeling extending from belly-button to knee (why in the name of sanity to my thighs get involved? Seriously, what’s it to them if my uterus is pitching a fit?), but I am not nauseous or in tears), I am finding spending the day in bed with the radio, the internets, and my knitting almost pleasant. And alternately, there’s cold heavy rain beating on the windows and bright glassy sunshine pouring through them. Weather very odd. I am rambling. The rainy bit is cozy-making, what with double-glazing, a functioning boiler and a duvet.

Before Cute Ute The Ironically Named kicked off, H and I had gone to his parents’ for the weekend. Last Saturday was his Grandfather’s memorial celebration (not a service, as it was totally secular, what with Grandfather being a humanist and philosophical atheist (another reason why I adored him so – we had similar outlooks on, well, nearly everything)). H and I were reading the eulogy between us, and along with all the other sorting and organising and making of ham rolls and crudites for modern day Funeral Baked Meats (H’s Grandfather loved Shakespeare too) … (I am being entirely too parenthetical. What was I saying?) … Anyway, we and the In-Laws all stuff to do, and everyone was anxsty (In-Laws bickering more than I think I’ve heard them bicker for years, poor people (damn, ‘nother parenthesis. BLOODY TRAMADOL)), and I was rather concerned that my period would turn up a day early and Fuck Things Over. I’d been spotting since Thursday and Cute Ute and Satsuma between them are prone to brinkmanship. However, one of my more unusual and inexplicable gifts is that of calm, straight-backed, unfazed, clear-voiced public speaking, even when four centimetres from the verge of tears and/or falling over. I was fine. H did fine too.

The memorial celebration was, in fact, very beautiful, joyous and moving. We all laughed, we all had at least a little weep, we all agreed H’s Grandfather was a Mensch. And a talented, witty, charming man of great gifts and great achievements, but most wonderfully and above all, a Mensch. We should all be so lucky.

I started to flake out during the restaurant dinner we had afterwards. Couldn’t finish eating, felt increasingly woozy. And then H and I were sleeping on the fold-out couch in the In-Laws living-room. How do you make people sod off out of their own living-room so you can lie down? Especially my Brother-In-Law, who is a) a night-owl and b) chatty and c) the last person I want to discuss my uterus with and d) I was getting too frazzled to think of something nice and vague to say to him about being tired or under-the-weather.

Sunday I was Proper Afflicted. H went off to visit his Grandmother and give her all our love without me, and I, pale as milk, curled miserably up on the refolded couch while MIL made me cup after cup of tea and chatted gently to me. At one point I was visibly shaking, and she was visibly upset to notice this. I felt an odd mixture of one part ‘see? I am not fucking around when I say this hurts,’ one part ‘OK, I do actually feel quite selfconscious that you’ve all noticed I look and therefore obviously feel like hell,’ and about ten parts ‘OW OW OW OW’.

And then H came back from his Grandmother’s and we drove home.

H is still in a bit of a state, emotionally. And why shouldn’t the poor sod be? He’s just said goodbye to his beloved Grandfather again, and seen his family all sad and stressed, and had to do public speaking infront of 100 people, and his job is not being any less tiresome, and his bloody wife is ill again, and still not pregnant, which is coming under the heading of Unreasonable Also Unfair, Damn You Universe. As he said in his post, he’s actively hunting down a counsellor of some sort at the moment (remind me to nag him about it (what? I’m his wife. Nagging is in the wedding vows)). The thing is, usually, when H is in a state, it has been my job/duty/role/honour to help him work out what he’s in a state about, what he can and can’t do to destress the situation, and what is and isn’t helpful behaviour. I usually understand H quite well – better, sometimes, than he understands himself – and can be actively useful in getting him to have some insights. I can be helpful even if my speculations are wrong, because I give H the prodding necessary to think and say ‘no, actually, that’s not what’s bugging me. It must be something different. Something to do with [xyz], perhaps.’ And H has usually found this sort of thing useful, and leading to improvements in his state of mind, even if it was unpleasant or difficult at the time.

Of late, however, I just haven’t had the strength, the energy, the motivation, to do all that. I am finding dealing with my own health issues, anxieties, and depression rather a full-time job, and with H being unsupportive (sidle, sidle), isolating and resentment-causing.

The thing is, H resents me. Well, not me exactly. He resents how ill I get each month, and what an almighty fucking bore it is to deal with, and how it banjaxes plans and ruins holidays, and he feels guilty about resenting it all, and guilty that I am the one actually doing 100% of the physical suffering, and helpless (no fun at all for a fixer), and then of course sad at the Continued And Persistant Lack Of Baby. Dealing with me (difficult to avoid altogether, I’m in his bed, looking like I’ve been made of wet paper) is a constant rubbing-of-nose into the above issues, which make him feel bad, which he can’t deal with, which he sidles away from, which he can’t sidle away from, which he tries to compartmentalise and repress, which is nevertheless lying in his bed moaning faintly and demanding fresh hot-water-bottles, irrepressably. Basically, he needs to go tell someone other than me, someone safe, that it fucking sucks and he’s had ENOUGH and it’s not FAIR and ARGH and GRR and FUCK FUCK FUCK BUGGER AND DAMN.

Of course, he mentioned his family tragedy, the poor aunt who was bi-polar, and whose hallucinatory highs and terrible, crushing lows scared the living crap out of the family over and over again before she couldn’t bear it any more and took her own life. When H was growing up, strong emotions, any strong emotions, delight, or rage and sorrow, were triggers. He was told to calm down. He was sent to his room. He learnt, quite young, not to have strong emotions. Whereas I grew up in a family where just about everyone was loudly, noisily, extrovertly emotional all the time, and shrieks of laughter and of rage were equally likely at the dinner table. Often during the same dinner. I was an introverted, sensitive child, and found this all quite painfully Too Much.

