When I logged into our school’s online system this morning to print out a copy of my summer schedule, this is what I saw:

“Student Information effective from Spring 2008 to The End of Time”

So much for that plan to graduate eventually…

So next in our WTEWYSTTE series: rethinking your marriage.  Or, why did I think that it was a good idea to share my closet with this chump, again?

Aurelia pointed out once that few of us blog forthrightly about the issues in our marriage.  I hesitate to do so, because it treads awfully close to my own rule about not writing about anyone else.  But I’m going to throw this out there and let the chips fall where they may.  And I am reserving the right to pull this post down later if I start to feel as if I am/have violated Manly’s confidentiality in any way.

Cultural expectations for marriage almost always include procreation of offspring.  I’ve remarked before that this expectation is one of the reasons that childless couples face so much social pressure — by not producing children, they are seen as outsiders refusing to conform to societal norms.  So what does this mean for couples who married under this expectation and now find themselves in a position where they are unable to fulfill the implied obligation?  I invite you now to review the concept of a psychological contract. *jeopary music*   Make sense?  I know it’s normally applied to employer–employee relations, but I think that there’s a valid correlation to the shared expectations in a marriage.  The two ways that a breach of the psychological contract can be repaired can be boiled down to the essentials: walk away from the relationship, or re-forge the contract to reflect the changes in the situation.

A million years ago, when I thought that we were going to end up with children in the end, I read a post on a message board where a woman shared that when confronted with the possibility of never having children with her husband, she responded: Well, maybe we should re-think whether we want to stay married or not.  At the time, I couldn’t really understand her comment.  Why would not having kids be a reason to end your marriage?  I mean, we all said “for better or worse”, right?  And why wouldn’t you feel that way during treatment or right after you found out instead of after deciding to walk away?  Now, I completely understand what she was feeling.  When you first realize you’re infertile, the psychological expectations for producing children have not been forgone; most of us (90+% of us, I’d guess), still think that we’ll eventually end up as parents.  It’s just one of the “worse” times in a marriage, something to be weathered together, with a bright future on the other side.  And while you’re going through treatment, you HAVE to believe that they’ll work in the end.  Otherwise, none of us would go through the hell of having cameras pushed up our hoo-has, shooting up and/or gulping down medicine that wreaks havoc on body and mind, rescheduling work and life around doctor’s visits, sore elbows from all the blood draws, et cetera.  But in the end, when you finally decide to stop and walk away, you necessarily have to leave behind the belief that childlessness is a temporary event that eventually will be overcome. 

The first few weeks after deciding that we weren’t going to proceed, I was miserable.  I cried and cried and then cried some more.  Then I got to the point where I would just tear up.  And once I got that sadness out of my system, I went (looking back), a little manic.  I spent money, I bought stuff for the house, I cleaned, I cooked every night, I drank, I smoked, I hosted Christmas parties, I loved on my niece — there was nothing bad about this life, no, not here!  Everything’s great, all spiffy and shiny and I can spend my life thinking about me and not dealing with Fischer Price or snotty noses or PTA meetings.  And that lasted for months.  I wans’t consciously trying the “fake it til you make it” process — I was really quite entertained with life and with the possibilities I could see ahead. 

Now I’m slowly coming down off of that high, and taking a look at how our future really is going to play out.  I’m looking at the fact that we don’t have wills or living wills in place.  That we’re going to need to make sure we’re as financially sound as possible, since we won’t have kids to move in with or take care of us.  That we’re going to need long-term care insurance.  That one of us is eventually going to die before the other, and how that needs to be handled.  That our next house probably needs to be a one-story, because we’re going to be getting old in it.  That we really need to start taking better care of ourselves because it just going to be the two of us together in this world. 

Those are the big picture, long term worries.  But they lead to immediate, pressing questions about our union.  Take our monetary styles as an example: his first priority is to, in my view, buy toys and have fun now!  I, OTOH, want to jack up the 401K contribution and restore the foundation under the garage.  Which leads to resentment from both of us — from me that he’s expecting me to do all the work while he plays the rest of his life, from him that I expect him to give up the things he’s worked to get while I have access to more money anyway.  He thinks I’m a killjoy, I think he’s irresponsible.  Marriages have dissolved over this even without infertility.  Or sex; suffice to say that he always wants more and I really could be happy with less.  And dear god, if you wait until I am going to bed to go to sleep to ask for some, be prepared to be told to piss off.  You should have planned ahead.

