Sunday, February 13, 2011

Getting things out of my head

This is going to be a long rambling post. My body is revolting, staging some kind of uprising, although I really don't know who it thinks is going to put in power if it kicks me out. (There are no opposition parties in here, not like in the middle east countries where the dictators of 30+ years are being ousted.) I can't find a physical reason for my symptoms so there must be a mental one. The only psychological change has been my inability to communicate/vent my feelings in any way for the last few weeks, so I guess I need to force myself to do that if I am going to feel better.

....

Seriously, I am going to have to start hanging out on-line with the "I" people of the ALI world. There's a constant stream of pregnancy announcements and pregnancy posts in my reading list and I am starting to wish that blogger had a "hide" button like the evil FB. (I just realized I can do this in Go.ogle Re.ader so I going to have to switch to using that.) I am eaten up with bitterness that people who are older than me or have health problems or whose babies died just a few months ago are able to get pregnant and I can't. (It's not that I don't want them to be pregnant, I just don't understand why I can't be too.) The stuck feelings are just being amplified. I need to get back to spewing out my feelings (I can't really call this writing) on a regular basis. Supporting all your blogs has become so important to me, but I haven't been able to write a decent comment in weeks so that's probably a sign that I need to save reading all the ones with babies on the way or here already for days when I am feeling strong.

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Last Wednesday, I was taking D to her swimming lesson, my new weekly exercise in self torture where D splashes happily in the pool with her teacher and I am forced to watch all the moms with their 6 months to 1 year old babies in the baby class next door. (I was thinking about avoiding moms with kids D's age AND babies when I picked the early morning class, never considering that the moms with just 1 baby would be crawling all over the place.) Anyway, we were driving to the pool and stopped at the lights right by the pool, when I noticed the light was taking forever to change. I watched the walk signals and they changed from "walk" to "don't walk" but then instead of the traffic light turning red and ours going green, the walk symbol came back on. This happened about 3 times before I gave up and turned right, them made a u-turn to get going the right way to the pool, but not before it occurred to me that the malfunctioning lights were a pretty good metaphor for my life right now.

I am waiting at the lights and thinking that when the light turns green (I get a BFP), I'll be able to start moving forward, to try to talk to people again, to not feel personally attacked by every baby announcement. And every month, I think I am about to get that green light (the "don't walk" symbol for the street I want to cross starts flashing) and I get my hopes up and start thinking about what I can do once I'm on the other side of the street and about how things will start to change. But the my light doesn't change to green, it stays red and nothing changes for me. I just sit there waiting and waiting, watching other people go zooming past me, getting more and more bitter.

Now the problem with this metaphor is the right turn to bypass the light. What is my right turn? How do I move forward without a new pregnancy/baby to give me hope for the future and strength to try to go back into the world? I have no idea what my right turn is and I don't know how to find it. Clearly it's not going to find me, so what do I do now?

6 comments:

Beth said...

i had to stop reading some people's blogs (or just not start) before i got pregnant. it hurt too much. i'm all in favour of protecting yourself, and reading updates from people who are pregnant when it feels like you should get to be pregnant again before they do is just like stabbing yourself repeatedly in the eyes. or the stomach. or something.

so, yes. blog more and chose which blogs to read. and even the ones you do read, you don't actually have to comment. it's not compulsory.

thinking of you car x

Catherine W said...

Car, I just hope so much that it happens for you.

It took me just over two years to fall pregnant again from losing G (one year wait followed by one first tri miscarriage, followed by a year ttc) and that waiting time was no fun. It can make you feel terribly stuck as everyone else just seems to glide right on past.

I don't know what your next move should be but look after yourself. You don't have to support others and you more than entitled to censor your reading list. xo

Glo said...

((hugs))

I wrote a very similar post a few weeks ago....after 6 pregnancy anouncements.

I do understand the feeling and don't think it's awful to protect yourself.

Dana said...

I can't imagine how hard it must be at the swimming lessons.

I know how you feel about the pregnancy announcements. I'm happy for them, but I just want to be one of them too.

Sending you hugs.

Anonymous said...

I understand the pain of reading all those stories AND the pain of not getting pregnant for 16 months after the death of my son.

It might sound CRAZY corny, but have you tried talking some optimism into your life and your uterus? You can read my letter to my uterus http://daleandhannah.com/blog/2010/12/01/dear-uterus/

Merry said...

Ah Cara, thinking of you every day my sweet. (And knitting for you, but a bit behind!)