Been so busy with work and life. I'm actually PMSing at the moment and have been having trouble with my temper. I suppose with many more shifts and lots of hot days at work, I've been feeling sort of fed up with work and really looking forward to our holiday.
A coworker has been signed off for a few weeks and then yesterday she resigned from work. I had a feeling already that she wouldn't stay long with us. I have no idea what she's having because here in Finland it's unethical to tell other people about stuff like this, whereas in Indonesia stuff like this is considered normal to share. I was wondering if I should ask her through FB or not, but not sure anymore now that she's decided to quit. Her decision to quit means that the rest of us gets more shifts, which is rather difficult for me to handle because I know my own limits and it's getting rather straining to me these days (and PMS doesn't help). I am thankful that I still have a job, but I know that if I work too much, I won't be able to do my best at work (i.e. serve with a genuine smile and be intentional when serving people - instead, I'd just be counting down the hours until I can come back home).
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Anyway, while struggling with my temper through work yesterday, I saw this gorgeous little boy. I almost couldn't take my eyes off him. He was seriously one of the more gorgeous children that I had ever seen. I felt like he'd fit a baby commercial. He was that gorgeous. He was staring at me intently and I tried saying hi to entice a smile, but no smile came, though it still didn't spoil my enjoyment he he...
Last Saturday I went to a coworker's graduation party and had one bingo question. Because I had to come earlier to the party (much earlier than the official time), I was the first and only guest there and her mom was in a talkative mood. We talked about many things, but of course in the beginning it was introductory time.
Mom: "So, do you have kids?"
Me: "No."
Mom: "Ah, but you're still young..."
Me: (smile) "Nah, I'm not that young anymore."
Realizing I had rendered her speechless (a few awkward seconds ensued), I quickly added, "But that's fine."
To which she replied, "Oh, yes, that's definitely okay."
That's refreshing! :-D And then we continued talking about other stuff. A few days later I met that coworker at work and she thanked me for coming and apologized if her mother was too nosy. I told her that it was completely fine and that Indonesians were even much nosier than that.
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Yesterday when I rode my bike from work, I met a regular customer who always tried to chit-chat with me at work (a grandma). We rode our bikes side-by-side for the first time ever (the first time we had time to talk like that outside of my workplace) and talked about different stuff (holiday, summer, etc.). And of course she started asking about myself. She actually thought my husband was an Indonesian as well he he he he...but she didn't ask me about kids, though. She just asked me about my parents and siblings and husband. And after those questions she said, "I hope I'm not too nosy. Feel free to stop me if you feel that I'm intruding your privacy."
It's a whole new world compared to what I'm used to in Indonesia. I've had many other customers who sheepishly asked for permission first before they started asking me private questions like those. Funny how cultures can be SO different.
P.S. Oh yeah, the grandma also asked me how I met my husband and when I said the internet, she said, "Oh, maybe I should try to find a husband in the internet, as well. You know, give the grandkids a new grandpa." She laughed while saying that and it made me laugh, too he he he he...:-) Nice to have a good and light-hearted conversation.
P.P.S. Oh yeah, almost forgot...I found this article written by a Christian couple. In case someone wants to read it, I'm going to put it on my sidebar as well:
Yesterday another coworker asked me if we had children and I said no. It was very refreshing because she didn't ask me anything else. Ha! :-D She just accepted my answer he he he he he...I bask in the glory of moments like this! :-D
Anyway, here is a quote I found in Facebook (I'd love to link to the original poster, but it's hard to find the original sources through FB pages), but anyway I thought this one was really appropriate. :-)
On another note, though, my inner b**ch is out and kicking (PMS time), so I've been trying to listen to some soothing music and soon I'll be watching all the TV series I've taped that I couldn't watch last week because I've been so busy at work (three coworkers got sick in a row last week so their shifts were shared with the others).