Those kind of tactical, operational, boots on the ground decisions feed back into a layer of questions somewhere more theoretical but not quite big-picture: the what-ifs.  For example, if he’s this irresponsible now, is he ever going to change?  By denying him the opportunity to gain some perspective and maturity through fatherhood, have I condemned myself to living forever with (in the immortal words of Edward Norton), a “thirty-year-old boy”?  That’s not something that I’m willing to tolerate.  And while I’m trying very earnestly to deal with the emotional fallout of being childless, he’s down there watching reruns of startrek.  By the time that he gets around to processing the impact of what has happened, will I still be able to afford any empathy towards his pain? 

Yet, this is all balanced against the reality that this is my husband.  Is he the man I married? No.  The past five years have changed him, just as I am not the woman he married.  Time works on all of us.  It is his body that I curl against at night, it is his arms that wrap around me when I come home each day.  I love him, with or without children.  That has never been in doubt.  The question is whether I can live with him for the next 50 years with no hope that who we are will ever be reflected in a pair of eyes shining back at us.  Whether he will grow to resent me for being unable to make him the man he wanted to be.  To see if we can find a new definition of marriage, of this union, that fulfills our needs even with the understanding that is not what we originally signed on for.

I don’t claim to have answers to all this.  I don’t claim to have answers to any of it, actually.  We are working through these questions one day at a time, navigating the waters as we reach them.  Some days are better than others.  At my worst, I want to move out, to run away, to cause him as much pain as I am feeling myself.  At my best, I can’t imagine how we could NOT be together until we die.  On most days, there’s a mix of the two.  Part of me, very rationally, thinks that things will get better when I finish school and we’re not so stressed for time.  Part of me, very irrationally, wants to just sell everything and run away to live on an island in the south Pacific for the rest of time.  But it is fucking hard to face this shit head-on, knowing that a wrong answer could have diastrous consequences for everyone involved.

The observation was made over at Flutter’s place that all infertility blogs eventually turn into something else.  Now, first off, I love this idea because it echoes a quote from one of my favorite movies: “We all began as something else.”   But more so, I think it is a very true sentiment.  Most infertility blogs become pregnancy blogs, or mommy blogs, or adoption blogs or “insert-resolution-of-your-choice-here” blogs.  Another large percentage become silent; the authors drop out of the community entirely and their blogs are left as ghost ships, empty vessels documenting a life left behind.  There are scant few that turn into post-treatment-life-without-children blogs.  And yet, those voices are some of the most important our community has to offer — the knowledge that a life without children is no less important, or less prevalent, than lives lived after successful infertility treatment.  That belief is at the heart of why I still write here.  I want to lay out my life as a guide to those who might come after me, to show that choosing to walk away from unsuccessful treatment is not the frightening ending that so many people are so afraid of.  To show how I navigated this path, to keep my life as an open example to those who might follow in my footsteps and look for the same answers that I sought. 

And hey, until we can find an infertile therapist in our local area who’s willing to do group consultations in exchange for dinner and margaritas once a month, this is the cheapest therapy around.

So tonight I want to talk about anger.  Specifically, I want to talk about my anger.  I want to tell the world that no matter how well I seem in person, how cheerful and happy I am at my job, how much I manage to hold in my feelings, I am deeply, royally, and godforsaken-fucking angry.  Everyone’s familiar with the Kubler-Ross stages of grief, right?  (PS, if you’re infertile and haven’t heard of them, you really need to go look it up.)  Well, it’s taken me a while, but I’ve finally accepted the fact that I am deep inside the anger stage.  And my anger isn’t just about my infertility.  Oh, it triggers it all right.  Whenever I hear the words, “There’s a plan for you”, even if we’re not talking about children, my heart rate goes up and I go into the ‘fight’ response of the fight-or-flight reaction.  But for me at least, my infertility has just gotten all mixed in with the other mental trauma I deal with in life. 

