This lifestyle includes many doctor visits, intimate moments with the dildo cam, pills and shots. It includes many nights crying yourself to sleep and feeling like a broken failure most every day. It includes depression. The worst kind of depression that is often hidden and debilitating. It includes the loss of friends because they don't understand why you are pulling away, why you are wanting to hide from the world. What could be so bad?
This lifestyle makes you bitter towards any large family, towards pregnant woman, towards the sight of a baby. Let me just tell you that the grocery store is akin to the 6th level of hell. Pregnant women happily rubbing their bellies and new babies EVERYWHERE. I can't even go down the baby aisle as a shortcut anymore. Alex knows we have to go around because it's just a whole row of reminders.
And all those reminders, they make you cry and those of us in the IF lifestyle will often find ourselves crying in the middle of the grocery store, or Target, or church; where ever we find a reminder.
One of my dear friends mentioned today how she cried in Church this weekend because of a large family with a new baby in the pew front of her. She's not alone. Another TTC6+ girl said she can hardly go to church anymore because she ends up in tears every time as she's surrounded by babies and small children. This would be something that at the beginning of your TTC/IF journey wouldn't have affected you but over time it gets worse and worse. Stacie is right, it does change you. The IF lifestyle changes you. It takes away the joy and brings the sadness.
Some people are lucky for the lifestyle doesn't seem to affect them as much or maybe they are just good at hiding it outwardly. Some seem impervious to it and are able to find the joy in things. I wish I could but some days it's virtually impossible.
I recently told Alex that I was depressed. He didn't seem to understand that I wasn't just "sad", this wasn't an, "Oh I'm so depressed because my favorite show isn't on", kind of thing. It is clinical depression. It's real and it's deep down. I think many of us in the lifestyle have it and I think many people in our lives don't realize to the extent we feel this hurt and hopelessness.
This is a lifestyle I hope all of my sisters can get out of because none of us deserve it, none of us want it, and it all can be cured by the arrival of one small wonderful thing.
And as an ironic punch to the gut, what did I see when I clicked on Blogger to write this blog but
Are you freaking kidding me? Even in trying to get our feelings out we are subjected to babies. So not cool.
5 comments:
That baby thing has been on blogger for the past few days every time I log in. Fuck. It's like you just can't get away.
I don't even go to church anymore because of all of the babies and children. For whatever reason going to church makes me very emotional on a regular basis, and I usually cry at some point during church because of a song that reminds me of my great grandma. But now, church isn't even something I do. I feel guilty about it, but I can't do it.
The depression is deep and it hurts and it is taking away so much from my life. To be quite honest I've never felt like such a failure in all of my life. Infertility is not something you can just work harder at or learn more about and it will be fixed. I have a hard time grasping that I will never be able to fix what has happened to us.
It is also so hard because people who don't understand how this feels just don't get it and often say things that make me feel worse. I wrote a little bit in my latest blog entry about that.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts on this, I debated about going to therapy for a long time, and today I'm going for my first appointment. I feel such a sense of relief, that I'll have someone to help me through this, since I clearly can not help myself.
:::hugs:::
Well said...and I got that stupid baby blogger thing, too.
Everyone in my blog world is sad tonight. :-(
You put this all so perfectly. The part that kills me is that I know the hormones that are part of the treatments make it all worse. So on months when I think it's the worst, the hormones are adding to the stress. I don't feel myself, I don't feel like the girl I used to be.
I can't imagine waking up one day and thinking "I feel sick, I can't remember when my period was, maybe I'm pregnant?" I can't imagine being pregnant without worrying, all the time, that something will go wrong. I will never get my innocence back. I will always be infertile.
(((Hugs))) I've been clicking past the Blogger babies very quickly.
Very well said. {{hugs}}
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