by Band Back Together | Sep 6, 2015 | Anger, Anxiety, Faith, Family, Fear, Guilt, How To Help A Friend With Infertility, Infertility, Invisible Illness, Loneliness, Marriage and Partnership, Romantic Relationships, Shame, Stress, Trauma |
I don’t think anyone knows the isolation that infertility brings with it unless they’ve lived it. Sure, we have several friends that we share all this with. Or rather, I do. I don’t know that my husband, Brian, has really told anyone what we’re going through. If you know him in real life, you know that he is silent about things that bother him. If you don’t know him, I cannot stress how quiet and private he is. But most of my friends know what we’re going through, and a few of our family members. Most people are unfailingly supportive, even if they don’t understand a bit of what’s going on.
Unfortunately, that doesn’t make it any less lonely, and doesn’t make me feel like less of a freak. Save your breath — rationally I know I’m not a freak. But that doesn’t keep me from feeling that way. And no amount of support from my very fertile friends makes it less lonely. Infertile friends — we are blessed with a few of those, too, though I wish they didn’t have to go through it either — make it even easier.
But when I’m in that exam room, having my lady bits poked and mishandled by the doctor and his ultrasound wand of pain, I am alone. When the Clomid headache sets in and I can’t even think straight, no one else is going to deal with that pain for me. When we schedule our love life, it’s just the two of us. When my cycle abruptly ends with the inevitable period, it’s just me.
That’s isolation.
That’s infertility.
But what really shocks me is the unexpected ways that infertility continually separates us from our family and friends. While it colors how I look at the world, it also colors how people look at me.
Between daycare and lessons, I come into contact with about 11 or 12 families each week. I have at least one doctor’s appointment each month and sometimes more, since I’m always having blood work and such, I need to let the affected parties know that either Brian will be here with the Munchkin Coalition, or that I’ll be late for lessons. None of them get too nosy or pry into my personal life, and all of them offer their support quietly, discreetly, and in a very sincere manner.
Except for one person. Who feels the need to tell me (again and again and again) the three stories she knows about other people suffering through IF, and how easy it was for her to get pregnant with her multiple children, and how she just can’t imagine how horrible it must be. And then, she says it…. “I am SO glad I didn’t have to do any of that! I just got pregnant so easily!” And laughs.
I’m not kidding you. She laughs at the misery of others and her amazing good fortune. One of these days I’m either going to punch her, or tell her what I’m thinking. Which is “Me, too. I’m glad you never had to go through any of this, because you couldn’t take it.” Nothing says “You’re a Freak” like that kind of statement.
My next example is a conversation I had with a family member who has expressed absolutely zero interest in our fertility situation until a recent phone call. Which, I have to say, was lovely and all that, but also really strange after two years of completely ignoring the situation.
It’s hard to catch someone up after two years of constant flux and ordeal. She then said “I wasn’t sure if you wanted to talk about it or not.” Um…yeah. I have a blog about this, ya’ll. It’s pretty much all I do talk about, it seems. Asking how it’s going makes me feel like you care, like you’re interested, like I’m not alone. The only reason I don’t talk about it 24/7/365 is because I know how that would annoy people.
So instead I wait to be asked, and feel separated from my family.
Finally, a very sweet friend recently made a comment that showed me just how much people must view me through what I’ve come to think of as The Infertility Filter. After all, it doesn’t just color how I see the world, but also how the world sees me.
We were talking about her family, and her new niece. She related an adorable story about her nephews as well. We rarely get to see them, so it was neat to catch up and think of them as little people and not as the babies we last saw. We parted ways and about 10 minutes later my phone beeped. She texted to apologize for her story, because she thought the content might have been inconsiderate and hurtful given our infertile state.
Granted, after I spent the next ten minutes really thinking about it I was able to see how someone could have taken offense or been hurt, given the actual content of the story she shared. If they were seriously sensitive and felt the world revolved around them. I, however, love to hear stories about other people’s kids — I spend 5 days a week caring for other people’s children, right?
Even though I was completely un-offended and hadn’t spared it a second thought until she texted, I appreciated her concern.
But I also had to wonder — who else is censoring what they say because I can’t get pregnant? Are we the topic of conversation when we’re not there? Are we your dinner conversation? How often are we referred to as “Brian and Andrea. They can’t get pregnant.” Or “this couple we know who can’t have a baby”.
I hate being pigeon-holed anyway, but to be ostracized by perfectly well-meaning people is kind of a bummer in and of itself. How many stories are we not hearing because someone is worried about our reaction or our feelings? Sure, it’s thoughtful. But it’s also terribly isolating.