Earlier tonight, when I was thinking about what I was going to write, I went poking around googily looking at anger and grief links.  One of the sites I found was this one: www.coping.org  Have I tried their tools for anger and control issues? No.  So I can’t offer them an unqualified recommendation.  But do I plan on working through the tools they offer?  Oh, hell yes.  You know why?  It’s their diagram of the maladaptive anger cycle: expression of anger out –> guilt –> remorse –> feelings of anger in –> resentment –> irritation, rinse, repeat.  I’ll give you two guesses on how I express anger.  I’ll bet that you only need one.

Why am I so angry?  Infertility is a big piece of it.  I am angry that my life didn’t work out as I wanted it to (yeah, I’ll let you go poke around coping.org on your own to look at the control issues tools.  Guess which ones are tied together?).  I am angry that I worked so hard to get my life where it is, and now I have to reframe my plans for my future.  I am angry that we did not have the first grandchild on my husband’s side.  I am angry that my parents were not the greatest parents, and still aren’t, and that I can’t talk with them about this.  I am angry that other women have children easily.  I am angry that treatments work for other people but didn’t for us.  I am angry that my husband has never explained his feelings to me about why he wanted to stop treatment.  I am angry that he bought a expensive sports car without really listening to my opinion about it.  I am angry because I do not feel he supports me emotionally as much as I need.  I am angry because there are people making comments on my blog about my feelings about adoption.  I am angry that adoption has so many fucking things wrong with the system.  I am angry that there is injustice in the world.  I am angry that the religion in which I was raised promised ponies with rainbows coming out of their asses for believing in god.  I am angry that during the marriage ceremony I attended two weeks ago, the priest mentioned the couple’s future children no less than 4 times.  I am angry that the patriarchical system our society is based on equates my worth as a person with the ability of my uterus to produce children.  I am angry that there is a fucking patriarchy.  I am angry at men who don’t understand that they are granted benefits and opportunities for no other reason than male privilege.  I am angry I am expected to be both the primary wage-earner in our household and to be responsible for making dinner.  I am angry that my asshole of an ex-boss hasn’t been fired yet.  I am angry that there is a fish tank in my dining room instead of a buffet.  I am angry that the water doesn’t get hot in the sink fast enough.  I am angry that I don’t have time to enjoy a hobby.  I am angry that I am still in grad school while all my friends got bachelor’s and got out.  I am angry that the internet is slow.  I am angry about a whole lot of things.

Should I admit here that I actually feel a little better now, just listing out all that?  Just admitting that yes, I am angry, and whether it’s justified or not, I still have those feelings?

Now we come to the part where better writers than me wrap up their posts with a neat, efficient conclusion.  Unfortunately, I suck at that.  Especially on subjects like this.  I don’t have a neat, efficient answer.  Fuck, I don’t have any kind of neat, efficient life at all.  That’s one thing that I’ve always tried to be honest about here — you guys get the first draft when I hit post.  I do go back and edit for spelling when I reread, but other than that, you’re getting raw Sharah, served up sashimi style with no filler or extra rice on the side.  Straight, honest-to-goodness, me.  So conclusion?  I think I’ve hit an emotional limit for the night.  I processed some anger.  I feel better.  I also feel tired and worn out that I’m going through all of these issues again.  It’s like I’m stuck in this dysfunctional repetitive emotional cycle that I can’t break out of.  And I don’t want to be here anymore. 

I don’t want to be in this place. any. more.

And you know, fuck it, that means I’ve just got more to do to straighten out my own fucked-up headspace.  And now I’m rambling again.  Conclusion, and I mean it this time, I think I’m going to read some more on those tools at coping, and see if I can work through some of the exercises.  And I’ll let you know what I think.  And if I decide I really do need a real-live, certified, in-person shrink.

On May 29, 2005, I took my last birth control pill.  The action was so momentous to me that I marked it down in my calendar.  How could I have known at the time that that little note would be the one date that I go back and check each summer to verify?  This year it slid by with little fanfare, but I still knew it was that time of year.  Three years.  Gone.  And not a tangible thing in my life, other than a leftover box of ovulation predictor sticks and some fertility clinic copay receipts, to mark that anything changed on that day.