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I forgot to mention here that a few
months ago I finally got rid of the English pregnancy and parenting
books I bought second-hand from online shops years ago when we first
started TTC. I'd started reading one of them during TTC, but the other
three were parenting books, so I hadn't really started reading them yet
and they'd been gathering dust in my book shelf, so off they went to
this "exchange book corner" in our local library. Btw, I felt nothing when I left the books there.
In
the past there was no such a thing, but these days they've put this
"exchange book corner" in which people can grab any book(s) they want
with the hope that they'll trade them with other book(s) that they own.
The empty space has been put to good use as I've been piling up new
books that I haven't read yet (chuckle). I'm a bad reader. I tend to
switch from one book to another and who knows when I'll finish reading
them all LOL!!! Some of them are unread, though. I LOVE collecting books
even though that means I may not read them yet LOL!!!
I'm
still PMSing and still feeling a bit conflicted inside every now and
then (esp. when I read news about my friend's morning sickness issues
and the other mommy friends got to share their own morning sickness
experiences - felt like being left out when a group of friends were playing together). Just now I received an email with the title "27 weeks" and
I felt a jolt inside. I thought, "Another pregnant woman?" Turned out
that no, it wasn't the case. It was a false alarm. Phew!
Yep.
The green eyed-monster of jealousy has arisen, though thankfully it's
not blinding me. It's just a tiny little monster, but I know it's out
there. One thing I tried to do the other day is to turn each jealous
thought into a ball and then I (the superhero in my imagination) got to
kick the ball into outer space, where it was swallowed by this giant
black hole (I had to do this whenever the ball came out to play). Is this helping? I think so. :-)
Another thing that helped was exercising and doing punching and kicking movements with all my might (release all the negative energy, Amel!!!)...and feeling the lovely endorphins afterwards. :-) And yes, I looked like this fellow below when I was doing the exercise:
Let's just see how well I fare in this friend's pregnancy journey (and maybe in the future other close friends' pregnancies) where I get to read a lot of details and where I get to see lots of pics. I'll take it one day at a time. May God help me!!!
P.S. I know I'll feel better when my PMS is over. :-) In the meantime, though, I'll continue the imaginary battle and exercise regime.
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PMS mode here. Just read a post about a blogger friend's friend's demise and she wrote such a beautiful post on her that just made me ache inside. Life isn't as simple as ABC. There are so many people facing their own challenges or "crosses to bear" all around me and those challenges are made even more vivid whenever I get to hear some more details about them.
Lately I've been having lots of conversations related to children or actually pregnancies and babies with some friends.* One is pregnant and another one has started feeling the longing for motherhood. I was really happy when I heard about the pregnancy, but about half an hour afterwards the storm started within. I suddenly felt mellow and sad. I was uneasy 'coz I didn't know why I felt so sad (a different kind of sadness than what I experienced in the past). It wasn't that I started longing to have children again, mind you. Not that.
I actually just realized (while writing this post) that the news and the talk about pregnancy and the other friend's future TTC plan transported me face-to-face with my "dead/buried dreams". As if I were suddenly standing right in front of those rows and rows of buried dreams and I couldn't help shedding a few tears (literally just a few tears, not sobbing like crazy). I was again reminded of how many dead dreams that I had to let go of and I suppose the sight of it all kinda overwhelmed me: seeing not just the buried dream of achieving pregnancy, but also the opportunity to feel the morning sickness, to feel the baby kicking inside of me, to talk about hubby about the details of the baby room, to share the news with my friends and family, to hear their shrieks of delight upon hearing the news, to share preggy photos and USG photos, to give birth, to share baby photos, etc. etc. etc. And the list kept going on.
* Note: This is the kind of talk I want to be involved in 'coz I do care about them with all my heart. And I know they care about me with all that they've got as well.
And on another level, again I couldn't help but think how "easy" it seemed for some people to get preggy. The latest pregnancy news reminded me of my SIL's pregnancy. When I first found out about her second pregnancy, she told me that it was a surprise 'coz she said that "they weren't even so diligent in TTC" though they were trying to have one. Words like these came back to the surface every now and then. The more often I hear words like these, the closer I got to feeling that my body wasn't working the way it should have been (in the past I had not felt this at all, I think - at least I didn't really think that way).
