I've noticed some shifts in my healing journey again. I think the further along the way I am in this journey, the easier it is to take the stand of a witness/bystander instead of the victim/the target. I remember back in the days random words could feel like an arrow shot right into my heart or like a stab of a long, serrated blade, even though the speakers of those words didn't mean to hurt me at all.
The other week I had a conversation with my mom who had been getting in touch with her old school friends. She said that some of them had also lost their husbands, but she was just reacquainted with another one who was living alone (no kids). When she was mentioning the fact that she had no children, I felt that she was sorry for her.
However, instead of taking it personally (in the past this would make me feel defensive and hurt), I felt like a bystander. The words amused me and disturbed me a little. It disturbed me not because it hit a nerve in myself, but because I thought that this particular woman may not think of herself as a pitiful human being and that's what matters most. If she herself thinks that she has a pitiful life without husband and children and tells my mom about it, then it's a whole different thing. The words also amused me to a certain degree because of the possibility that my mom could be so wrong.
Another thing I've felt lately is about all those things that parents say about children/parenting/fears on child-rearing. Lately I've read some bonding messages between some mothers concerning child-rearing (not smug parenting talk but real sharing/bonding between parents), but I haven't felt what I used to feel anymore. In the past I used to be upset because those words made me feel like I was less than a human being (couldn't understand what they were going through, couldn't empathize) simply because I wasn't a mother.
These days I think that it's pretty normal/understandable for parents to say those words, because in the same way that those who're in my boat can understand my thoughts/feelings much better than those outside of my boat, isn't it normal for parents to be able to understand more layers of parenting life better than me? I've also been watching how parenting changed people and I noticed that many of them were surprised by the depth and breadth and width of their love for their children and I find it fascinating. I think from an evolutionary POV, it's beneficial for parents to be able to feel this way towards their children. Anyway, from this particular spot where I'm standing, I don't feel that they're trying to disregard my ability to empathize anymore.
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P.S. However, when they say "as a parent" in a public arena, I still feel that it's way too political (I don't like politics), that it's a card that they're playing instead of creating special bonding moments between parents in a more intimate setting.
1. The other night I suddenly remembered
something that I was planning to do if I could ever conceive.
Thankfully, it doesn't make me feel any pain or grief. On the contrary,
it makes me smile nostalgically.
You
see, my mom used to tell us many times how some elder in her family
told her to pray for her babies before they came to the world. Literally
praying for them while pushing them out. My mom remembered the advice,
so she did it while sending me and my brother off to the world. She
prayed that God would smooth out our paths and she hoped for equal
financial provision for the both of us (she didn't want one of us to be
so rich whereas the other one so poor as to induce sibling rivalry and
jealousy but she wanted us to have enough in life).
During
TTC, I always remembered this story and I was bent on sending a prayer
the way she did, though I hadn't exactly planned the content of the prayer itself, but
at least I had kept a mental note to remember to do this while pushing my baby out.
Ah, plans, plans, plans! :-) There's only so much that we can control in life.
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2. I was talking to my close friends in a group email about infertility (after a long absence of that topic) and its impact. I told them how in the past, I used to be very angry when I thought of all those children in abusive families or when I saw a pregnant woman smoking because I felt that they didn't deserve to be mothers. I added that these days I don't feel that way anymore.
One of them, being raised in a Christian family that stressed heavily on the weight of sin and the unworthiness of mankind to receive His grace and salvation, wrote that she never felt deserved to be a mother (even though she's a mother now).
That comment made me think. I wrote back, saying that I actually never felt sure that I was definitely going to be a good mother, because I had no idea what kind of child I could be dealing with. What I felt deserving at that angry period was a chance.
It's nice to talk to people and realize more things about yourself. :-)
P.S. My parents sent us to Christian
schools, but they found God much later in life, so they never really
tried to drill religious related stuff into our heads. My brother and I
found God when we were teenagers.