Do you remember the very first time you had sex with the intention of getting pregnant?  I do.  I remember getting into bed, unprotected by any kind of latex or hormone, and thinking, “Oh my god, I can’t believe we’re really doing this.”  For the previous, ahem, eight, years of my life, I had spent who knows how much money and time trying to keep sperm away from my vulnerable ovaries.  And here I was now, trying to do the exact opposite, still unsure if this was really what I wanted to do.  I was nervous.  I was excited.  Manly was sure.  He had been trying to get me to toss the pills for a while, subtle hints and finally a straight out request.  We had been married for 2 1/2 years and together for 5, and he was ready for a family. 

Ironic, isn’t it, that he was the one who wanted to stop treatments.

Dr. Googlicious informs me that 80% of couples who start trying to conceive are successful within 12 months.  Another 10% are successful in the next 12 months.  I can’t find a number for rates during year 3, but after 48 months, only 5-7% are still unsuccessful.  As the magic eight ball would probably say, “outlook not good.” 

The past two months have been hard around here.  Between Manly’s unbloggability, and my new job, and school, I haven’t had much time to write.  And now I’m feeling the effects of that.  I have this well of anger and bitterness sitting inside me, festering, looking for a place to spill over.  And short of one night a month when I can escape to the solace of WAITT, I have no one to talk to about it.  I think it might be time to come back. 

Fuck yeah Redwings!  You kick ass!

Mmmmmmm.  Now I feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  Nothing like a little Stanley Cup action to make us a happy household.  I’ll even forgive you for losing in triple overtime at midnight in game 5, just to see you guys carry off that cup.

And now you guys don’t have to wonder what I do with my time these days

I feel like I’m putting messages in a bottle and throwing them into the sea, hoping that there’s someone on the other side to get them.

There are 878 posts in my google reader.  There are something like 30 comments on my last post.  And yet this is all I can come up with.

Work is good.  Manly is still healing from his injury, but is doing much much better (albeit, still with massive amounts of pain medication).  Classes started back today.

Today is cycle day 1 … again.  And despite my best efforts, I couldn’t help but know that somewhere out there, the ferry crossed over to the other side without me again.  Some days you don’t even have to see it; just knowing it exists is painful enough. 

I miss you.  All of you.  I’m not reading, I’m not writing, I’m barely keeping spam cleaned out of my inbox.  I want to come back, but the time just isn’t right yet.  This extended absence has been good for me, in a way, by letting me really focus on a few choice topics.  But I miss the community, I miss seeing what you all have to say, I miss getting fresh ideas to mull over with my morning coffee.

I hope to be back soon.  And if you’ve emailed me or left a comment, I am trying very hard to get back to you, but I will not promise anything.  Be well.

I was thinking this morning about the transition between TTASP and choosing to live child free.  You all know the “Infertility Island” metaphor right?  To recap, there’s a ferry that runs between Infertility Island and the mainland, call it Motherworld.  And the ferry comes, but you never know when your ticket is going to be called.  You wait and wait and hope and wave goodbye to your friends and wish them well and simultaneously feel miserable that you’re not going with them.

Then one day, for whatever reason, you realize that you simply CANNOT stay one more day on the Island.  Could be that you’re going crazy, could be that your spouse forces your hand, could be that you run out of funds, could be … any number of reasons.  But you can’t stay.  And you still can’t go to the mainland cause you don’t have a ticket for the ferry.  So you jump in the water and let the current carry you where it will.  And pretty soon, you wash up on another island downstream.  There’s a great big jungle on the side of this island that faces infertility island that’s deep, and dark, and foreboding, and hides all the villages.  But once you hack your way through the jungle, you realize that there’s a gorgeous beach and friendly neighbors with lots of tequila to share on the other side.  

The ferry doesn’t come to this island (well, occasionally it’ll show up without any warning, but it’s a complete surprise because no one here expects it).  For the first few months after you wash up on the island, you force your way back through the jungle to watch the ferry travel back and forth between Infertility Island and the mainland.  It’s sad, it’s painful to watch the ferry and know that you might have been a passenger, that your ticket might have been called this month.  But after the first month or two, you get settled into your new routine and you realize how much WORK it is to trek through the jungle to watch the ferry arrive.  So you delete the arrival date from your calendar, you try to find something to keep you busy on the day the ferry arrives.  You still know it’s there, but you make a conscious decision not to keep watch for it anymore.  More time passes, and one day you realize that you really don’t know when the ferry schedule is anymore.  And the absence of that knowledge is an absence of pain.  Sometimes you’ll think about the ferry, or catch a glimpse of it as it travels over the water, and you remember.  Some days the memory is sharp and it cuts like glass and leaves you bleeding.  Some days the memory is a fleeting ghost that you catch out of the corner of your eye and then it’s gone.  But the vast majority of your time is spent doing things other than thinking about the ferry.  More time passes, and memories grower paler and the pain grows duller and then one day you wake up and it hits you: you are happy.  Not just faking it, not just the absence of pain, but true and real joy in the life you have instead of longing for a life that might have been.  And that is a wonderful day.

