What I am…

1. I am watching: Strip Search

My husband reads this website and goes to this convention every year.  When he came home from the convention, he turned on an episode of this show.  It’s basically a reality tv show that airs on YouTube where they are looking for someone to draw an online comic strip. It is so random because I would have never watched this show on my own, but he just started playing a bunch of episodes and I became invested in these people and can’t wait to see who wins!

2. I am reading: Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell

This book got rave reviews from multiple people whose opinions I respect. It’s a YA book about teens in high school but it doesn’t really read like one.  At least the very beginning doesn’t which is as far as I’ve gotten so far.  From the beginning though, I was hooked by the writing and the characters.  Even though I just began the book and they literally had like one bus ride together, I’m dying to find out how Eleanor and Park’s relationship progresses.

3. I am pinning: Adoption announcements.

Because why not plan ahead?  Even though the profile isn’t done yet (but we’re close), while I wait for it to be completed, I look ahead to the future.  That’s where the fun stuff is!

4. I am listening to: The National

Their new album comes out tomorrow.

5. I am eating: Cinammon sugar pretzels

We bought one of those Auntie Anne’s at home kits and my husband made them tonight.  They were incredible!  He did such a great job.  Although it would be much easier just to buy them.

6. Different blogs I am loving: 

The Unslut Project

This is amazing.  This woman is blogging her old diary entries from when she was in middle school.  Reading them is almost painful because some of the entries could have come out of my own diary.  It’s crazy how dramatic everything was when we were young.  Emotions were high and every situation seemed like it could change your life.

Stop labeling

I can be changed by what happens to me. I refuse to be reduced by it. – Maya Angelou

At my infertility support group, someone labeled herself as defective because she’s comes to the end of the road of her fertility treatments and has only losses to show for it and no live baby.  It broke my heart to hear her say that about herself because I don’t see her as defective.  And yet, I see myself as defective.  It took 8 IUIs to get me pregnant.  Then once I did get pregnant, my body revolted.  It went full on crazy.  My baby was healthy and fine but my body gave up.

It’s funny how we see ourselves.  I doubt that this woman would ever call me defective.  Yet, she has no problem labeling herself. I would never ever describe someone else as defective, especially not based on their ability to carry a child. When it comes to me, though, I can very easily label myself a failure.

It’s so easy to judge yourself.  It’s so easy to blame yourself.  It’s extremely difficult to rise above.  But we have to try.

What’s Making Me Happy This Time

Thing number 1:  Arrested Development is coming back.  Oh Bluth family, how I missed you!

 

Thing number 2:  A cat walking a dog home.  I wish our animals got along like this.

 

Thing number 3:  A comedian hired a skywriter (funded by Kickstarter) to write a joke in the sky.

Thing number 4:  This commercial makes me want to eat nothing but Oreos for the rest of my life.

 

 

The things people say

Sometimes, it feels that after infertility, it seems that people try to explain why they deserve their pregnancy so much.  ”I’ve been suffering for two years and it sucked big time so I deserve this pregnancy.  And because I had it so hard, I deserve for it go smoothly.”   What bothers me about that is that it implies that the ones who aren’t pregnant after three or four years, didn’t deserve it enough.  The ones that lose their babies don’t deserve them as much apparently .  It means that to them, I don’t deserve it.  I’ve been waiting for nearly six years and they only waited two.  So they must be a better person or more deserving of a baby.  That’s simply not the case.  It’s luck and it’s random.  If everyone that got pregnant did so because they “deserved” it, there would be no unwanted babies out there.

Someone in my support group had a successful IVF and she said she was feeling good and had no morning sickness.  She said it was because “God knew how much she suffered to get a baby, so he was making it easy on her.”  I didn’t say anything. I was too stunned.  Because what does that say about me?  I didn’t suffer enough trying to get pregnant so God threw in a good dose of morning sickness and pre-eclampsia and a baby death just so I would get the full suffering experience?

It’s like the saying that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle.  A comic, Tig Notaro, talked about that after she was diagnosed with breast cancer and her mother died.  She was saying how the angels were standing back and saying, “God, what are you doing? You’re out of your mind.”  And God says, “No, no, no.  I really think she can handle this … Just trust me on this.  She can handle this.”  That’s insane.  Are you saying that if I was weak and crumbled at the thought of any stress, God wouldn’t put this on me?  You’re basically telling me that this is my fault.  You’re telling me that because I’m so strong, God is really piling it on there because I can take it.  The weak woman who wouldn’t be able to stand her baby dying:  that’s the woman who gets her baby.