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3. Mother's Day is coming here and I'm feeling psyched. I've prepared a post for this community and I've done a test run on it in an online forum. Thankful for all the feedback from the ladies there because I'm also considering sharing it in FB (just that post, not my blog link). I've also prepared some gifts for my MIL and we're going to spend a day with her as usual. I wonder how it'd feel like on Mother's Day when/if my MIL passes away earlier than I do. Oh well...we shall see how it goes...
I'm also psyched for our upcoming car trip because I'm going to have my first week of summer holiday sometime this month and thankfully hubby can also take a few days off and he wants to go for a car trip (day trip), so it's EXCITING because it's rare for him to want to do something like this.
I don't drive, you see, so I can't initiate something like this. Sure we can go by bus, but it's expensive and there aren't any trains running all the way up here (a round-trip bus ticket to Rovaniemi, a city about 1.5 hours away from this village, costs €50/person and this time we're going even further south). So this year Mother's Day preparation is "swallowed up" by other stuff (in a good way) he he he he he...:-D
We had a peaceful Christmas with MIL as usual (no kids involved). BIL and SIL came over for a while, but then they left to go to the graveyards. We went to the graveyards already before they came for a visit to light some candles in front of hubby's grandparents' and FIL's graves. FIL's grave doesn't have a gravestone yet.
Before Christmas, I had a "pat my own back" moment. :-D The close friend who's pregnant posted a side view and front view baby bump pics in FB, so naturally the photos garnered lots of lovely comments. In the beginning I wanted nothing to do with it, but then I had an experiment with myself...I took some time to clear my mind, then suddenly a thought occurred, "Hey, what if it's some random acquaintance who's pregnant and it's the first time for her to post the baby bump pics like these for the whole world to celebrate? How would you deal with it?"
I took my time to step back mentally and it worked!!! YAAAAAAAAAAYYYYY!!!! It was like unlatching a mental connection with her so that I could respond in a more neutral fashion. It felt GOOD to be able to mentally step farther away as a way of emphasizing that her experience had nothing to do with mine. *pat on the back* I've shared this with the GW ladies and I received so much warmth from them. It feels nice to have people with whom I can celebrate this kind of victorious moment. :-D
I actually used the trick again just now (FYI I'm having my PMS now) as I almost felt a thump on my chest as she had just posted a photo of herself holding a tiny Christmas stocking with the writing "My first X-mas". For a second there I was thinking, "That could have been me" but then I forced myself to step away mentally again and I could comment on the photo to celebrate the moment with her. Mind you, I think this is easier done because it happens in the internet world***, not face-to-face. I don't know if this trick can be done IRL (in real life) or not, but I'll remember to try it out if I'll ever have the chance to do it IRL.
*** I'm further away in my healing journey, so I also think that's one reason why the trick worked. If we had tried having a baby at the same time and then she had gotten pregnant first whereas we ended up with infertility, I dread to think just how much devastation it could have done to our friendship.
You know, whenever I read posts that debate the kind of views that state that non-parents aren't as busy as parents, I cringe inside. Because of my personality and my choice of a "simple life" (at least that's how I call it), I have limited variables that can complicate my life.
I have a part-time job and even though I was asked if I wanted to have more working hours, I chose not to. It'd be a whole different case if we needed money desperately or if it was a different kind of job, but one of the reasons I chose not to have more working hours was that I did that one time and it backfired on me. I'm an introvert at heart and working in a job where I have to serve people (meet lots of people) means that I need plenty of recharging time = alone time. Whenever I feel "tired" of being with people, I tend to just hide in our house and avoid meeting people as best as I can. Having a part-time job means that I have plenty of spare time to do whatever I want to do at home.
Speaking of variables in life, though...my job is the kind of job that doesn't really leave too much "homework", so basically I don't have to be carrying around any mental burdens whenever my shift is over. Other than that, I get along well with my MIL as well as my BILs and SILs. I only have one younger brother and he doesn't give me a headache, either (never had). My dad and FIL have passed away and my mom still lives with my brother and wife, so I don't have to worry about her being on her own. My nephews live far away from us and two of them are already almost grown-ups and we have no pets.
