breaking the seal

Given the utter lack of posts for the past 2+ months I suppose it goes without saying that I’ve been a terrible blogger.

Or maybe I was just on a break?  Yes, that sounds better doesn’t it?

Since it’s actually been strangely stressful trying to figure out what to post after so much silence, I’m just going to dive straight into the deep end.  I’ll figure out how to do this again.

I’m not having a good day today.  I threw up last night before bed and again after I woke up this morning, hence the staying home from work and posting in the middle of the day.  Before anyone gets any crazy ideas, I’m definitely not pregnant.  I know this because like the pee-stick addict that I am, I did test right before I got my last period a couple weeks ago (it was negative, obviously) and my OPK today was positive after having been negative the past few days.

So yeah, we are not TTC yet but I already have a problem with peeing-on-things, so next month when we are (hopefully) actually allowed to TTC should be really interesting.  Obsessive might actually be the word I’m looking for here.

Anyway, outside of feeling like garbage today, for the most part I’ve been doing pretty well physically.  I am now completely off the Cellcept and solely on Imuran as of the end of February.  Initially my labs were showing an increase in my AST/ALT numbers (liver enzymes) which could have been bad, but then they started to decrease and now seem to be holding steady at just a touch above normal (which both doctors agree is fine as long as there is no trend upward, right now they are at 44 and 97 respectively).

I think my body is actually tolerating the Imuran better than it did the Cellcept because a lot of gastrointestinal issues I had before have suddenly disappeared.  It never really occurred to me that they were being caused by the Cellcept because I’d had them for so long but, I did take Cellcept for nearly eight straight years, so my guess is that it started happening slowly over the years and I didn’t make the connection.  When they put me on the really high dose after my last flare, I did have terrible stomach issues so it makes a lot of sense now that I have the Imuran to compare to.

I’ve also been closely monitored (as the vein in my right arm can attest to) and am showing no signs of the rare blood disorder that Imuran can cause.  I am mildly anemic, but that’s kind of always the case and it’s not getting worse (again it’s the trend that my doctors seem to care about).  Actually, I guess my anemia is so “meh” compared to when I’ve flared in the past that neither of my doctors have even mentioned it to me (another reason I always request to be cc-ed on my lab results).

I am trying really, really hard to be all care-free and lackadaisical and actually do what I always say I want to do, which is leave this in God’s hands.

I am, as usual, mostly failing.

The impatient, control-freak in me has been obsessively studying my period tracker notes and google-ing things like “fertility foods” and “how to conceive quickly.”

I know none of this is actually helpful.  None of the google searches have come up with anything I don’t already know from years of reading infertility blogs.  I suppose if it was as simple as doing a google search, there would be no IF blogs at all.

And while it is somewhat comforting knowing that I have pretty clear signs of ovulation each month, I know (also from reading IF blogs) that this doesn’t really guarantee anything.

(But yes, it is a small source of pride for me in looking back on all those notes, that wow, my body is actually probably doing one thing right!  Yay!  Where’s my cookie?)

The truth is, I’m pretty disappointed in my inability to just let go.  I feel like the lesson God has been trying to teach me over the past three years – that things happen in HIS time and not mine – hasn’t sunk in.  And I’m kind of afraid of what that means.

As I mentioned above, we’re one month away from being cleared to TTC.

Four short (endless) weeks away.

I vacillate between hope and joy, and fear and anxiety.  Every time I start to feel those first two feelings, I can’t help but think about the fact that two years ago, I was also so close and then everything fell to pieces.  It’s almost like I have PTSD about being back in this same (emotional) place and I can’t help but feel like it’s all going to slip away again.

And it occurred to me the other day that in my mind, I’ve consistently viewed being allowed to TTC as the finish line, when in reality that’s like the one mile marker of a marathon.  I’m so far from the finish line it’s not even funny.

If this read like a spectacular ramble, that’s because it was.  It felt really good to get some of this off my chest, I’ve been wanting to write but the task just seemed so gargantuan for some reason.  I do have a lot of things I want to write about so hopefully now that I’ve broken the seal, it’ll be easier to come back. 

now i’m just rambling

I wanted to try and write something a little more cheery after yesterday’s festival of sadness and self-pity. Mainly because I personally really hate seeing such depressing stuff as my top post.

But I got nothing.