Thankfully, though, the storm lasted only for about 6 hours (yeah, I'm slightly crazy about details LOL!). In the middle of it, I was screaming to God, "Help me, help me, help me focus on others' happiness instead of focusing on myself, pleaasssseeeeee." I also kept on remembering this verse: "My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness." (1 Corinthians 12:9)
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That helped, as well as saying this mantra over and over again, "It's NOT about me, NOT about me, NOT about me, NOT about me". I went to bed pretty easily that night, though I must admit that it's bloody hard to try to focus on their happiness without looking back on my own history. And I couldn't help feeling "left out" - because I DO want to share the happiness by sharing my own story, but I have no story to tell except my Mom's stories about her being pregnant with us and my own childhood stories.
But I think I've done a pretty decent job in trying to focus on them and their plans for the future instead of focusing on me (I may have slipped a few times but not too many times). Actually, writing all of this has made me feel SO much lighter. :-D
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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
Last night I watched "The Accidental Husband" (Uma Thurman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan) 'coz I was in the mood to watch a light, romantic comedy. The movie itself was what I had expected, but what really made me feel disappointed was the ending. Disappointment may not be the correct term, though.
How to put it? Ummm...well, first of all if I have to explain it here, I have to give a SPOILER ALERT first, so if you're interested in watching the movie, stop reading NOW!!!
Btw, here's the imdb link to the movie: The Accidental Husband.
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Okay...now I can continue in peace...
As in many others romantic comedies, you can sort of guess the ending, but what really got me was the last minute of the movie, where it showed a bulging belly and the hubby and the wife shared a special look of fondness between them.
I was wondering what on earth made me want to say, "Oh for goodness sake!!!" when I saw it.
I was like...what? Why did I feel like that?
It's not like I want to be pregnant anymore (in fact, I'm not so sure I want kids anymore - though I suspect a great degree of this feeling may be affected by self-defense mechanism, but the bottom line is that we're used to thinking of the future without kids for the past 1,5 years). So it wasn't because of envy or anything like that.
I searched my soul and heart and mind and realized that what bothered me was the fact that the movie propagates that THE ultimate happy ending for a couple to have is when there's an additional family member coming in the form of a child/children.
I was groaning inside after I saw the ending. Why couldn't they just leave it without the bulging belly? The last minute of the movie made me feel like what we have now is "less than".
I know this may be PMS mood talking, but to be honest I'm tired of people's "silent/not-so-silent" hope that we can still have kids in the future (that we still have time).
How can you make them understand that it's not about having time still? That miracles do happen, but that doesn't necessarily mean you want it to happen to you anymore - not that specific miracle anyway (but you believe that you've been granted so many other types of miracles and that's more than enough)? Nor do you believe that that specific pregnancy miracle will happen to you anyway?
That their hope of a surprise preggy does nothing to make you feel better (not that I need them to make me feel better anyway 'coz I do love and am enjoying my life to the fullest and I have learnt to live life without kids much better than expected and that they should rejoice with me because hell, it ain't easy to reach this stage)? In fact, that kind of hope doesn't really affect me in any other way other than make me feel that they just don't understand? Oh well...let me just stop ranting...On normal days, I know that I won't feel this way, but I just feel like ranting now he he he...
Had been feeling rather shitty lately, but then yesterday something happened at work - or actually two things. Had my yearly work appraisal talk with my boss and I was shell shocked when I heard what she said. She said that she had heard lots of positive feedback from customers about me and in my PMS state, I almost cried. I tried to control myself, though my eyes got wet and I'm pretty sure she noticed it, but she said nothing about it.
All in all, it was a much better work appraisal than I could have ever thought. I got better marks compared to last year, but what really touched me was what the customers had said about me.
Actually, in the morning before the work appraisal talk happened, out of the blue a customer said to me, "You're a wonderful person." Though shocked to hear that, I thanked her right away. I don't remember ever doing something special or extra to her, so I had no idea why she said those words that day. I was just so speechless and when she left, I was left with wet eyes again.