I don't have too many IRL friends, but I do enjoy meeting them every now and then and they're not the type of friends that say bad things about me, so again I don't have to worry about meeting them (esp. since they're done with procreating). So if I look at my life and if anyone comments that he or she envies my "less busier life", then I won't be able to debate it and I'll say that it may be true. But then again this is how I choose my life to be.
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I get along pretty well with my coworkers, though I can't say that they're my friends, but I know that they've accepted me as one of the team members despite the fact that I'm a foreigner (I'm SO grateful for this). However, my coworkers are mostly younger than me and we don't really poke into one another's business, so we don't talk about babies and stuff like that.
Next door neighbours? Well, we do say hi to one another whenever we meet, but the interaction never goes beyond that, so we never have any problems with them.
I think whenever people perceive that someone else's life is "less busier" than theirs, it's because they don't know all the other variables in that other person's life. What they see is but a glimpse of an illusion - which may or may not be true. The more variables in life that you have (having to care for a sick, aging parent on top of a bankruptcy and your own health issues for example or even a fight with a friend and problems with neighbour/coworker/brother/sister), the "busier" your life can be if those variables aren't in "good shape". But then again I believe that attitude and personality come into play as well. Something that may be difficult to handle for A may be easy/easier for B. Something that may be difficult may be less "bitter" if you see it from another perspective.*
* I'm NOT trying to belittle life's problems or grief or whatever it is that life may bring and I'm all into embracing whatever you're feeling and then working through them and I'm not trying to say that one should be positive all the time, but just saying that I believe attitude does matter.
I remember when I was translating novels for a publisher, a friend of mine who graduated from the same faculty told me that for her, working like that would be like a torture and that no matter how much someone was willing to pay her to do translating jobs, she would never accept it. I laughed when I read her words, because in my mind, she wasn't mocking my job, but she was stressing on my strength. That I was patient enough to be doing something that she thought would be one of the most boring things on earth.
Anyway, I'm rambling here...I was seriously debating on writing this post or not, but I just couldn't get the itch away LOL!!!
Yesterday when I heard about SIL's pregnancy, I knew I was starting to go down the melancholy road again, especially because two days ago was the induction day of a friend and another one has started dilating yesterday. Talk about baby boom: another friend of mine is going to give birth in a few weeks'. So to balance out the melancholy mood that was threatening to engulf me in darkness bit by bit, I decided to exercise.
Right after exercise we went to sauna and sure enough, my mood had lightened up so much after that, though while hubby was making funny jokes in sauna, this slipped through my mind, "Oh, what a shame it is not to have an opportunity to see a young hubby with that quirky sense of humour!" However, it was a fleeting thought and I refused to dwell on it too long.
Before going to bed, I noticed that in FB another friend has just posted her latest pic with a preggy belly. I was a bit surprised - not because I didn't expect that, but because I did the math. You see, we met last year in spring and at that time I knew she hadn't tried having a baby yet, though she was going to do that 'coz she had been talking about babies with her spouse. In the picture she must be at least 4 months already 'coz I can already see the belly clearly. What I mostly feel was/is amazement that some people can just "get pregnant" easily (or seemingly easily - I know that's not the case in the other three people's pregnancies that I mentioned above besides SIL's).
I know it sounds silly to be amazed at something like this, but I just can't get over it because over the past years nothing has happened to us. Nothing. Zero. Zilch. But this amazement is more like the feeling you get when you see someone do an amazing magic trick and then you ask, "How on earth can someone do such a thing?" Something like that. So no more anger towards God.