A lot of the time, people with infertility isolate themselves. We really don’t want to make people uncomfortable or uneasy. We don’t want to be seen as abnormal, so we keep our problems hidden away. We don’t put our needs and concerns on the prayer list at church. We don’t ask friends to accompany us to the doctor for moral support (at least not after the first time you turn us down).
We don’t offer information, and we are crushed when you don’t ask. Quietly crushed. It’s so terribly easy to believe that we are all alone in our struggles, especially for couples who don’t know any other infertile couples. The longer we’re infertile, the more it builds up, and the lonelier we become.
That’s one reason I blog. Granted, I started blogging before we were “trying”, and I’ll hopefully still be blogging long after we have children, so it’s not technically an “infertility blog”. And yet it is.
I found that when we really started having trouble getting pregnant a lot of my information, ideas, inspiration, and encouragement came from the blogging world. I learned more from other infertile people than from doctors or journal articles. I want to give back to that. I want to be a source of information and encouragement to other infertiles out there who have just received a diagnosis, or just finished their fifth failed IUI, or who have discovered that Clomid doesn’t get everybody pregnant right off the bat.
So I make it a point to live our story out loud and proud. I won’t act ashamed of my infertility, and I won’t pretend it doesn’t exist to make someone else comfortable. I won’t be silent about something that affects so many people, and I won’t make anyone else feel embarrassed either by their fertility or their ability to pop out kids like it’s easier than breathing.
If you got here through a search, you are not alone. Pull up a seat, pop open a bottle of water (no booze in the infertile zone except CD 1-4), and share your stories. Ask questions.
If I can’t answer, maybe someone else can. Let’s learn from each other, and lift each other up. Need prayer? You got it. Need to gripe about how much this sucks, how cold your doctor’s hands are, or how much you really hate scheduled nookie? Go for it — we’re listening.
You are not alone, you don’t have to be isolated, and you are okay.
If we are all determined to do this right out loud, infertility does not have to separate us from them.
by Band Back Together | Sep 4, 2015 | Childhood Fears, Fear, Self-Esteem |
I am the Black Sheep, at least on one side of my family.
It’s not easy being the one who everyone seems to judge as being “bad,” when really, it’s that we are simply just not like the others. This is really the reason why you don’t feel accepted as one of them. I know this feeling. I totally get it. I am here to tell you that the most gracious thing that the Mother Goddess could do for you was to make you not be like them.
No one likes to be treated like an outcast, but when you take a step back and look at what sets you apart from everyone else, the stuff that you learn about yourself might not be so bad. You need to realize and accept that what others think of you doesn’t matter until you make it matter. Whatever they think does not have to be the truth of you.
As a kid growing up, I heard lots of ugly things about me. I was just a little kid. It makes me sad to know that there are adults on this planet who think that their word has to be gold. They use their words as a means to manipulate others to think the same way they do, without a thought to how those words will affect another person’s life. In fact, the reason that they are saying what they are is done out of fear, out of their own feelings of inadequacy.
All of us has the responsibility to create our own lives. Do not allow the opinions of others to keep you from making your life all it is supposed to be, and all that you want it to be. No one else has the power or the right to take away your ability to shine. You are who you are for a unique and special purpose. You hold the key to who you are, not someone else.
When people talk shit about you, it means they are guessing. It is easier for those kinds of people to go with what they have heard or what they assume rather than learning the real truth. When this is happening to you, it is hard to go through, and hell yes, it is hard to grow from, but you will grow from it. I Promise.
I come from a very “Born Again” family. As a little kid, I always thought I would go to hell because I was also one of those kids who conversed with the unseen world. I am Hawaiian. I am indigenous. I am a Pisces with my sun in the 8th house. What this all adds up to is that I am very weird, and for some of those very conservative people, I am evil.
I am the eldest of three children. My father, a preacher. My mother, I refer to as being “God’s Secretary.” As a child, I was freaked out when the lights were out and the house was dark and still. I knew that there were entities there with us, so I would talk to them. My parents likely believed that I was just a little kid with a great big imagination. As I got older, the things I was learning from my parents and my church did not agree with who I was. Did that give me the right to go out into the world and say horrid things about people and things that I did not understand? Not at all.
I tell my Spirit Students that through the hurt and the pain caused by the thoughtlessness of others, we become Stand Alone. I will repeat it again and again – you’re not alone …you’re Stand Alone.
The truth is that when we are at the weakest point in our lives, we are actually at our strongest.
