Barren Mare

They paved the internet and put up a parking lot

For a few days now*, I've been ruminating on a recent post from Pru about Infertility blogging: the Halcyon Days Gone By. It made me all wistful and nostalgic and even a little...homesick. It was a time in my life where I had little else to do in the evenings but roam the internets, read blogs, write comments, write my own posts (I used to try to post every other day! Imagine!). The quality of the company was just stupendous. There was, for at least a short time, a real sense of community and togetherness; I for one had the feeling I had found my tribe and my sad, bitter little infertile voice could for once be raised as loud as I wished. It was an amazing revelation to me to learn that people could have serious, soul-destroying problems and still be funny, still laugh about things, still find a  snarky comic joy during some very bleak moments.  

If you are a blogger now and weren't around then, this is not to make you feel all left out. To be honest, even though I have fallen out of the habit of reading so widely, I had kind of assumed that in some ways, the tradition continued on unabated, although it did seem to me at one point that there were now entirely too many blogs to humanly keep track of. That was part of the beauty of the old days, I think. It used to be on Infertility Island, everyone knew their neighbour and nobody locked their tent at night. But the population seems to have grown and grown. Odd having a overpopulation crisis in a group of people unable to populate themselves, but there you go. I even heard a rumour that there may be a brand new condominium going in by the ferry dock.

For me, blogging changed irrevocably due to three factors. The first, and most serious, was that E. found out about the blog a couple years ago around the time of our first near break-up. Well, I say "found out" but in reality, I did tell him. I think we were having a huge fight about the underlying web of secrets and lies in our relationship and it seemed kind of disingenious to be keeping it from him, considering what a huge amount of time and effort I was spending online. He wasn't particulary amused about it and even though he indicated he wasn't going to read it, from then on I felt eyeballs on the back of my shoulderblades whenever I sat down to write. And I started doing a lot of undesirable self-editing.  

And that self-editing became even more self conscious after I got trainwrecked. I hate to even bring this up, since it was a ridiculous incident and it bothers me in the extreme that those sad little fucks (who went around targeting sites to subject to ridicule) might have somehow, in any small way, gotten to me. But it did make me question to some degree as to how my writing might be coming across. That can be an insidious mental journey to take, and in my opinion, one guaranteed to fuck with your blogging head. Who is reading? How often? Do they like me? Do they still like me? Why do they like me? Will they like me if I say...this. What about that? Oh God, I really want to say that but then they might hate me and stop reading. Or maybe they are only reading because they hate me. Oh God, I hate me. Maybe I should just give it all up and work on my knitting. Etc.

The third thing was, obviously, getting pregnant with Botany, her subsequent birth and the mayhem of my ensuing life since then. I no longer have an iota of the free time I used to for the internet; most of my days are spent patching the leaks in the liferaft and trying to keep us afloat (all the while singing a rousing chorus of Incy Wincy Spider at top volume). So it's perhaps easy to wrap up the fondness I felt for the Halcyon Days with the same longing for say, a long lie-in followed by a leisurely coffee while reading the Sunday papers. Or even just thirty uninterrupted seconds to pee in peace.      

Anyway, I am not sure where I am going with this little walk down memory lane. But if you're out there blogging, wondering in Jack Johnson fashion- where'd all the good people go, then I hope you somehow manage to carve out your own little happy corner of cyberspace. Everyone should have their own Halycon era. For no matter what fresh hell comes along in future, I think I will always be the better for having experienced that time.

*Nothing gets done quickly around here anymore. I have grey roots showing, I may never reach the bottom of my laundry basket and there are still cardboard boxes from the move sitting in the hall awaiting recycling. Admittedly, the boxes do make great tunnels in which Botany can play. 

The view from the desert

OK.  I'm ready to admit that I suck at finding the time to blog; which is a shame because when I do get around to it, it is with such sweet, sweet pleasure that I push the "publish" button. 

Things here are...well, a trifle chaotic, largely owing to the fact that we decided to buy another house without having sold this one. The sound you hear is me thwacking myself hard on the head with my own hand. This is at least the second or third time I have embarked on such a utterly stupid plan.  What I can I say, clearly I get a curious thrill out of dicing with financial catastrophe.  At the moment I am in that hazy space of denial/blind panic with lots of number- crunching doodles on the backs of odd bits of paper.  I suppose all will be fine if the nice bank people give us a punishingly large loan.  Huzzah! And if we don't eat, buy anything or go anywhere until we sell this place.  Huh. 

