So I have recently started this “lifestyle change.”
If I call it a “diet,” I will fail miserably as I have a thousand other times. I try really hard to watch what I eat. Most days I keep a nifty online journal that tells me how many calories I can have and how many I’ve consumed. It’s really been helpful. Tonight, I even walked two and a half miles, which is awesome for me. I’m still sitting here sweatin’ my balls off!
It’s HARD not to get discouraged. The last three weeks I have pretty much stuck to eating 1600 calories, which means that I should lose about two pounds a week. I have only lost two pounds altogether and depending on the time of day that I weigh myself, I haven’t even lost that.
I know everyone is different and all that jazz. I know I shouldn’t weigh myself all the time. I know I have been drinking almost a gallon of water a day to fight hunger. I know I should walk more. I know what I should know.
I know I will lose the weight. I know I need to. I have gained almost 100 pounds since high school and there’s no reason for that. Yes, I had three children, I have a stressful job and a hard marriage. Still, not a good excuse. I really think I’m more disappointed in myself for listening to all the excuses and letting my weight get so out of control.
I have a constant fight with my reasoning. If I eat just one more bite, it won’t hurt. I have to finish my whole plate or I will be wasting money.
My whole life I thought that I was fat because family always said I was. Once, I asked for a snack and my mom replied “and you wonder why you’re so fat.” I was only 10. But looking back at pictures, I see I wasn’t fat, I was beautiful. Maybe if my family and kids at school hadn’t been cruel, I would have cared about how I looked. Then maybe I wouldn’t have been so discouraged. Now that I have friends who encourage me, I know that I can do it. I can lose this weight.
It’s up to me now. I have to get myself out of this mess. It’s going to be a long, hard journey. I will probably fail – I usually do. I’m going to try really hard not to. I have awesome support group this time. I will exercise my self-control. This will be a journey of hits and misses. I cannot and will not get discouraged.
I really need to get hot for Aunt Becky’s cruise(ed note: WOO-HOO!). I need to be able to wear a swimsuit in the Bahamas and not look like a beached whale.
100 lbs. That’s all.
I cannot wait to know what it feels like 100 pounds lighter. That’s a whole person. Somewhere, I will find the willpower.
I’m not a “real” addict, though. I’m just irresponsible, immature, and emotionally unstable and that’s why I spent my entire inheritance on makeup, perfume, clothing, nail polish, and food.
No, that’s not true.
I am a real addict.
Just like the alcoholic, the substance abuser, the gambler… I’m a shopper. I am a compulsive shopper. Shopping is my drug of choice.
And just like every other addict, my addiction causes me fear, guilt, and shame. It’s alienated me from friends, family, and even other addicts with whom I worked to get better. It didn’t fill up the hole inside of me like I thought it would.
As a diagnosed borderline personality disorder patient, who has parents who essentially abandoned me as a child (and yes, it really is possible to abandon someone and their needs and still live in the same house), I started accumulating things as soon as I had money of my own.
My father, who was – and still is – extremely successful and well-off, never taught me how to work with money and live companionably with it. Instead, it was something to be feared, revered, untouchable.
I can’t control my addiction, and although I know that this shopping addiction is there, I don’t know how to stop it.
It’s that deep, dark place I visit after spending days or weeks traveling into. The place where I’ve found myself dejected, sad, rejected, angry, jealous.
Angry at the world for not giving me what others have received.
Tears falling as I realize I’m in the place where I don’t deserve to be. I have no reason for being here. Nothing concrete has put me here.
Only in my mind have I traveled here.
The dark hallows of my mind have brought me to this place where I don’t belong.
Even in my depths, I’m outcasted.
Other people belong here. Other people who have suffered, who have been brought here not by their own mind, but by outside forces beyond their control.
Death. Disease. Sickness. Suffering.
Those people, affected by depressing situations, belong here if they happen to arrive.
Not me.
I have no reason for being here.
Yet here I am.
Sad. Jealous. Angry. Crying.
As with everything, and with every time, it will pass.
And it will not look to be this bad from the other side.
Many parents struggle with mental illness. She wonders if she should’ve had kids at all.
This is her story:
For as long as I can remember, I have been a touch crazy. I have suffered from anxiety and depression most of my life.
I was five years old when I had my first panic attack. Only five! I also worry about absurd things; I know they are absurd but I can’t stop worrying.
But now, it’s worse. I don’t remember it ever being this bad. In the last month alone, I have suffered six nervous breakdowns and I wonder what is wrong with me?
WHY am I SO FREAKING CRAZY!?
But what makes it worse is my children. I don’t want them to suffer with me. I don’t want them to know I am this way. I don’t want to mark them or make them afraid for me or themselves. I try to keep it all bottled up and away from them so they don’t really know I am suffering. The only people who know are my husband and my mother, and they aren’t always a huge help. My husband thinks that I should just suck it up and deal. That’s not easy to do. My mother tries very hard to understand what I am going through and help me because I know she watched my grandma suffer at times quietly just like me.
My grandma’s suffering hurt my mom, and that’s what scares me. What if I think I am suffering quietly but my children know? But how could they not? Sometimes a shower is more than I can bear and getting out of the same pajamas I have worn the last three days just doesn’t seem possible.
So they have to know right? Hell, they are 8,7, and 5; not exactly babies. My eldest has Asperger Syndrome and this ridiculously genius IQ; if any of them could figure it out would probably be her. I am so scared of them knowing. I don’t want to be crazy mommy who has meltdowns. I want my children to know me as happy and loving. I know I am loving, but I’m not always happy. And I don’t EVER want them to think it’s because of them. So do I talk to them? Do I explain to them, this is what is going on with mommy?