Yup …you read that right. Think about it in terms of someone being hurt in a battle or perhaps someone being attacked by an abuser. When people who were attacked and done wrong to, they have walked through a fire of refinement. That is how people come to their own self-conjured amazingness. Though you may not see it, you never strayed from being you, meaning that in all of your you-ness, you managed to be able to remain true to you.
In remaining true to you, you have endured losses of gigantic proportion in terms of being able to trust others with your heart and soul. You have been able to walk with your head held high. Here you are, in all of your shining, fractured glory. It is the fractures which make you so very you.
It is not a bad thing to be what is known as ‘The Black Sheep.’ You are equipped to handle things beautifully, even the ugly, crappy things.
You are the black sheep, not because you are bad, but because you stand out.
You are the black sheep, not because you are weird, but because you are an original thinker.
You are the Black Sheep, because the Goddess and your Ancestors knew that of the entire herd of proverbial sheep you were born into, you stood out among them.
It is one thing to stand out, but you were meant to be Stand Alone, because really, there is no one like you.
Aloha!
by Band Back Together | Sep 3, 2015 | Anger, Depression, Help With Relationships, Loneliness, Romantic Relationships, Self-Esteem |
When I was seventeen, I was kind of a heavy kid. My largest weight was 240 lbs, weighed by the scales of the United States Navy. The recruiter was very interested in getting me to join, on account of my having a very high score on their tests. He introduced me to a master chief who was in charge of recruiting people to work on the nuclear power plants aboard naval ships. They tested me and found that I was smart enough to enlist as a nuclear power specialist.
The only bar was my weight. I had to get down to at least 180 pounds. The next year was full of jogging, eating salads and wrapping myself up to sweat off the pounds. It didn’t work fast enough. I still had around ten or fifteen pounds to go.
The date came nearer and nearer for my final entry. My recruiter, who was a first class petty officer, had me drink a laxative for a couple days before my last medical exam before basic training. It was awful. I ate nothing but salad and laxatives, but I came in at exactly the cutoff weight. I was sick enough that I didn’t really feel that I had accomplished anything.
I left for basic training that September. The days were long and the nights short. I was at NTC Great Lakes. Then came the time for psychological testing. The only two specialties that had this testing were those who were aiming to become SEALs and, yep, nuclear power specialists.
Honest answers got me disqualified from service altogether. I wasn’t fit to be in the service. I was angry, disappointed. This was supposed to get me out of the town I hated and into a new life. Why didn’t they test like this before I got all the way to NTC Great Lakes? I was shuffled into a ‘separation division’ the very next week. I read a lot, and I met people from all over the world there. There was even a recruit from Nigeria!
I stayed in the seps division for a week and a half. The petty officer in charge told us about his struggle with depression, and how the Navy was providing the help he needed because he had finished his training. He thought that it was kind of messed up that they didn’t screen earlier too.
I arrived home via airplane. Chicago’s O’Hare airport is HUGE! I bought a pack of smokes and walking what seemed like a mile from the gate to the smoking area outside, while waiting for my flight home. I was depressed. I thought that I must be the biggest loser ever to have come all this way just to be sent home.
My parents waited for me at the gate in SLC International. My mother was an awful mess. She was spiraling into another one of her episodes, brought on by my leaving home. My father was stoic as usual. The ride back to the shitty little town I grew up in was not fun. My mother had only a tenuous grip on reality. Great.
Days later, my mother lost it completely. She was screaming that my father was Satan. I said, fuck this and left with my cigarettes into the hills. Dad took her to the hospital. Again. I was shunted to the side. Ignored. What about me? Mom had to have attention and I couldn’t burden the family with my trouble, right?
I still had a bit of money from the Navy. I had earned nearly two thousand dollars while there. My friend introduced me to crystal meth, so I spent that summer in a haze of drugs. It made me feel GOOD. I’d never felt like that before. The novelty wore off after a while, and I put it down because I saw that the humans around me were becoming less and less human from that drug. I didn’t like the days after a binge either, feeling unwashably dirty and depressed.
I was finally arrested at a drug party, nearly a year after I came home from the failure in the Navy. I was lucky. I didn’t have any drugs of any kind on my person, but they still charged me with ‘internal possession’ from a dirty UA. I took a plea in abeyance and got a job.
For the most part, I kept my nose clean. I paid rent to my parents, paid my dad back for the lawyer he hired to defend me, and drank beer nearly every weekend with my friends. I wasn’t happy. I felt inadequate and like I was a failure. Certainly, philosophically I’m glad I’m not a sailor. The thought of being responsible for killing other human beings isn’t something I enjoy contemplating, even if they are enemies. Yet, I cannot help but wonder what might have been.