You see, I had been rather bummed about the upcoming Mother's Day (unlike previous years). It just crossed my mind that nobody would ever buy me flowers or Mother's Day's card or make me a Mother's Day dinner or bring me a Mother's Day's cake or whatever. I suspect that the trigger is the fact that one close friend is currently pregnant for the second time and that another one has started TTC this year.
And there I was, behind the counter of the supermarket where I worked, wondering if the job I was doing was making an impact on anyone, wondering if what I had been doing was enough or too much or whatever. Basically wondering about my place in the world and my role(s) in life. I didn't even realize how much validation I needed at that time until I heard the woman's positive feedback and my boss' words.
They just blew my mind...and today when I was digesting all that happened yesterday, I felt God's voice whispering at my ear, "You are precious in my eyes just as you are. Just keep doing your best and share my light with others." And I broke down and cried...
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Today had a chat with a friend. He said that he was going to have a second child next month. I felt HAPPY for him, but when he started asking the typical questions, I felt my defensive front rising up.
As usual, he asked, "When are you going to have a child/children?"
I said, "Go ask God and then tell me about it."
He said, "Hey, I'm not a psychic. How can I know the future?"
I said, "There you go...there's your answer. If you had asked when we would be making a baby, I could answer you, but if you ask me when we're going to actually have one, I can't answer that, can I?"
He said, "OK, let me rephrase then: have you ever thought about wanting to have kids?"
Doh!!! I'm getting tired of this type of question, but I was in a good mood, so I answered him anyway.
I said, "We have been trying for 2 years now with no result."
He asked, "Ah, we also had trouble with our second one. It took us a year and 7 months to get pregnant. We tried to time our intercourse every month to no avail, until eventually we gave up and just as we gave up, we got pregnant that month!"
Yep, the typical insinuation from the good-intentioned people that "if you stop trying, you'll get pregnant".
I simply replied, "Well, we've stopped actively trying already months ago."
And just as prediction, the good-intentioned guy asked, "Have you checked yourselves up?"
I explained to him our decision and then came the usual suggestion, "Why not try insemination or something like that? I know some friends have tried and it works for them."
I was thinking at that time, "Yeah, sure, I know you have good intention and you probably want to tell me not to give up, but you DO NOT KNOW FOR SURE that children are God's plans for us."
I managed to write, "Well, we've just decided that we don't want to try anything else 'coz I know some people who've tried everything, yet nothing works for them."
And sure enough, he continued with a dose of hope, "I'm sure you'll have your own kid(s) someday."
So I voiced my thought in a non-aggressive way, "Well, I've learnt to be thankful with or without kids. Besides, you'll never know if God really wants us to have kids or not, right?"
He finally said, "Yes, you're right. God's plans are always the best and His help never comes late nor early."
Yeah, yeah, can we change the subject now, please? was what I had in mind at that time. At least he didn't start asking the other typical question: "Why don't you adopt?" Then I'd definitely blew up ha ha ha...
It seems to me that good-intentioned people want to:
a. Know if we really do want kids or not.
b. If we do want kids and we have tried for a while without any result, then they would give us different pieces of advice on what to do.
c. If we have decided not to try anything or we've tried many things with no result, then they'd ask why we don't just adopt. ---> and it really amazes me that those people who have NEVER really had to even think about adoption are the ones who usually ask this question.
d. Then they'd usually end with a good dose of hope and or Biblical quotes: I'm sure you'll have kids someday, just think positively...yadda yadda yadda...
Phew!!! Well, pardon me for having a defensive front. I'm having my PMS right now and I just need to vent. It was good enough that I could control myself and not use capitals in my replies to him or growl in text he he he...
Anyway, on a positive note, I feel HAPPY that I manage not to kill any of my plant babies so far (thus proving it wrong that I'm a plant killer)...and hope that flowers will bloom sometime next month...
A pic of my babies in our garden:
