it's been a dark few days

Part of why I started this blog was to work through some of the isolation I have felt in recent months. However, it goes beyond that. Infertility is isolation not only from other people, but from one's own thoughts and feelings. It's a sort of forced denial, squeezing oneself into a costume that doesn't quite fit. The sad clown stereotype.

I had a breakdown this week. Or a breakthrough. I don't know quite which to call it. Shortly after my last post here, I had one of those days (it was starting around the time I posted) where I swung into a deep despair. I cried myself to sleep, lamenting to Mark that I was TIRED of having my life run by this want. I wanted my life back the way it was before I worried about my mucus or how dark the stripe would get on an OPK. But I can't let go.

One thing that threw me over the edge was a woman who called my office to schedule an appointment to speak with the doc about fertility medications. She described to me how she hadn't been ovulating, how she was using the OPKs, and how she wanted to talk to the doctor about starting a medication called clomid. Then she said "Please write that down, the drug is spelled C-L-O-M-I-D."

Yeah, thanks for the tip lady. And yet, even my irrational anger towards her is a sign of how this experience is altering my personality. While I am a little self-absorbed, it isn't much like me to be without any kindness for a suffering person. And here I was, angry at this woman for not knowing that I was dealing with the same experience, for not being able to explain that I knew how she felt. I was angry at her for feeling the same way I feel.

It's all so fucked up, this. The feeling of shame that washes over me when I see a pregnant woman. The self-loathing I feel when I look at someone else's beautiful baby. This frustration with other infertile women.

And yet, I love babies, and I am truly happy for my friends who are pregnant, and for the random pregnant strangers I see. It's myself with whom I am angry and of whom I am ashamed.

As quickly as these feelings came, they have gone, leaving me perhaps a little wasted and fatigued, as after a long illness. If anything, this has brought Mark and me closer together, as he has seen the way the experience has ravaged me, something I don't think he understood before. His strength, his hopefulness, they have brought my own strength and hope back.

I also want to recognize that these strong and volatile emotions may very well be a result of the Clomid. While I did not experience any side effects while I was taking it, my body is still responding to the hormonal changes. Clomid works on the estrogen receptors in the brain (as well as all throughout the body), and not much is known about how this effects mood.

And so this experiment continues.