I think back to that young man. He wanted to be someone important. He wanted to be part of a group that accepted him as he was. But he was met, yet again, with rejection. He was pissed off that, when he came home in such a state, once again, he couldn’t count on his family to help.
I hid away from the world and my family after that. After so many years of rejection by peers and social groups in school, the separation from the Navy was like the cherry on top of a shit sundae. I was a fucked loser for dreaming anything at all.
I don’t exactly hate the town I’m in, yet, all the things that I do value in life are of little consequence to the people here. They don’t consider deep questions. They get the easy answers from their religious dogma. Those who deviate are, of course, shunned to the greatest degree of shunning possible. Its like you’re invisible to these people.
I’m a long hair, a hippy. I have a beard and I wear t-shirts that I’ve bought at rock concerts. I read philosophy and science books. I read mystical stuff too. I’ve read the Bible cover to cover, the New Testament several times. I’ve familiarized myself with many schools of religious thought. I’ve studied psychology and read several books on the subject. The purpose of all my studies was to bring me closer to understanding myself and those around me, has but created a great divide. I feel that I cannot share my deep perceptions with any but a few. It’s as if the gulf between me and other humans, which I hoped to bridge using knowledge, has only widened with my efforts.
Society is so shallow. It’s been disappointing enough that I just don’t go out anymore. Perhaps I need to find a dating service like the skit on MAD TV: Lowered Expectations. Maybe my desire for an intellectual match has to be tempered with the fact that not everyone is interested in the questions of existence.
I’m just so damned lonely. I have friends to be sure, but I don’t have a lover. I have material prosperity, yet no significant one to share it with. All of my resources are hoarded for my kids. I have so much to be grateful for and to be sure, I certainly am. Many do not have what I do, yet I envy those who have someone with whom to share their burdens. I am not Ebenezer Scrooge who counts wealth as the sole measure of human value. I am not satisfied with this solitary existence, nor do I think that Scrooge truly was with his either. Yet, the missteps and missed opportunities become the regrets of old age. Is that my fate? To be an old and lonely man, regretting that girl in high school who would light up when we would meet. That girl who always seemed to be so happy to see me, yet I couldn’t see that she liked me until years had passed.
Going to bars is soooo awful. I really don’t like it at all. Karaoke is the sole exception. Grocery stores? Church? I want to scream out loud I’m so frustrated in this quest for companionship!
I just hope and pray the theme of my youth peters out. I hope and pray that failed liftoff isn’t simply an oracle showing me the dismal future. I know that there are many, many people in my same situation, dying for a friend, longing for a lover. Hopefully I can find someone who wants to build a new rocket together, one that will launch both of us into greater heights than either of us thought possible.
by Band Back Together | Sep 2, 2015 | Adult Children of Narcissistic Parents, Anger, Bullying, Child Abuse, Fear, Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Therapy |
I am the daughter of a Narcissicistic father.
From my earliest memories, I recall a lot of fighting between my parents. It was very violent, and oftentimes, I would curl into a ball and put a pillow over my ears to drown out the noise. When I was about eight years old, I swore that I would become educated, so that I would never be trapped like my mother was.
We lived out in the country and had only one car, which my father used for work. My father had a hair-trigger temper, especially when criticized. I recall him asking my opinion once, and I gave him my honest answer. He became enraged and flew off the handle. While he never punched me, I got thrown around a lot, pinned to the ground and wall quite often. I was deathly afraid all the time.
As I grew, his rage turned away from my mother and focused on me. In a way, I was glad because I adored my mother and wanted to protect her. I also knew instinctively that I was much stronger than she was. So …I was the Scapegoat.
I was criticized and picked on every day of my life. I could not go unnoticed; he even yelled about my sitting posture, my clothes, or the way I held my head. It was constant. I tried hard not to cause trouble, became an A student, but he still was not happy with me.
He was uber sensitive about his personal appearance and also very nosy. He’d ask anyone he met how much they made, what kind of car they had, or what church they went to. Although he was a blue-ciollar worker, he passed himself off as an executive, and people believed him. He had an air of authority and superiority.
My mother was co-dependent; whenever he and I had a row, she would come to my room and say, ” Your dad really loves you. He doesn’t show it, but that’s how he is. He would never hurt you.” Total BS.
I left the home as soon as I turned 18 and lived with friends to finish high school. He’d already made it clear that I should not get educated, as women were meant to stay home and care for their husbands in a submissive role. I attended a community college for two years and then transferred to a university, not getting my degree until I was 25. I worked two jobs, had an apartment and car. No matter what, I was always criticized, and he would not butt out of my life.
