Labels

After not being pregnant within a year of TTC, I started reading IF blogs and then I started labelling myself "an infertile" whenever I talked to my close friends via email. Hearing the bitter and angry tone of my emails, they were shocked. They wondered why I even used that label to call myself. I felt as though some of them had probably thought I was "jinxing" myself for calling myself an infertile. One of them got pregnant on their twelve month of trying, so she had probably thought that it was "too soon" for me to call myself that. I know and knew she meant well, that she wanted to encourage us to keep hoping and trying.

But I got angry because they "wouldn't let me" label myself that way (self-defense mechanism kicked in). I must've responded to their well-meaning words in a harsh way, because after that they were much more careful in saying anything to me related to my IF journey. Bless them!!! :-)
 
childless-not-by-choice
I felt so desperate back then. I WANTED to label myself because I was searching for a place to "belong" in all the madness, in all the chaos. I was searching for people who were able to make me feel less alone, who could help me make sense of what I was feeling. If labelling myself helped me find my "peers", then so be it!!! I don't care even if it "jinxed" me. 

Conclusion: I find that sometimes it IS necessary and even healthy to label yourself so that you can learn from your "peers". 

Mind you, though, I don't actually share these labels in real life freely unless I feel that I need or want to do so. :-) In the beginning, though, I felt like I wanted to scream out the word "infertile" to everybody 'coz I felt that my pains were "unseen" and "unheard".

These days I mostly use the words "infertile" or CNBC in this blog rather than anywhere else. Because this is my safe haven, where I feel most understood in terms of this part of my life. :-)