Okay, well, it is Friday right? Can’t be mad about that.

Except now I’m going to go into my laundry list of reasons for not being thrilled for this particular weekend. With the caveat that it is still definitely better than the work week, I just like to complain.

I get to go to the lab again for a poking tomorrow. I’m hoping just two vials this time though and preferrably not the big needle so I don’t look like a heroin addict on Monday, like I so often do. I don’t know why some phlebotomists feel the need to use the big needle on me, I have good veins, I don’t need the big needle! But I never speak up and tell them this because I’m kind of a doormat that hates confrontation. Also, I prefer not to question people who are about to stab me with the big needle.

The Superbowl is also depressing me in a, man, it is so awesome to feel depressed over something as trivial as sports, kind of way. Of course, it would be much more awesome if I were feeling excited for the Superbowl because the Niners were about to beat the Pats in it. As it is, I’m stuck cheering for the Giants – the team that broke my heart two short weeks ago! – and feeling like the truth is I’m not going to feel happy about the result of this game either way.

Like I said though, it actually does feel nice to feel depressed over a game instead of over whether or not I’ll ever achieve the one and only goal in my life that I had assumed would take zero effort to achieve.

But I’m not ready to get into all of that again, so instead a funny story from yesterday. I was driving home and Paul was checking his voicemail when he started laughing at a message. It turns out the flower shop he orders my Valentine’s Day flowers from every year was calling because they hadn’t gotten an order from him this year – he didn’t call them back so now they probably think we broke up haha!

In case you’re wondering why no flowers this year? I told him he didn’t need to. Sometimes I feel bad because I can be so unromantic and my husband loves surprises and flowers and all of that stuff, so I feel like I can just never give him the reaction he’s looking for. I think it’s really sweet, but it’s also just not something I feel like I need from him. This is going to sound all kinds of gross, but he is so amazingly sweet and thoughtful every day that there’s just not many more points he can score by going big a few days out of the year. The man cooks, cleans, works full time, goes shopping for me, wakes up at 4:30 a.m. to drop me off at the office (even though he starts at 8 a.m.!) and somehow also manages to never lose his temper even though he is married to a crazy person.

When we first started dating eight years ago, every. single. one. of my guy friends was predicting that he’d stop doing things, like opening the car door for me, within six months. Then when we got engaged a year and a half later and he was still opening the car door for me? They all said they were now sure it would end after the wedding.

(Incidentally, now you also know the apparent reason most men get married – so they don’t have to open the car door for you anymore).

Anyway, here we are five years later and I just have one thing to say, every single one of them was wrong. Every. Single. One.

The only thing wrong with this man is that he is attracted to me. But I can live with that.

He heard me

After I hit publish on my last post, I ran out the door to pick up Paul from work, just like I do every day.

As I was driving, Strong Enough by Matthew West came on the radio.

I’m not going to lie and say it pulled me out of this emotional pit I’ve fallen into.  Or that it suddenly made me feel like everything is going to be okay.  Or even that it prevented me from almost bursting into tears in the middle of a crowded grocery store not thirty minutes later, as I told Paul all the things I wrote on my blog today.

But, at least for those four minutes and three seconds, it did make me feel like even though I meant to blog as though no one was reading, He heard me.

And for that I’m thankful.

You must, You must think I’m strong
To give me what I’m going through
Well forgive me, forgive me if I’m wrong
But this looks like more than I can do
On my own

I know I’m not strong enough
To be everything that I’m supposed to be
I give up
I’m not strong enough
Hands of mercy won’t You cover me?
Lord right now I’m asking You to be
Strong enough
For the both of us

Well maybe, maybe that’s the point
To reach the point of giving up
Cause when I’m finally, finally at rock bottom
Well that’s when I start looking up
And reaching out

Cause I’m broken down to nothing
But I’m still holding onto the one thing
You are God and You are strong
When I am weak

I can do all things
Through Christ who gives me strength
I don’t have to be
Strong enough

cause all the dreams you never thought you’d lose, get tossed along the way

When I started writing on the internet twelve years ago (twelve years ago this month actually), I didn’t know.

I didn’t know what the future would be like. I didn’t know the things I would experience.  I honestly couldn’t imagine what anything beyond the next few weeks of my life would look like.