When H and I met, I saw in him a place of calm, of phlegmatic, stoic, good-natured placidity, and it was so peaceful, and restful. Being with H was like a warm bath and a cup of tea. It was like lying down under a shady tree and watching clouds. After the shouty, anxsty chaos of my family, the serenity was enchanting. Meanwhile, H saw in me a joie de vivre, a lively, fierce delight in and passion for, well, all sorts of things, ideas, art, literature, ethics, flowering trees, Star Trek, kittens, mountains, astronomy, yada yada, passions he himself didn’t even share the half of, but to him, after the guarded fear and worry and flattened affect of his childhood, intoxicating. And to this day, I find his unflappability in most crises, his practical kindness, and his mellow acceptance of, well, stuff, truly lovable. And H finds my righteous indignations, tendency to give all the cash in my wallet to teenage beggars, and raptures over cherry trees and falcons and Doctor Who and knitting yarn adorable and refreshing.

But because we’ve been a couple since we were teenagers, I am driven round the fucking twist by the flipside – his refusal to think about or deal with issues, his inability to get really enthused or delighted about anything, his wet-blanketness; while H, bless him, is both annoyed and unnerved by my ridiculous idealism and unrealistic high standards and expectations, my uncanny ability to be both exalted by thing A and really pissed off by thing B at the exact same time, my tendency to cry and shout when angry, by my fascination with emotions and feelings and every goddamn infinite little variant of thought that anyone has had ever in the history of consciousness.

Which is normal. It’s a truism, because it is true, that whatever it was that attracted you to your mate will be exactly what drives you bonkers about them three years in.

Anyway. It has been quite a few months since H and I have been on the same wavelength. We argue and explain and try to get to grips with it and each other and sometimes, for an hour or so, succeed, and then by the end of the week we’re both back in our own anxst-choked caves and again, unable to find each other or lean on each other for support. We’re still loving towards each other. We still say please and thank you and offer each other tea and help with the laundry. H still reads me poetry in bed (yes. He does. ENVY ME). We still cuddle before we go to sleep. We are not teetering on the brink of the Abyss of Marital Embuggerance – at least, I don’t think we are. But we are both lonely, and sad, and rather angry with each other, and unable to find our way back to equilibrium by ourselves.

Which we ought to do before we start IVF, don’t you think? Because if we think we’re stressed now…

Interim assault and battery April 16, 2012

I would like to be talking to you all about feeeeeeeelings, nothing more than feeeeeeeeeeelings, but I have my period (again! It happens every bloody month! Why isn’t this banned by the Geneva Convention?), and I feel urgh. On the plus side, I haven’t puked yet. Keep your fingers crossed!

OK, Fine, Let’s Talk About Feelings (H) April 12, 2012

I’m not very good at hints, but on looking rather stunned and crest-fallen after reading May’s last post I think her saying “you could always write a response” was just about unsubtle enough for me to pick up on.

I’m not sure what I’m going to say yet, so let’s see where this goes…

Sidling does fit well as a description of my behaviour, I think. Yes, definitely worse when I’m stressed, which as May generously points out is quite a lot recently. The new job is a lot more stressful than the previous (don’t worry I’ll spare you the boring details, suffice to say I inherited a pup of a project that turned out to have real expectations of delivery, but smoke and mirrors support and resources, and more skeletons than a ghost train), but then staying in the old job while the organisation wound down around me would also have been extremely stressful – so I was kind of stuffed either way on that one. At least I have a job for the next 18 months, albeit not an ideal one.

I’m also a mass of misery. I’m not sure what other feelings I have really, as I’m emotionally constipated (I’m in the process of signing up for counselling/psychotherapy). As May recounted I have admitted to feeling scared, so I guess that’s a start.

I tend to think in a fairly binary way and I also compartmentalise (arguably quite badly, see comments on previous post). I think of strong emotions as ‘bad’. There are family reasons behind this – as a child growing up I witnessed regularly and at close hand an aunt who was bi-polar going through the highs and lows (and being hospitalised at regular intervals as she reached the extreme ends of the spectrum). I also saw her seemingly recover and get a couple of good jobs and find some stability in her life, before she committed suicide.

This means, as has been pointed out, that it’s not that I don’t have emotions but I handle them badly. I try and squash them down – and this applies to the ‘good’ ones, such as joy, too. Something that annoys May and makes her sad, I think. It means it’s difficult for us to connect on an emotional level.

So, when someone approaches me with strong emotions my ingrained, automatic response is to either sidle or hunker down into ‘protective shell’ mode. This makes effective communication near impossible and also doesn’t really provide reassurance/support. I know this intellectually, but at the time what I may know plays very little part in my reactions. I panic. this the quickly deteriorates depending on what I’m faced with – getting defensive or silent/dumb or trying to escape. This is only exacerbated when it’s someone I care about. The fear of saying the wrong thing, as I have far too often, is increasingly paralysing.

None of this is ground-breaking stuff and I’m sorry for May, in particular, who will probably be disappointed that there’s nothing new or non-obvious.

I also realise that I haven’t really addressed the non-communication aspect, which did improve a bit (I think) after our previous therapy – but I agree has relapsed. In the interest of getting this posted before the weekend of family fuss, however, I shall save some stuff up for another post soon.