It’s all just luck of the draw.  I know that we’re taught to believe that good things come to those who wait and good people get rewarded while bad people get punished.  It’s just not true.  Crappy thing happen to good people.  Good people lose loved ones, they get sick, they lose their jobs.  It’s not because of anything they did. It’s just the way life goes.  Anyone that tells you otherwise is either very lucky or just in the pre-crisis part of their life.

People don’t mean anything by it.  They just say things.  Things spill out of their mouth because they don’t know what to say next.  They don’t know how these things can hurt.

You ruined everything

Jonathan Coulton is a geek singer-songwriter that my husband really likes.  I started listening to some of his songs because my husband had them on and they are pretty funny and catchy.  My husband burned me a CD so I could listen to songs in my car and there is one that I always always skip.  

I was fine,
I pulled my self together
Just in time,
To throw my self away
Once my perfect world was gone I knew,
You ruined everything in the nicest way

You should know,
How great things were before you
Even so,
They’re better still today
Now I can’t think who I was before
You ruined everything in the nicest way

It’s about having your first child.   This song always makes me cry.  It didn’t used to. I could listen and tune it out for the most part.   We saw him in concert about a year ago.  He sang this song and as soon as it started, I burst into tears.  I was having a great time and the tears came out of nowhere.  I buried my face in my husband’s chest and sobbed.  Thank God it was loud and dark and so no one really noticed.  If they did, they were kind enough to pretend that sobbing in the middle of a show where everyone was laughing and singing along was perfectly normal.

That CD is in my husband’s car and so I haven’t heard it in a while so I haven’t had to quickly push the skip button while driving.  Today though, the song popped into my head.   Out of nowhere, I started humming it.  And while it didn’t make me sob like it once did, it did hurt my heart.  

I can’t wait for life to be ruined. 

What’s Making Me Happy – Space Edition

Thing number 1:  An astronaut on the international space station wringing out a washcloth in space.  Man, would I love to be an astronaut.

 

Thing number 2:  Same astronaut singing David Bowie.  Coolest astronaut ever.

 

Thing number 3: Same astronaut’s awesome pictures from the International Space Station.  How amazing would it be to see the Earth from above like that?

Thing number 4: Pictures of a solar eclipse.  Amazing.  Kind of makes you wish that we could view it without going blind.

Thing number 5:  Solar flare photos.   Our universe is so amazing and beautiful. Sometimes I’m just in awe of the things that we can see and photograph.

 

Depression

Back in October of 2011, Allie Brosh at Hyperbole and a Half wrote an amazing post about depression.  Did all of you read it?  She very recently posted a follow-up to that depression post and it was also amazing.  It made me cry so hard because it reminded me so much of things I felt and it was so true and so right and so dead on, even though I didn’t experience all the things that she did.

In her first depression post, there is this one part where she is yelling at herself for crying.  She asks herself why she’s crying because people have diseases and are dying and all that’s happened to her is that she tore the spout on her chocolate milk.  But that’s the thing about depression.  There’s no logic.  It doesn’t matter what’s going on with you or with other people, it hurts.  She also thinks, “maybe I’ll go outside today” and then decides she can’t because she hates herself too much.  It sounds insane, but it’s true.  You just kind of give up.  It doesn’t matter that you logically know that you should do something. You just can’t.

In her second post, she talks about people trying to help her but them not understand and offering the wrong kinds of solutions.  And finally, she talks about being suicidal.  The most real part is where she writes: “No, see I don’t necessarily want to kill myself.  I just want to become dead somehow.”  Oh. Wow.  How I can relate.  I never wanted to commit suicide.  That was too active.  It would hurt too many people.  Instead, I just wanted to not wake up.  Every night I would cry and pray and pray that God would just let me die so I didn’t have to bear the grief anymore.   She says there’s no good way you can tell someone you’re suicidal.  I completely agree.  I couldn’t even tell my husband.  Any time I hinted at it, it upset him so much.  I didn’t want to break his heart. I wanted help. I couldn’t ask for help without breaking his heart though.

Eventually, those feelings passed for me.  With the help of meds and therapy and support groups and friends and a new job, I felt more in control of my life and I started to feel better.  There was no defining moment for me.  There was nothing that marked the change from depressed to less depressed.  One day was just a little less horrible than the next.  Reading her posts makes me realize how far I’ve come.  They make me relive those feelings and I am so grateful that I’m no longer in that place.