Did I mention that the car sorta needs a half a new engine?  And Christmas is coming?

Anyway, there is other stuff afoot with treatmenty things.  But aside from the fact that I am not sure if we would be able to pay for it, I find another strange hesitation in talking about it. You see, the last time we embarked on fertility treatment, I was really very open about the situation with- well- just about everyone I know.  I didn't exactly take out a full page advert in the local newspaper to announce that we were doing IVF, but neither did I make any efforts to cover it up, and where appropriate (and perhaps sometimes where inappropriate), I disclosed the fact fully and frankly. I told my boss. I told my boss's boss (who may have in turn told his boss).  I told the human resources department, most of my colleagues, all of my friends, my family, E.'s family, a couple of long lost relatives, a neighbour, possibly a few bar staff down at the local pub.  Oh, and lest we forget, I shared the blow- by- blow with the wide worlds of internets.   

In hindsight, I marvel at this. Especially nowadays, when I barely tell my boss whether I am leaving for the day or just going out for a cup of coffee. 

I now appreciate that in more ways than one, at that point I was really having a terrible time suppressing what sometimes felt like a geyser of anguish welling up within me. It was horrible, realising that we really did have a problem- that this mess was happening to me.  To meeeeeee!  Meeeee!  And so to try to pretend that I wasn't going through this big, scary, wretched thing just felt like an added burden during what was already a mightily stressful time.

So if the subject came up, or if I felt like talking about it, or if it ostensibly made it easier to "share" what was going on, then I more or less spilled it forth with whomever was in my line of conversational flow at the time. Naively, I think I also somehow felt it would be "healthier" for all concerned if if they knew what I was going through- and instead of wasting energy on trying to defuse the inevitable solicitious queries, gossip and stupid comments, I could just cut to chase. 

Regretfully, I didn't get the result I was looking for there. I'm not saying my own little trauma warranted the whole world pivoting on its heel to provide me with attentive, soothing comfort. But while many people were kind and supportive, on the whole, there wasn't a sudden outpouring of empathy.  The stupid comments didn't stop, and in some cases, just got stupider. And because I had been so open and honest, it felt like even more of a slap in the face when I was on the receiving end of what I perceived as inappropriate reactions from people who had been informed and from whom I consequently expected better.   

What I know now is this: going through infertility treatment is basically going to suck ass no matter how you cut it. With the possible exception of the wagon-circling of like-minded friends or fellow infertiles, there's no way around the fact that it's by and large a lonely journey. And it doesn't matter how many people you tell- only you have the full panoramic vision of the strange, thrilling, terrifying landscape before you. No one, not even the people you love best, are really coming with you- not all the way, not completely.

And so- present company excluded, of course,- I feel like I don't really want to waste any more energy trying to describe the view from the desert, from my own part of the island- a place where most people I meet have never been and will never have the misfortune to go.

Jessica

There's an empty tent on Infertility Island tonight.  The occupant hasn't boarded the ferry, hasn't left us in the usual way.  But she is gone all the same, and she is not coming back. How this breaks my heart.   

Farewell, Jessica, also known as Cancerbaby.  You will be sorely missed by many.

Thank you for sharing your life with us.

The Prufrock Question

Well, I'm back from my trip. It was both remarkably delightful and slightly unsettling. Delightful in the sense that it was one of those trips where things seem to coalesce in a wonderful combination of delicious perfection – great weather, an ideal pace, fantastic food, lovely lodging, and best of all, truly fantastic company. We spent a few days visiting dear friends who have just bought a farmhouse in the country. And it was one of those weekends that becomes the most glorious sort of memory- roasting marshmallows on a campfire, sides aching from laughing so hard, staying up until 2.30 in the morning, playing guitars, drinking whisky and talking, talking, talking.