And so, for years, I shared my place on the internet with far too many people.  I shared without discretion.  Hell, I had the damn link posted on my AIM profile for God knows how long.

Now I wonder what this blog would have looked like if I hadn’t done that.  And you know what? I’ll never know.

I don’t know how many people from my “real” life have kept the link somewhere.  How many people have forgotten about it but still have it saved in a favorites list they scan through at random.  How many people still check in from time to time when they are bored and see me in their list of FB friends.  I don’t have a clue.

And the truth is, I hate that.  I’ve thought so many times about shutting this place down.  Every year I struggle with the idea of not renewing this domain.  Running away from my little home here on the internet, the one I’ve lived at for over a decade.

But I don’t have the balls to do it.  I don’t know if I ever will.  You see, after writing here for so long this has become as much a part of my identity as anything else in my life that means anything.

Maybe that’s weird, but, well, so am I.  Clearly.

So the way I see it, I have two choices.  I can start being honest here again and have this continue to mean something.  Or I can post pictures of my cat and talk about the weather and have this place fade to the point where it means nothing to me anymore and the only option left will be to start over.

For now, I’m going to give option one a try.

You know this quote?

Work like you don’t need money. Love like you’ve never been hurt. And dance like no one’s watching.

Here is my best attempt at blogging like no one’s reading.

I’m starting here and now.  And with any luck this won’t end up like so many “real” posts I’ve started over the past who knows how long – in the drafts folder, or more likely, in the trash folder.

So the truth is, I’m a fucking mess.  A hot, disgusting, messed up mess.

I feel more broken than I have in a long time.

I spent the last five days in my room, mostly in bed.  I have withdrawn from everything.  From my friends, from thinking about the future, from the ability to hope for anything good to happen.

I broke down completely on Sunday and spent most of the day crying.  Over what exactly?  I don’t know.

I think about things and then I hate myself for them.  I’m going to be in two of my best friends’ weddings this year and all I can really think is how it’s going to feel when they get pregnant before I do.  And then I hate myself even more for thinking that.

Because I wish I knew how to just be happy for them, but I can’t think about them moving forward in their lives without feeling like I’m going backwards.

I hate this vicious cycle of sadness, bitterness, guilt, self-hatred, more sadness, etc.

I hate that I can’t even really bring myself to open Facebook anymore because I don’t want to see it.  I don’t want to see other people living their lives because I feel like I don’t know how to live mine anymore.

I hate that I’m being fake every day when I congratulate people over their pregnancies, over new babies, over second or third babies.  When I patiently listen to people complain about how hard it is to be a parent.

It makes me want to die when I hear things like that.

I hate how scared I am of the future now.  I feel like I’ve stopped knowing how to imagine good things happening.

Yes, I’ve always had my struggles with depression, but I think no matter how bad it got before, there was always a little part of me that had hope that something better was coming.

I feel like that part of me is gone now.

All I can see is how things can go wrong.  And all I can feel is scared.

Terrified, even.

Broken, lost, hopeless, helpless.

I was talking to a good friend the other day, really the only person “in real life” that I’ve been able to talk about this honestly with at all, about how as wonderful as Paul has been, sometimes it’s hard because I don’t feel like we’re totally on the same page.

He is so fucking hopeful.  And optimistic.  That somehow this is going to all work out.  That I will be able to get pregnant, that the baby will make it to viability, that we will have a baby in our home at the end of this long road we’ve been walking.

I don’t know.  Maybe it is better that one of us feels that way.  Maybe someone needs to?

I know this is not the right way for me to be approaching all of this.  Especially right now in the middle of transitioning meds and preparing my body to be a hospitable place to house a fragile life that will be 100% dependent on it for nine months.

But I think that’s also why I feel this way.  Because I’m so close and I feel so far away.  I have no confidence in this broken down, beat up body.

And I feel like I’ve already failed by not being able to get completely off the meds for this.  I feel guilty that if I do get pregnant, my baby is going to be at risk just for the fact that it’s in this POS body.  That I’ll be exposing it to all these unknowns because I have to keep taking meds for the duration of any pregnancy.  And then I feel selfish because I still want so badly to be pregnant.

In my really low moments, I think that this must be why God doesn’t want me to have a baby.  Because I’m a horrible person and I don’t deserve one. 