—————————-

Y’all know me, I find my words so often in the mouths of other writers.  And I love me some Fight Club, so I’ll paraphrase here: …first you have to give up. First, you have to know, not fear, know that someday you are going to die.  Only after you’ve lost everything, are you free to do anything.  And then, once you’ve hit bottom, you start deciding what you are going to do with your freedom.  I think that part of the reason that there are so few women who keep blogging about unresolved infertility is that they are either a) in the stage where they are deliberately trying to NOT think about the ferry or b) busy living the rest of their life.  I’m a big believer in perspective and have been accused of observing situations instead of participating in them.  And choosing to step off of the ART train, choosing follow a different path, requires a big ol’ dose of perspective.  It takes a true and wholehearted belief that there is a life for yourself that does not include children, that you can be happy, that time will heal emotional wounds, that eventually you too will be free of jealousy and anger and bitterness.  But it takes a choice to start that process, to embrace that belief, to stop watching for the ferry, to walk away.  And that’s a hard motherfucking choice to make.  But once you make it, once you start walking that path, it gets easier with every step you take away from the beach.

For Aurelia, yes head still above water.  Manly came home Tuesday night, and doesn’t go back to the doc for two weeks.

The new job looks like it’s going to be fantastic (at a week in, anyway).  BUT I can’t/won’t get online there.  Too much temptation to screw around all day reading blogs when there is lots and lots of good work to do.  Between that and having to take care of everything at the house now — I’m even going to learn how to plant the garden this year — I just don’t have enough time to keep up.  I’m terrified to even look at my g.oogle reader.

So if I’m quiet, please don’t worry.  If something is ever really wrong, I’ll get Becky or Jess to let everyone know.

Something UnBloggable has happened, and it means I will be away from here for who knows how long.  End result of said incident: Manly ended up needing surgery today to repair several broken bones and will be off his feet for a while.  Obviously he’s in a lot of pain, but nothing life-threatening.  I personally was not involved and am just dealing with the stress of this on about 3 hours’ sleep spread out over the last 36 hours.  Of course, this had to happen the day before I start my new job, so there’s no telling how this will all play out.  I’m 80% confident that everything will turn out fine in the end, but I’m going to be wrangling with this Incident for at least six weeks. 

So please say a little prayer for us and be patient — I’ll be back eventually. 

days left in this job.  Well, 4 1/2 by this point in the day.

Oh, hi!  Remember me?  Yeah, got a new job.  Start next Monday.  Losing my mind trying to wrap things up here. 

Post brewing on predestination/free will … again.  I know you’re sick of hearing it.  I’m sick of thinking about it.  But with the new job and the way things are shaking out around here, I just can’t let go. 

For your homework,

1.  Go read this post and think about the last few lines:

“…the past is malleable, that chance masquerades as fate, and that, when you look back, by some trick of the light, all roads seem to lead inevitably to exactly the place you’re standing.”

2.  Add another quote that I love:

“Don’t congratulate yourself too much, or berate yourself either.  Your choices are half chance.  So are everybody else’s.”

3.  Now, answer me this: have you ever thought that events occurred in YOUR life in order to make way for someone else’s dreams to come true?  As in, you were the tool (unintended pun there) fate manipulated to create an opportunity for another person.  So in essence, it didn’t matter what happened to you as a result.

4. Extra credit:  is luck something that everyone has an equal shot at getting, or do people create their own luck?

5.  Extra extra credit: do you believe in karma?

I’m asking these things very seriously.  I really do want your answers, whether you leave a comment or want to take a shot at an entire post of your own.

Go forth and ponder.