The unsettling part was the hard thump of realisation that in fact, I really want my life to look less like the one I am leading, and more like that of my friends. I was filled with a renewed yearning to be in a place where I could do the kinds of things they are doing- writing, creating, building a future that enables a happy balancing of worlds. The barn behind the farmhouse will hopefully become a small recording studio, the outbuildings will become offices and writing spaces. And I found myself longing for an existence comprised more of that and less of this. Wishing I had the means, time and the space to turn some of what I think and feel into a more tangible art.

These questions felt all the more potent to me having listened to my friend's recently completed album, a stunning work based on the experience of losing a beloved sister whose untimely death still resonates deep through the lives of those who knew her. And in creating this piece, my friend has formed both a lasting memorial to her sister as well as to her own self during that time, the two becoming intertwined in a beautiful, unforgettable legacy.

If there are to be no children for me, it seems that maybe there ought to be something else like this, to shimmer in the space I once occupied. Something to leave a lasting trace, however slight, of who I am. To import some meaning as to what my life was about, what I wanted it to be. To take the place of that piece of me that would have looked out through my son or daughter's eyes.

I've thought these things before. At times I wonder if it's really just hubris and vanity talking- that ultimately, I just have to accept that perhaps I'm not meant to be remembered always. That perhaps the mermaids will not only not sing to me, they won't sing of me. That things fade away, or are lost forever.

Of course, that too can be freeing- not to worry, to let it all go. But what this trip, this recent experience reminded me once again is that to face a life without children is to confront, even in a small way, one's own ultimate mortality. To accept the finality that it's not just the gene pool that ends with me, but seemingly everything else too.

And to question- really question- exactly what, if anything, I can leave behind.

I was standing on the dock when that ship sailed

At the moment, E. and I are proceeding on the basis that for the foreseeable future, we will stay together. Of course, I can usually foresee about as far as next Tuesday, so that's not saying much. But I suppose it's better than endless day-in, day-out wobbling on the grim knife edge.

As part of this tentative re-negotiation of the relationship-that-was and the one that will be, we have obviously had a couple of things to talk about. One being: what we will do, if anything, about trying to have a family? What was interesting is that for the first time in a long time, this conversational tack didn't inspire me with either gut-wrenching fear, excited anticipation, or saddened flatness. My main reaction was a sort of benign indifference. Because at the end of the day, what is left to say?

In short, the options for us appear to be as follows: do nothing or do IVF or other treatment again.

The idea of doing IVF again at this point is, to my mind, frankly out of the question. Aside from the fact that the last go-round didn't go so well in terms of outcome, my view on it is that the whole process did play a big part in bringing this relationship to its fucking knees. Why would I want to go back there, and more importantly how can I even think of going back there? It's hard enough doing such treatment with somebody when you're in a rock solid situation;whereas less than two months ago I wasn't sure if E. and I were going to spending Christmas together. So the notion of sashaying off to the next round of IVF, as if all of that were a small blip on the radar, is completely ludicrious. Of course, I don't have a crystal ball, but if I was a betting girl, I wouldn't back that particular horse.

Listen, I have spent some long, hard, tearstained, wine-soaked hours over the last few months coming to terms with the idea that the life I wanted was probably not going to come about. I do hear a tiny voice in my head which plaintively cries out "But if you don't do anything now, you'll never have children". But on the whole, that has given way to something much sterner and harder. A cool, slightly detached voice, which says that in the present circumstances, embarking on the pursuit of further treatment at this stage is basically akin to sticking my finger in a light socket.

So, for now the answer is wait and see. If things improve to the point where I feel secure enough to go down that road, then who knows. It could take a long, long time to get to that point, and by that stage, I may want to even less than I do now.

I've learned to never say never in this game. Really though, deep down in my heart, it does feel like that particular ship has sailed. And my main concern is to learn to love and accept the dock I'm standing on, rather than forever mourning the loss of the high seas.

Seizing the Joy

A year ago , as I sat burbling into my Christmas pudding, I remember thinking one thing quite clearly: "At least this time next year, I'll know. I'll know whether we followed through with our treatment plans, and I'll know if we succeeded, or failed. I'll know if I am going to get pregnant in 2005. I won't be sitting around waiting for answers; I won't be forever on the sidelines while others go forward. I'll be on my way to the better things. Because better things must surely coming my way. Surely I am due some joy."

