So when the protagonist is suffering loss, she's simply saying in dialogue what I've written on this blog and in my journals. It's kind of bizarre, actually. Labeling it as fiction distances me from my own story, and when I read it, people don't necessarily know if it's really my story or not. I keep assuming everyone knows it's really my experiences I'm talking about, but so far you'd never know it if that's what people are thinking.
I'm taking the GRE next week and I'm really scared. I'm not doing so well on the practice tests. Well, I'm not doing so well on the math, that is. And the essays scare me. I'm supposed to be good at this stuff-- if I'm not, then I sure have been in the wrong field for the past six years-- but I keep expecting I'll get an average or mediocre score (4, 5) instead of something that shows writing talent. Although writing a persuasive essay and an analysis of a flawed argument in 30 minutes each is no easy task, and one could argue that it requires its own skill set (writing under pressure, writing extremely well in the first draft, etc.) which may or may not be germane to other, equally important writing skills (ability to take drafts and revise them; use of imagery in creative tasks, etc).
A lot is happening to me. Now that I'm writing this, I realize I haven't actually written about myself as myself in weeks. Not since my last blog. As I've said, I'm writing fiction for this fiction course. And while I'm shamelessly cannibalizing my journals for my fiction, still there is a kind of posturing or distancing that happens when I take my story and recast it as the story of someone other than me. It's true... I'm writing this reflecting on how profoundly disorienting and not altogether satisfying that action has been. I keep returning to the pages with a kind of reluctance. I thought it was because I was feeling overwhelmed by all the other things I've had to be doing (studying for the GRE, preparing my own lessons, etc.), but actually I think on some level I continue to feel out of place in fiction. That it's not my world. Nothing feels so totally right and true as this kind of writing, the kind I'm doing right now: writing in which I mine myself for the sparks of thoughts, then work to put words to them or to put them into words. Twice now in the past few weeks I've heard the story of how a famous poet crafted her poems when she was a young girl: she would be in a field, and she would see and feel the poem coming toward her across the field. And she had to run into the house to get paper and pencil to catch the poem before it swept through the house and away from her forever. Each time I hear this story, I can't help but ask myself why this kid never figured out she ought to bring paper and pencil with her when she was out in the field. But that's not the point. The point is, I'm thinking about the moment of inspiration or genesis of creativity, the creative spark. And I think, sitting here, watching the fire, that how it happens for me is I have to be clear and still, and sit and stare into space, diving into myself, listening to what's inside me, and then clearing an open channel for the ideas to rise, become words, and pass into my fingers and out of me. That's about right.
But onto fertility! That is, after all, the raison d'être of this blog.
Tuesday I began my first cycle after my miscarriage: it was 5 weeks to the day from my D&C. This cycle has been extremely bizarre and even a little frightening. I have bled so heavily for three solid days that part of me wonders if something is wrong. I never bleed this heavily even on the first day, and by Day 3, I'm usually finished. Now, it's been like I've been peeing blood.
That very evening of Day 1, I happened to have a session with my therapist. I haven't been doing very well, to put it mildly, and she finally said to me she thought I should go back on drugs. I say "back on" because, as I think I've shared before, I've been on and off anti depressive drugs since I was 23-- 13 years ago. My entire adult life, essentially. Under normal circumstances, I would be on the drugs no question, but I have been on drugs while trying to conceive in the past and it fills me with anxiety. I know the medical community today says certain antidepressants are totally healthy during pregnancy, but I keep wondering what they will find out 20 years from now when the children born to us on drugs turn out to manifest symptoms that were previously undetected or even dormant. I called my OB/GYN today and talked to him about it, and he said quite emphatically that there is no reason to worry about taking drugs during pregnancy and that they will most certainly not harm the baby, and I left it with him that I would call back next week and possibly come in for him to write me a prescription. But I don't know. If I don't get pregnant soon, then yes, I should go back on the drugs. I can't hold out much longer. However, the reason I need the drugs in the first place is because I'm so upset I can't become and then stay pregnant, so I truly believe the thing to do right now is just hurry up and get pregnant and hold out the 9 months to go on the drugs.