And I know this is ridiculous, because if anyone, my friend I mentioned above, my cousin who has now had two miscarriages, anyone going through all this BS ever said they felt that way about themselves, I would tell them how ridiculous they were being, that God doesn’t pick and choose who to give babies to by who “deserves” them (I used to watch Teen Mom, after all).  But this is the thought I torture myself with anyway.  Because it feels true.

I’m trying to keep moving forward.  Get up out of bed.  Put one foot in front of the other.  Swallow the tears that come randomly throughout the day.

Trying to figure out how to get the hope back.

But I don’t know.

like sands through the hourglass

When I moved this blog to wordpress a year and a half ago, I meant for the layout to be a temporary one.  Until I had the time and motivation to figure out how to edit the stylesheets to my liking, until I had the right image to turn into a new banner, until I had the right inspiration.

As you can probably tell, there was no inspiration.  But I did finally just get so sick of looking at the old layout, that I felt the need to replace it with something, anything.  I really started to hate that image, which was just a blown up, pixelated version from the prior layout I had on blogger.  For some reason I finally just needed something to change.

Maybe it was a metaphor for something more.  Probably.  Obviously?

Oh and I also realized that I’m way too old to learn new things.  So I’ll just have to live with slowly tweaking this prepackaged template.

reach down your hand in your pocket, pull out some hope for me

I have been writing.  I stopped taking pictures, but I have been writing.  I want to get back on the picture thing but these past few days I have been in a dark emotional hole and the apathy…oh the apathy.

I am currently working on a post that is already nearly 6,000 words long – and I’ve only just scratched the surface.  I thought that writing all of it, writing the story of how I got to the present, would help.  Would pull me out of this funk I’ve been sinking into.

But so far I don’t think it has.  The catharsis I thought would come is nowhere to be found.  In fact, I think I feel worse.

But I do plan to keep going, to tell the story if only because it’s never been told before.  Maybe it won’t be until the end that everything will become clear to me and I can stop tormenting myself with the past.

Well I’m so terrified of no one else but me
But I’m here all the time
So I won’t go away

It’s been a long day. A long year. Sometimes it feels like a long life.

a sports analogy

Devastating.

That is the only way to describe yesterday.  I nearly lost my voice from all the screaming and went to bed sad and disappointed.

Yes, I’m talking about the Niners.  I think other than my fellow fans in red and gold, only those in Baltimore can feel my pain today.

Sigh.

This is why following sports can be so hard.  Your emotions rise and fall on the performance of others, people you have no control over (I’m looking at you Kyle Williams!) despite wearing your lucky shirt or following a pre-game routine or avoiding certain behaviors that could be seen as “jinxing” them.

It’s weird how similar it feels sometimes to my journey towards pregnancy.  How often I’ve felt like an observer on the sidelines, breath held, lucky hat on my head, fingers crossed, just hoping, wishing, praying for the ball to cross that line.

I know I have much more control over my health than I do a football game, but sometimes the lupus does make me feel just as powerless.  In my lowest moments I can’t help but feel like despite my best efforts, I can’t win.  Right now, I’m fighting a cold that I’m terrified will send me into a flare – I’m sure my doctors would attribute a flare right now to me switching meds and not simply the stress getting sick puts on my body, particularly when my work schedule is such that I can’t take time off to properly rest.

(And in case you’re wondering, what happens if I get sick during pregnancy?  I plan to tell my boss VERY early on despite common practice because I do plan on doing whatever I need to, including missing as much work as necessary, to maintain a healthy pregnancy.  But it’s hard to tell your company this BEFORE you even get pregnant).

I guess all I can do is keep doing what I can to stay healthy and at the end of the day, keep hoping for victory.

hodge podge

I had a really angry, bitter moment today.  Okay, clearly I have a lot of those every day, but this was one of those where I found myself suddenly typing in all caps and wanting to rage at anyone who would listen.  I was at work so luckily I managed to keep my audience down to the hubs and our other buddy who is in a Bloomberg chat with us.

Let’s reach into the archives for a moment and revisit this post from October 2010 when I found out that Paul’s douchey childhood best friend had a child out of wedlock.  I don’t know if I ever mentioned this here, but I was right about her being young (I think she had just turned twenty when the baby was born).  I had met some of his girlfriends when he was living here in the states and started calling all of them Bambi because he liked girls who were young and naive and he switched them out often enough (and they were similar enough) that I didn’t even bother trying to remember their names.