With the benefit of that great gift, hindsight, I now see how spectacularly naive that line of thinking was. Because in reality, I don't know a whole lot more than I did then. If anything, I know less. I have no idea why the treatment failed, and I don't know if I'll ever be pregnant. In the big scheme of things, I confess it doesn't even matter much right now. The answers I was looking for then have fallen away completely in the face of even larger, scarier problems. Never in a million years would I have expected the strange twists of the last several months. In my quest for one particular joy, I've come very close to losing a great many other important things.

What I now think is this: nothing much is certain. Today, I have my health, a lovely home, parents and friends who love me and will stand by me in bad times. There's no guarantee that tomorrow will necessarily bring anything better, because frankly, that's not how it seems to work. I've been waiting too long on this dark beach, searching the horizon for a sign of a rescue flare. I've been pacing up and down in one place, playing with the lighter in my hand but not sure I should go into the forest to gather some firewood for a bonfire of my own.

But now...now I think it's finally time to start making my own joy. Time to go out and seize handfuls of joy in both fists, as much as I can find. As much as I can carry.

I wish you all so much joy of your own, not just for Christmas but for every day. If it takes an effort to leave a familiar place of safety to go out looking for it, then I hope you know I'm not far away. I'm right here. I'm right beside you.

And I have cake.

Is that all there is?

Is that all there is ? Is that all there is ?
If that's all there is, my friends,
then let's keep dancing....

- Peggy Lee

Stripping away the reality of having children leaves me with two prospects. The first is a vast expanse of possibility and option. Unencumbered by the responsibility of offspring, the choices sometimes feel limitless.

Once the initial blastwave of the shock of failure had faded, this was very much my mindset. In fact, at one point I was positively alight with excitement about it. We could travel in style! I've always wanted to see the otherwordly ice flows of Antarctica. I could shop til I drop! Without having to set aside all that cash for fertility drugs and then diapers, all those covetous material goods could be mine for the taking. My closet would be full and my house would be grand.

Or more enticingly, we could quit our jobs! Move somewhere else! Take on exciting challenges, like converting a ramshackle farmhouse in the south of France into a B&B before going on TV (like everyone else in this country who does that) to talk about how our venture failed. Or something more worthwhile like building houses and digging wells in third world countries, something that would make a difference.

The other prospect I mentioned is much more mundane- and that is, that without children, things will stay pretty much as before. Oh sure, there will be various fillers in between the daily grind of work, gym and cleaning the house. Occasionally I muse about doing a bit of voluntary work, or taking up a minor, pleasurable hobby, such as rock climbing or playing the cello. We'll eat out from time to time, and see friends once in a while. It will be more of the same. It will be the status quo.

Lately, I think it's most likely that the second prospect will be the way it goes. That's not to say that there won't be adventures from time to time, or perhaps other intermittent upheavals. But what I am coming to realise is that life usually develops a status quo for a reason. Once you're into that set-up, those patterns, these routines- it becomes very hard to start imposing grand shake-ups. It usually takes an act of bravery, or perhaps desperation, to move off from that position of relative safety, however boring safety may be.

That was one thing that always struck me as rather nice about having children- that out of the sheer necessity of having a family to care for (with all that this entails), people suddenly start finding ways to manage new scenarios that they never would have contemplated before. Things change, because they have to. And certainly some of the changes may not be entirely welcome, but it's perhaps easier to look into the eyes of your child, and know there is a purpose behind it.

What I worry most about not having kids is this: that nothing will ever really change. That I will be stuck in this goddamn rut for the next thirty years until I retire. That all the days in between will be a search for something to fully fill the spaces that a child would have taken up. Something to close the gap between the life I wanted and the one I have. To me that always seems the biggest difference between those that want kids and those that do not. For some people, there is no gap- or at least not one caused by the lack of a child.

I also realise that children are not necessarily the final word in giving meaning and purpose to one's life. Last year I was voicing some of these concerns to my mother. What's going to happen to me if I never have a child, I asked. Is this it for me? Is this my life, then? Is that all there is?

Oh honey, she said, everyone thinks this at some point. Even people with children. You get older, and things don't turn out quite the way you thought they would and you wonder the very same thing. Is that all there is?

