The Badge

Haven't been blogging or blog-hopping. Been busy with work, being sick (yeah, I finally couldn't avoid it in the end), busy with life and some travel plans this year. I'll catch up on blogging later. 

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In the beginning of my infertility journey, when I wore the badge called "infertile", my close friends' reaction took me by surprise. After that one year was up, their reaction made me think that I wasn't supposed to call myself an infertile (just yet) and it made me wonder if I jinxed myself if I used that term to describe myself. For me at that time, though, it was more of a clinical term. I needed a term to call myself so that I knew where to find more info on what to do next. That meant reading a lot of infertility blogs out there for my research. After a while, though, that term began to grow on me. I got used to it and other people started to get used to it, too. So from then on I wore that badge while I tried to navigate life in all its complications of wearing that badge. I clung to that badge, trying to find connection, understanding, support, and direction.

After we decided to turn to childlessness-not-by-choice road, slowly the title on the badge turned into "infertility survivor". The further away the healing took me, the more endearing the badge became to me. Funny how the old badge called "infertile" had a totally different feeling to it. I wasn't ashamed at that old badge, but that badge carried a whole different world to it. That badge contained so much confusion due to the roller-coaster ride that we went through each month. That old badge was a mother lode (pun intended) of chaos and brokenness.

These days, though, I've felt another shift. These days I no longer wear that badge daily. I even forget to put on that badge sometimes. I've just realized this recently, especially after talking to a mother about her challenges the other time. She openly told me stuff that made me felt privileged to be the listener and to my surprise, my "infertility survivor" persona didn't appear. Instead, when she was confiding those private stuff to me, what appeared was just "Amel the human being". That way I could respond to her accordingly. In the past, sometimes the infertile/infertility survivor persona automatically appeared and it took every bit of my power to take a step back and focus on the other person's story first instead of focusing on my pain/grief/needs. 

Anyway, I can't believe it's almost the end of March already! Where did time go? However, I do enjoy the coming of spring (I've also been enjoying some Easter chocolate LOL!) and afterwards summer to Lapland!

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. :-)