Anyway, he came up today in conversation because he had sent Paul some pictures of a copper mine they just found on his land in the Philippines and bragging about how he now (literally) has a private army to protect him (because kidnappings of rich folks are common in the PI).  I remarked casually that he better also have someone guarding his gf and their kid and Paul casually mentioned back, “Oh he has a new gf now.”  Um, of course he does.  And she’s probably twelve and he will probably knock her up too because he is a scumbag douchehole and I officially hate his guts.  He lives such a fucking charmed life it makes me sick.  I don’t know why I have such a visceral reaction to him in particular, but I do.  It probably has something to do with the fact that Paul always has an excuse for him and it doesn’t even make sense to me how they are still friends because they are so different and have such completely opposite moral codes (they have been best friends since they were six years old and maintain their friendship now even though they live on different sides of the world).

It’s just NOT FAIR.  And I know that all this “infertility stuff” is one giant lesson in how fucking unfair life is, but still – IT’S SO FUCKING UNFAIR that this cradle-robbing prick has managed to spread his seed.  Ugh.

***

As I mentioned briefly in my last post rant, I switched meds last weekend.  I did finally hear back from the doctor last week and was told that based on the test they ran I didn’t seem to be at risk for my WBC crapping out.  So, yay.  He did throw in the caveat once again, “if this is still what you want to do….” before he went on to ask me where they should send the prescription.  I also have to go get my blood drawn again next week and probably every two weeks or so for the next eight weeks.  I want to be excited about this, but I also don’t want to get my hopes up.  I am supposed to be in a wedding in August and I actually let myself think the thought, “What if I get a bridesmaid dress and then can’t fit into it because I’m big and pregnant?”  Then I quickly smashed the thought of my head because there are still so many things that could go wrong between now and me being pregnant and carrying to full term.  Is it bad for me to think this way?  Am I dooming myself to failure?  Or just acting out of self-preservation?  I wish I knew the answer.

***

Now that I’m officially on some sort of path towards fixing up the ol’ body in order to gestate another person, I really need to figure out how to kick my Am.bien habit.  It’s on the backburner right now while I take care of some other stuff and adjust to the new meds.  Lack of sleep always causes me to flare so I figure it’s probably not ideal to go cold turkey.  I need to figure out some sort of regimen to taper down over the next few months while I’m still on the Cell.cept anyway.

I think Paul will be glad when I quit because I’ve had some weird nights lately in my hazy Amb.ien induced fog.  On Tuesday, for some reason I decided it would be a good idea to go up the stairs, in the dark, with a bowl of pears in one hand and a plate of rice in the other.  Of course, I tripped and fell on the way up and broke the plate and Paul found me standing, confused in the stairwell.  He sent me up to the room and cleaned up the mess.

The next night I think I had some sort of meltdown where I spewed all my secret fears about, “What if I flare after the baby is born and I die?” and told him that I wanted him to find a nice woman to get remarried to and raise our imaginary child with.  I also vaguely remember repeating over and over again that he is too good for me and asking him why he was even with me.  The only reason this even came back to me at all is because I woke up with incredibly red, puffy eyes.  The sad thing is, it was all true.  It’s all stuff I’ve thought so many times in my head, especially recently as we move towards pregnancy being a real possibility.  I have a lot of fears and worries.  I also, clearly, have low self-esteem.

***

Completely switching gears now, I’m an SF gal, so you know I had to mention this at some point – GO NINERS!  I was a little too young for the Joe Montana glory days, but I did get really into football during the tail-end of the Steve Young years.  I do get quite passionate about teams that I follow so I kind of had to distance myself from football the past nine years because the 9ers were just so awful and disappointing.  I love being able to watch games again without being in a foul mood afterwards!  One win away from another Superbowl and I actually feel like we have a shot!  The game against the Saints last weekend was amazing, I couldn’t stop screaming at the TV during the last four minutes (YES! NO! YES! NOOO! YESSSSSSSSSSS!) and I’m hoping this Sunday will be equally as exciting with another win for the home team!  A good game has always been the one thing that can take my mind off anything else I’m struggling with so this is just what I need.