And I know she's probably right. It's just that I would so much rather be asking the question from the position of mother and parent, than from where I sit now.

Lost in the woods

I was in the middle of a complicated piece of work this afternoon, sitting at my desk and minding my own business- when suddenly and for no particular reason- I had a strange and vivid memory.

When I was a child, we lived in a house in the woods, in rural Nowheresville. Every day I walked down a quarter mile of gravel lane (past the scary dogs at the neighbouring farm) to catch the yellow school bus, and every day I trudged up the lane again, lugging my heavy school bag. Over the years, my parents gradually bought up all the parcels of woodland surrounding the family homestead, until we had our own little forest around us. It was peaceful, but isolated. On winter nights I used to wake up and press my face against the cold window, watching the deer grazing in the front lawn, a raw sliver of icy moon in stark branches against the sky.

My parents being of an environmentally friendly, economically conservative bent, the house was heated by a combination of a coal stove in the basement and a log burning fire in the living room. For my dad, the axe, the chain saw and the coal scuttle was a big part of daily life. Before I became too cranky and wild with teenage hormones, I would sometimes go into the deep woods with him to help chop logs and load the wheelbarrow full of firewood.

One day, I got lost. I had wandered off to find the stream which ran through the property to rinse my hands, and on the way back, I somehow missed the vague trail leading back to where my dad was working. In the forest in early winter, all the trees looked the same. Terrified, I tried to retrace my steps, looking for something familar, something recognisable. After an hour, I realised I was simply going around in a big circle, passing the same grey tree stump over and over. I was about to sit down to wait for someone to find me when I heard my father calling me- all that time, he had been so close by, virtually right next to me. We rolled the wheelbarrow home together. But I stopped spending so much time in the woods after that.

When the IVF failed, I lay on my bed with my hands folded across my stomach. E. went to make soothing cups of tea. And I had that dreadful feeling again- of someone who has walked a long, long way. Thousands of miles, through heat, storms and the darkest, blackest woods- only to discover that when I finally looked up from the path, I was right back where I started. That in fact, I hadn't moved an inch. All that pain and time and trouble, but the essential position was no different. Not pregnant. No baby.

I had gone around in a big circle in every sense of the word. It was a horrible, brutal realisation to discover that despite all our best efforts, we were simply, truly, back at square one with absolutely nothing to show for it. And some days, like today, it hurts to realise that this is where I stay- where I may be trapped forever.

I think what I have come to find hardest about infertility is that it's often very difficult, if not impossible, to find meaningful lessons from it. Everything about it feels so stupid and pointless. With many other challenging life experiences, we can sometimes turn around afterwards and say, "OK, that sucked the biggest of donkey balls, but as a result I am a better, wiser person. That which does not kill us makes us stronger, yadda yadda."

But with infertility, I often find it incredibly difficult to put a positive spin on the death of this particular dream. I can't yet find the good in it, at all. I can't see how the end result facing me is truly meant to balance out all the equations of my life. I know I don't want to keep going around in circles forever, but at times, I don't know how to begin to find my way back to safety either.

When you are this deep in the woods, all the trees look the same.

"Still Life with Gonal F"

Here's one I made earlier. A few of my favourite things. Ah, the art of ART.

See you on 21 September!

Because the sea is so great and my boat is so small

I clung on to the life raft of "late implantation bleeding" for nearly twenty four hours. It seemed like a real possibility at one point. In fact, it sustained me through the choppy seas of another day at work. Until once again, just before heading home, I visited my favourite bathroom cubicle. That stall has been the port in so many storms over the last couple years, so at least I was in familiar waters.

It became apparent that the life raft had sprung a fatal leak. I am now having what is undeniably the most expensive period of my life. There are sharks in this part of the ocean, and no doubt drawn by the smell of the blood, they moved in for the kill. The life raft went down, taking me with it. It's over.

I somehow managed to get to a small atoll, known locally in these parts as "Youarefucked." And there I sit now, with my heart breaking and my tears mixing with the salt spray. I can still see the lights from the campfires on the beach at Infertility Island not too far in the distance. When I feel a little stronger, I'll try to swim back. Because there's nothing else except a vast expanse of blue of the great, cruel sea in the other direction.

There is nowhere else for me to go.