I went on to earn a Masters Degree at one of the nation’s best universities and got a great job that I loved. I met the man if my dreams, who is the complete opposite of my father, and we had four fabulous children, who are now all grown. I never once behaved as my father. I took great care to be a loving mother, and with the help of my husband, was very successful in that.
My father criticized our parenting, interfered with our marriage and exploited our children. For this, we decided to cut off all ties. We have been estranged for seven years now, and it was the best decision of my life. I still love them, pray for them and want the best for them. I am powerless to change my father, whose temper has lessened, but his criticisms and overall negativity have grown much worse. He is in his 80’s now, so he probably doesn’t have long to live.
I did have psychotherapy years ago, and that’s when I learned the name for his problem: Narcissistic Personality Disorder. Happily, I did not repeat or inherit this. But I do have one sibling who has some characteristics, despite being the Golden Child. I accept that I will never be 100% healed, but I do my very best each day and my father’s voice no longer sounds in my head. I’m free!
by Band Back Together | Sep 1, 2015 | Adoption, Infertility, Infidelity |
My first husband and I were married for ten years. Almost the entire time, I was desperate to have a child. We tried everything short of in-vitro fertilization, with no luck. Eventually, we were able to adopt, but that desire for a child that I could carry in my own womb was overwhelming.
After four years of marriage, I found out he had been cheating on me. As time went on, I came to discover he had always cheated on me, and the number of women was terrifying.
Aside from the fear of STDs, my worst fear was that in the middle of my infertility hell, he would impregnate one, if not several, of his mistresses. After all, he had done it before!
When we had been married for five years, he admitted that he had another “potential” child. He tried to claim that this child may not even be his. That son was only six months younger than his second child with his first wife – who he also tried to claim might not be his.
I tried to tell myself that these things that happened before me didn’t matter, but I could quite never shake that feeling that if he’d done it once, he would do it again.
We divorced shortly after our tenth anniversary. He married his mistress of three years. She left him when she realized he was cheating on her, too. Irony at its best. I remarried, my ex eventually gave up his rights to our daughter; she was adopted by my husband, and I gave birth to an amazing little boy.
It has been eight years since he left me for Wife #3.
His birthday was last week. I wish I could forget that date, but unfortunately, it’s a permanent fixture in my head. His sisters and his mother took him out to eat for his birthday. One of the sisters posted pictures on Facebook from the dinner.
At first, I just scrolled past them, but a sense of morbid curiosity made me go back and look through them. Few things are as satisfying as knowing that your ex is falling apart without you.
Sure enough, he looked like crap. He’s put on weight. He’s not aging gracefully. It makes me much too happy.
Among the pictures was one that made my heart stop. There was a little girl. She was about the age of my daughter. I knew she didn’t belong to either of my former sisters-in-law.
In another picture, she was standing next to him with her hand on his shoulder in a very comfortable, affectionate position. Looking at the two of them together, I was stunned to see that she looked exactly like him. Same facial structure, same chin.
He has a daughter.
A daughter that is too old to have been conceived after he left me.
Hoping that I was wrong, I sent a message to his sister asking her who the girl was. When she didn’t answer back, I knew I had my answer. She finally did answer more than 24 hours later, saying she wasn’t comfortable answering questions about her brother.
Confirmation.
If that little girl had belonged to anyone other than him, she would have just said so. Not talking about her brother was the proof I was looking for.
At first, I was furious! Enraged! Pissed!
How DARE he get some other woman pregnant when I had suffered for so many years to have a child with him!
I sent the picture to several friends and family members, to get their opinions of whether or not I was imagining things and jumping to conclusions. Everyone agreed: that’s his daughter.
And who knows how many more children he has running around in this world!
I was still shaking several hours later when I went to bed. I couldn’t sleep, thinking about confronting him. Whether I would punch him or just slap him when I saw him. After a few hours tossing and turning, I finally fell asleep.
The next morning, however, I was fine.
I realized it really didn’t matter.
I always knew there was a good chance that it would happen. I was grateful that I didn’t find out about her when I was still married to him, or I would probably be in prison for murder right now.
My daughter and I are free of him. He can’t hurt us. And the fact is, he is not worth the time and energy it takes to be angry with him. He is a scumbag, he has always been a scumbag, and he will always be a scumbag. Who cares how many illegitimate children he has? That’s his problem, not mine.
I believe in God. I believe that one day we will all have to answer for our sins. My ex-husband is going to have some pretty major sins to answer for someday.
I think I’ll just worry about my own life.