***

Also, football related, I was really pulling for Tim Tebow and the Broncos last week and was sad to see them lose, though it was expected.  If I don’t have a horse in the race, I typically cheer for the underdog regardless (so I NEVER cheer for the Pats – yuck) but after watching the Steelers game, I couldn’t help but want the Broncos Cinderella run to continue (although they would have eventually lost to the Niners in the Superbowl anyway ^^).

I honestly only watched the Niners this season so I hadn’t actually even seen the Broncos play up until the game against the Steelers and had only heard about “Tebowing” – and mostly all negative things about it.  Before seeing it with my own eyes, I thought, “Eh, it does sound kind of like he’s being a little too flamboyant about it and could be doing more harm than good,” but after I actually saw what he does, it really didn’t seem that bad to me.  It kind of just seems like he loves God and praises God in everything he does and isn’t ashamed of what he believes.  Which I respect.  Before the Broncos-Patriots game I watched some special they had on him with a lot of candid video of him on the field during games and that only cemented my belief that he is a genuinely good guy who is just being a genuine Christian and not apologizing for it (lots of footage of him encouraging/consoling his teammates, singing gospels to himself and saying little prayers).

I don’t really get why people hate on him, although it did remind me of something that Michael Chang (the tennis player) spoke about when he said that the media was not at all comfortable when he talked about his faith as he was having success in his tennis career.  He said he was shocked by the fact that he was openly mocked by the press for it, so I guess it is probably a similar situation here.

Like all that hubbub over the Tebow Superbowl commercial a couple years ago that turned out to be a positive commercial celebrating life without even mentioning abortion.  I didn’t know much about Tebow at the time but still remember being confused about what the big deal was when I actually saw the commercial vs all the stuff I had heard about it.  I remember all the press coming out about it before the commercial had even aired and people saying it was “offensive” or “holier than thou.”  It turned out to be his mom saying he was her miracle baby and how she had almost lost him many times (I think this article does a pretty good job of summing up the “controversy” – you can see the video here).  If someone can give me an actual explanation as to why that ad was so “offensive” I’d love to hear it.  It’s weird to me how people can be so upset about Christians talking about their beliefs – are Christians now the only Americans that no longer have their first amendment rights?

***

I do have Project 366 pictures to post as soon as I gather up enough energy to upload them.  To be honest, some of them are half-assed iPhone pictures, but I’m still proud of myself for taking at least one picture every day!

In which my first “real” post of the year is a rant written on my iPhone

Not in a good place right now. This is a vent more than an actual post and written from my iPhone so apologies in advance for any typos or grammar issues as proof reading will be minimal.

I started my new meds over the weekend – more on that later – and because of that I’m quitting a bad habit I should have quit long ago. As a result I’m cranky and my appetite is FUBAR. I feel like total shit.

Last night when I went to go pickup Paul I discovered our car battery was completely dead. It wouldn’t even turn over when we used our portable battery. We thought it was still under warranty so we figured we would wait til tomorrow (today) get it jumped and take it straight to the dealership.

I rushed home after work to have AAA come jump the car so I could then rush to the dealership for the 4pm appt. Meanwhile a buddy I haven’t seen for 2+ years texted me that he was in town from Miami for a couple hours today and wanted to meet up if I had time. He came over and waited with me for AAA.

When the tow truck came the guy said he could replace the battery for $105 total on the spot. I declined because I thought Paul had confirmed when he made the appt that we were still under warranty.

Of course that was not the case as I discovered AFTER driving 30min to the dealership. In fact it will cost $130 and I have to wait an hour which means I will be stuck in massive traffic trying to get back into SF during the peak of rush hour. And for this privilege I will pay an extra $25.

I could have been at home, catching up with an old friend. Instead I’m sitting in a waiting room, pissed beyond belief and not even sure who to be mad at. Kind of mad at myself for not explicitly asking Paul to check that this was covered and this wouldn’t all be one giant waste of my time. Shit like this does not help my obsessive need for control and asking a million questions whenever someone else is doing something gin my behalf.

End rant. For now.

I’ll get over it. I know there are worse things.

9/366

I figured this project is not just supposed to be about gorgeous scenery and interesting pictures, it’s a way to show people the things I see every day.  The fixtures in my life as well as sunsets and views of the bay.  So I had my pill bottles huddle up as close as they could for a photo shoot.