Anyway, right now I'm feeling just fine, though I'm not particularly over-the-top happy over their pregnancies, but not too melancholic at least. I'm sure in time I'll be happier for them esp. when the babies come, but right now I'm not in that place yet. Well, at least I'm not envying them for their pregnancies so that's a step forward. :-) One thing I feel right now, though, is a feeling that this year's gonna be filled with more baby/pregnancy announcement 'coz another friend is TTC, so it's only a matter of time that she'll be preggy, too.
Note to self: I think at this phase, it's easier for me to accept at the most two pregnancy/baby announcement at a time (esp. if it's a close friend's) in terms of being over-the-top happy for someone else's pregnancy. Being bombarded by many different pregnancy/baby announcements in a short period of time is still a bit too much, though unlike in the past, it doesn't threaten to drown me in complete doomsday prophecy, but it does make me melancholic.
P.S. Hey, at least the workout strategy does work to elevate my mood! Next time I feel melancholy at bay again, I should try it again! :-D Bring on the endorphins!!!! :-D
I'm meeting some friends next week and I'm a bit worried actually. I'm having my PMS and I don't really know exactly when my period will start, so I hope that my hormones won't be too crazy during the D-day.
The thing that makes me a bit worried is the fact that one of the friends is currently preggy. She got married "rather late" and she was worried her eggs would be too old already, but to her surprise she got preggy in 6 months. However, when she tried to have a second one, she experienced several RPLs and she had actually thought that her family wouldn't grow any bigger. She's 41 y.o. and by the time this second baby is born, she'll be almost 42.
My concern is my own focus shift and its subsequent effects. I've managed to shift the focus from the "hole" (or crushed dream) in our reality pretty well so far, but I haven't been around any friend who's pregnant either, so that must've helped. Some friends of mine are pregnant, but they're far far away from me, so I count that as a whole different thing, but with this particular friend I'll still be meeting her every now and then.
I don't really want to feel that crushing grief anymore. Grief in itself is OK, but grief followed by all the other stuff that makes me feel like I have hidden bombs in many different places inside me that are ready to crush me into little pieces...that's what worries me. It's TOUGH WORK to collect all the tiny pieces of myself and start healing all over again...
But anyway, I'm trying to hold on to the mantra "Be kind to myself, be kind to myself, be kind to myself"...We shall see what happens then when the time comes. So I'm crossing my own fingers!!! May heaven help me!!!
Que sera sera...whatever will be, will be...
Update: I actually feel MUCH better now after writing this post here. :-D Giving a voice to your thoughts is really cathartic! :-D
The other day had a chat with one close friend who's still single. She avoided any talk about IF 'coz she knew how badly it affected me in the past and she didn't want to see me hurt. During the chat, I managed to tell her that I was doing MUCH MUCH better now and that talking about IF wouldn't do me any harm.
She then confided that when I was down in my battle with IF, it crossed her mind that in a way, she was also "an infertile" 'coz she couldn't possibly have kids without having a hubby first. (Well, of course in reality she CAN do that if she wants to, but her Mom and family members would probably be against it.) She said that she didn't want to tell me that she also felt down thinking about her own situation when I was telling her about my IF battle 'coz she didn't want me to have any extra burden of thought other than the ones I had when I was down.
Now that I'm at this stage of almost-full surrender (read: I don't talk anymore about baby programs nor do I think of future plans involving babies, but when AF is near, I still harbor the feeling of not wanting it to come. I can also feel VERY HAPPY for other IFers who get pregnant without questioning God about anything. I've also felt OK thinking about the future without kids even to the point that I believe life'll still be as beautiful, if not more), it's clearer to me that the impact of IF is really widespread. I know at least one married close friend who felt guilty for not wanting to have kids yet when I confided to her my darkest moments when facing IF.
I have stopped feeling guilty about many things and I'm more wary now about putting unnecessary guilt on my shoulders. That doesn't mean to say that I don't care about my friends' feelings, but I hope that through my struggle, they can also find their peace - just as I have found my peace.