It’s not you it’s me? God I hate that.
Are they old enough to know?
Or should I leave them in their little children bubbles? Am I hurting them being this way?
Do you think they know?
My next biggest worry and fear is this: in my children I see some of my crazy. My eccentricities, if you will. My eldest, who has Asperger Syndrome, has her own eccentricities. But my son (whom I did not birth) also has these eccentricities, a touch of my OCD, and the anxiety (who could blame him with a mother like his; heck, thinking about me probably makes him sick and nervous). But my youngest daughter scares me the most. She is a very nervous child who worries just like I did. She is scared of so much. She has OCD already at five. No panic attacks yet, but I fear it may only be a matter of time. This bothers me more than I can say. I feel like I did this to her. I feel responsible and God help me I don’t want her to grow up like this. I don’t want her to suffer like I have. I want her to be well and happy and not have fears of irrational things. Therapy is an option.
It didn’t always do me much good, but at times it really does help.
But what kind of mother, who knows she has these illnesses, brings children into the world when they may end up just like her?!
This is my struggle.
Am I bad parent for bringing them into my crazy existence?
How do I handle my crazy so I don’t mark my children? How do I handle my mental health without scaring them?
I was bitten by a tick when I was ten. It’s the only tick bite I remember, though a large number of those with Lyme don’t remember a tick bite. There’s no way to know if this bite or another was the culprit. I do remember a rash on my hand the summer I was pregnant, and I now wonder if it was from a tick, but there is no way to know. I always had weird medical things happen as a kid though, so we have wondered if maybe it’s been dormant for many years. Your immune system has an amazing ability to keep things in check (even if you’ve been given a taste of that forbidden formula).
And your immune system is amazingly susceptible to stress, which arrived on my, well, ashy, crumbling doorstep when I was eight months pregnant.
I had Kellen and went into my six week checkup, where they did a pap, which came back abnormal (yeah, my fall pretty much sucked), and gave me a flu shot.
Four days later (and four days after returning to teaching) my face stopped working. I was home nursing Kellen (or trying) and tried to smile at him, at which point I realized I couldn’t move the right side of my mouth. Earlier in the day I had noticed that it felt like I was talking with braces on, like my lips were having to make way for an obstruction on my teeth, despite not having had braces in well over a decade. That morning I drank orange juice that tasted dull as well as had a Starbucks sandwich that made me question their place as a food establishment.
It turned out that my taste buds were not working on the right side. After I finished nursing Kellen I decided to go back to school to finish teaching. I was really scared but didn’t want to deal with it at the moment (because the only two options I could think of were a stroke and brain cancer). As I was driving down the road I lost my ability to blink my right eye. I turned around, and we went to the hospital.
The good news is that it wasn’t a stroke or brain cancer, though the way the doctor told me it was *just* Bell’s Palsy made it seem so benign as though I hadn’t just lost full functionality of one side of my face and now looked like this:
“Are you sure nothing else is wrong?” I asked the ER doc. I just couldn’t fathom that the nerves in my face would stop firing just because they felt like it. The doctor assured me that nearly all cases of Bell’s Palsy are spontaneous and have no other underlying cause than a small virus. (Had I lived in the Northeast, it is likely I would have been tested for Lyme then as Bell’s Palsy is common in Lyme and the first symptom of it moving into your brain, when things get really dicey.) They gave me anti-virals and steroids. (It was because of this I stopped breastfeeding.)
Dan and I decided to head down to San Diego. I had taken a leave of absence from work because I was overwhelmed. The stress of the fire and the rebuild was compounded by this new development, and I knew that I was spread too thin. It has always been hard for me to walk away, and while it was sad, I am proud of my ability to say, “I can’t.” We left the day after Thanksgiving, a trip that was nearly thwarted by an incredible and overwhelming sense of anxiety. I couldn’t sit down at all because I felt so antsy and uncomfortable. It was one of the only times I’ve ever had the urge to scrub a floor. It’s unknown if this was a natural progression of the Lyme or because I had been prescribed Zoloft to deal with the PTSD. It’s been posited that SSRIs may actually exacerbate Lyme symptoms in some people (many also find them helpful).
That was also the day that the dizziness set in, and it’s kept a firm hold on me for over a year. I spent the entire trip in San Diego sleeping. When I wasn’t, I was scared. I truly thought I was going to die but was afraid of going to the ER because I didn’t want them to think I was crazy. I wish I had gone while in California.
I made a deal with myself that I would make an appointment with my neurologist in January if I was still sick after Christmas. I scheduled an appointment. That week I woke up and felt fine, nearly canceling the appointment to see the doctor. At that point being dizzy was the biggest issue; it was debilitating and frightening. The symptoms came back strongly the day before I went to see the doctor It would be the first of many cycles but also the clue that led another doctor to Lyme disease nine months later.
At first I was diagnosed with Benign Positional Vertigo, which is caused by ear crystals shaking loose. The test for this is tilting your head back to see if it gets worse. It did. But the exercises didn’t work. So an MRI was ordered. While I passed the muscle tests with the neurologist and chiropractor I was seeing, I drop things a lot (more than normal), so I worried a lot about MS, especially because I was told that mid to late 20s was typical for age of onset. With every click on the MRI machine I just hoped that I didn’t have MS and if I did that the test showed it. I didn’t want to be sick, but I also wanted an answer to why I felt so badly.
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.
