Don't RSVP to my Pity Party, You're Not Invited Anyway

I've seen my acupuncturist twice in this past week, and will see her again tomorrow.  I have to take my hat off to the acupuncture; I feel a renewed sense of calm that I haven't had, maybe, ever.  You can chalk it up to a placebo effect, or you can say that my meridians have been controlled or that my chi is balanced.  Whatever, I'll take it.

And so, when I spoke with one of my close friends the other day and she asked me how I was doing, and I said I hadn't felt so great in months.   I alluded to the "dark" places that Clomid had taken me, and how I now felt renewed and alive once again.

"What do you mean, she asked, were you depressed?"

"Yes, that's exactly what I meant," I replied.

"What about?"


HUH??

I paused for a beat.  The answer to that question might, to most readers, be obvious, and the question itself might have seemed daft.  Why indeed, would a woman who has had two miscarriages and tried unsuccessfully for several cycles to get pregnant, be the least bit sad or depressed?

I explained that I had become overwhelmingly melancholy when I took Clomid for those three cycles.  The feeling had no name, it had no circumstantial basis -- that would have been too easy to express.  I was not sad that I didn't have a baby, I wasn't pining away over my unused crib in my basement, I was blind with a feeling of despair that is simply hard to fathom unless you've ever felt suicidal or like you were trying to claw your way out of a wooden box buried deep in the ground.

"Well, why didn't you say anything?  Why didn't you write about it on the blog?" She asked.

I've got to hand it her, she had a point.  Here I was laying bare all of my woes, but I kept one of the worst aspects of the process to myself.

Maybe I felt that the blog had turned into a sort of funny pages about trying to get pregnant. Perhaps my own pride got in the way; it's hard to admit when your sadness is so undefined.  I also didn't want to throw a pity party.  The only person invited to that is my husband, who is legally bound to tell me hundreds of times, without complaint, that I'm not a loser and that I'm cute and skinny and small.  He is also bound by law to ignore my frequent trips to the freezer for ice cream immediately following a fat debate.  HE is invited to the pity party.

But once again, (no small thanks to friends) I'm called to my mission: to be open and honest and forthcoming about my process.  In the hope that it might assist other women to feel less self-conscious if they've gone through a similar experience, to teach to those who haven't, and, selfishly and most of all, to make it easier for me to put one foot in front of the other.  And I'm walking taller.

Next week: "energy work."  Whatever that means.