Talking about work, I had a very sweet moment before I went back home last Friday. Just as I was saying goodbye to all the kids, one of them ran towards me to give me a hug. Naturally I knelt down so that it would be easier for her to hug me. Upon seeing us, three other kids jumped in to give us a group hug and one of them started giggling and saying, "You can't go home, you can't go, you can't go" and the other two chimed in (giggling all the way). I almost fell down 'coz of the group hug and they wouldn't let me go for quite some time he he he he...Finally they did let me go, though...and my heart was SO full of gratitude...
I've started wondering these days who needs who more: the kids or me? Maybe now I need them more than they need me, 'coz they just melt my heart with their unexpected hugs and warmth. And it feels even better 'coz I know they have no "hidden agenda" when they give me warmth and hugs. It's just because they feel like it. Mmmmm...life is really beautiful...
Had a break from the outside world (well, as much as I could anyway) including the blogosphere and Facebook 'coz I felt so tired. I took time off from delving deep within the realms of my brain and heart and busied myself with household chores. Only after that did I start ransacking everything to get to the root of the problems of why I felt so tired and why I felt like distancing myself from other human beings (except hubby and his family).
1. The problem started with my self-defense mechanism in dealing with IF. In order to avoid disappointment, heartache, sorrow, grief, I thought of myself as a bad candidate to be a mother by thinking of some "facts": e.g. when I went to my friend's place who has a 2-year-old, I didn't cut the fruits small enough for her and I also felt so "stupid" when I went to visit my family in Indo last year and I really didn't know how to handle my brother's 13-month-old son at first (though I did learn some tips and tricks along the way). The other problem was that I didn't realize that I was using this type of self-defense mechanism.
Note: The crazy thing was that this type of self-defense mechanism worked "pretty well" when dealing with the disappointment, sorrow, and grief that IF can bring.
2. This self-defense mechanism became like a virus that spread through other aspects of my life. I belittled myself in other things, too: e.g. the fact that I don't have a career and I don't know what I want to do.
I've always been a planner (used to be a MUCH worse long-term planner, but now I've learnt to be more flexible) and I was probably born a planner (and raised up by parents who are planners), so this "idealism" backfired when I feel like a "failure" ('coz I don't even know what to do or what I want to do).
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3. Because I felt like a "failure" in the motherhood department, I wanted to compensate myself by telling myself subconsciously that I had to be the best that I could be in other areas of life (even if I can't become a mother). But I think I actually over-compensated the non-motherhood status 'coz my standards of "being the best that I could be" became much too idealistic for me to reach.
Thus, I berated myself whenever I felt reactive towards ANYONE. Whenever I felt a bad reaction or a negative thought or feeling toward anything (I read or saw) or anyone, I scolded myself. I didn't even realize this new "habit" of bullying myself until I felt that I hated every human interaction 'coz it made me feel so much negativity towards myself (which made sense considering the kind of idealism I had for myself by over-compensating the non-motherhood status).
The result of all three: I felt like crap (black and blue from all the blows I gave to myself). I felt like I was such a bad specimen of a human being.
I'm truly GRATEFUL for a friend's help for opening my eyes and making me realize the truth about false guilt and irrational guilt (if you read this, you know who you are). In the past, I had some irrational guilt, but I've never had them piled up this much before until I wanted to escape to a distant island and never be found again.
I've asked my close friends to pray for me on this matter and I've been more aware of what comes out of my mind these days and I've been able to shut the bully up even before she finishes her sentences. It feels GOOD to take control again of my own brain. So prayers DO work. :-D I feel MUCH freer now and I can interact with other people again normally.
P.S. I'm HAPPY to say that the other day I talked to my friend who's had PCOS (who had the miraculous pregnancy) and I couldn't wait to hear about her pregnancy symptoms and news about her pregnancy in general. I'm happy 'coz I didn't ask "Why, God? When? How? Where did I go wrong? etc." when talking to her or even after talking to her. Heaven help me so that I can be this way later on, esp. when someone close to me gets pregnant. ;-D Nothing's impossible for God, so HALLELUJAH!!!
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