Which leads me to the next and most important decision to make. After talking to my therapist on Tuesday, I realized that I really am not doing very well, and I need to get healthy right quick. And if I don't want to go on the drugs, then I'd better get pregnant damn quickly because, as I say, I don't know how much more of this sadness and anger and bitterness I can take. So I met with the fertility specialist Thursday, which was Day 3 of my cycle. And I began Clomid!
Yay!
I'm really excited, actually!
As a matter of fact, I need to take my second dosage of two pills at 50 mg each in a few minutes!
I made the appointment for next week for him to monitor my egg production, and then he told me that next weekend is when we would do our IUI.
IUI!
Insemination!
We're not playing now! This is the big time! We're not farting around with those godforsaken pee sticks anymore, no, thank you Jesus.
And whence this excitement? I feel so proactive. And while I don't necessarily feel optimistic-- I don't have any sense of positivity in any of this, to say the least-- I do understand that this is increasing our chances and that does almost take my breath away. There is a kind of power in it. Let me try to explain. When we try naturally, I feel totally defeated. We have sex, but I never really understand if we're timing it right (am I ovulating today or tomorrow? If we have sex tonight and I ovulate tomorrow morning, will we catch the egg? Should we have sex once a day, once every other day, or twice a day? There are so many different opinions on this). And I'm filled with anxiety and confusion and, ultimately, the sadness of another period. So I've come to link trying and even having sex with a kind of failure, sadness, uselessness, futility, and pain. Yet now, if we use science to help us, we are engaging and harnessing an awesome power and potential. Powerful forces for good and change. And it takes my breath away.
But there is a sharper edge of the sword, too. I'm Catholic. Enough said. I don't know if I can do this.
And now I'm going to get vulgar. If it offends you, stop reading.
Because we're stepping it up and getting some fucking help and saying, fuck you, fate and bad luck, I'm done with you. Fuck you, go to hell, fuck off failure and death and weak complaining. I'm taking this into my own fucking hands now. I'm telling the devil, go fuck yourself, I'm done with you, get thee behind me, I've had enough of you and your black head in my lap for three years and the tears in my hair and the desire to drive off a cliff and the laying in bed all day wishing I could die and the laceration and mutilation of binge eating, devastation over Facebook, and other emotional rapes and pillages. Fuck you. Fuck you all.
And fuck you, Friend X, who just had her baby, and Acquaintance Y, who had her baby a month ago, and Coworker J, who had her baby a few weeks ago, and you fucking mothers on the birth board I should have been on, fuck you all. Fuck you all. I'm sick of it. My rage cannot be contained by language. If I could wrap my fingers in excrement and hurl it at the forces that have been containing me, assailing me, raping and pillaging my body and my spirit and my mind for these three years, I would. If I could incinerate the joy of everyone in the world who doesn't feel sadness like me, I would. And no, I have no love for or good feelings for those who are happy and blessed. They are my enemy. They have lived and thrived in a world that has carved out my heart from me and placed it on the ground in a bloody, pulsating mass. They have birthed and loved and cradled and cooed and cried with joy while I have opened the knife drawer and considered drawing one across my wrist. They have known safety and comfort in the sweetness of their baby's arms, their cheeks, their blankets, their interminable lists of shit they registered for for their baby showers.
You women. You women who love and laugh, I do not love you. I do not wish you well. Miss W, whom I will have to spend time with soon, I feel nothing but hate and spite and scorn for you. My anger is the orange lip of a flame licking into a charred black log. And your joy fuels it. I have no love for you.
But is there no hope for me? Am I really so lost and spiritually dead as all that? Is there no room for love? What if I became pregnant? Would that change things? No- when I was pregnant the second time, I continued to feel anger at pregnant women even though I myself was one. It was a cognitive dissonance, a discombobulation, to hate that which I also understood myself to be.
But surely there must be some hope. That I can emerge from this and find again my spiritual goodness, some shred of human decency, resuscitate whatever human and Christian feelings I once had, when life was softer to me and I did not know what misery tasted like.
I'll try to find it. Let's see.
I'll start by writing a letter to myself in 20 years. Or to my child. No, that last is too risky. Too much potential for bad luck to come by naming it, making it real, tempting the gods. So to myself. To the me who has a child.
But how can I know that me will ever exist?
I can't.
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