I keep looking for words to describe my mental state, but nothing seems to really capture the quality.
I feel strange. I feel Unable to Process. I
go to work, I focus on work, but it's like being underwater. I find
myself in a classroom with a lesson plan in front of me, I carry it out, but it's autopilot-tastic. I had a seriously
overwhelming urge to ditch class yesterday.
I am
happy to be with my child, but part of me is never there. It's not like I'm thinking of other things, either, I'm just...gone. I am happy
when I think of my possible future child, but it's the same--there's a missing part of me, and I don't know where it is. My husband hardly
exists. He's that creature who does an inadequate job when it comes to
cleaning things.
Today I'm wondering if it's just the fact that this is the shittiest time of year, when nothing ever feels quite right. I used to mock people who couldn't handle winter, but now I live in a place that is not only cold, but endlessly grey, and I understand. It's like living in a Russian novel, and not something mildly cheery like Pushkin*, but something extra gloomy and hopeless, like Solzhenitsyn. And there's no vodka in my novel.
Or maybe I'm just Adjusting. Maybe the experience of infertility forced me to redefine myself, and now, hey, now that I'm a Fertile Whore, I get to redefine myself again. Maybe it's just going to take a while for all this shit to catch up with me, to sink in.
And yes, I DO feel like an asshole for writing anything but UNICORNS ARE FALLING FROM THE SKY considering how perfect and wonderful my life is, but this is what's going on, and I feel the need to express it so I can move on to other things, like WHY BUN BUN FEELS THE NEED TO MAKE A HIGH PITCHED WHINE THROUGHOUT DINNER THESE DAYS.
*Yes, fine, it would be a short story or poem or play in that case.
Seems like there would be kind of a lot of Adjusting to do....adjusting to being back at work, adjusting to the idea of having a 2nd kiddo, adjusting to getting pregnant more easily this go-round, etc. No wonder it all seems a little surreal.
ReplyDeleteHad to reply because you are describing EXACTLY where I was at one year ago, newly pregnant with #2 (much much more quickly & intervention-less than I'd planned...almost like a fertile, except for the clomid & OPKs involved), and...while THEORETICALLY happy with my life, not really being able to be even 50% present for any of it, let alone 100%. Job, marriage, kid; like I was watching my life from far away, just going through the bare minimum. I vacillated between thinking it was something existential (mid-life-crisis? freaking out because my life was kind of at the point I'd always dreamed about?) and blaming the combination of winter ickiness & first-trimester ickiness. In any case, it gradually eased away by the spring; I hope yours lifts even sooner!
ReplyDeleteWe call that sound the Monkey Death Shriek. If she hasn't yet, just wait til she discovers how to modulate the volume. It goes up to 11.
ReplyDeleteI have a tough go at it this time of year, too -- I think you're on to something about the shit weather, the total inertia of everything. Honestly, when I feel like that, I find that autopilot is a gift. Coast on that as far as you can until it lifts a little. And I bet it will.
I have a post brewing in my mind about how to ENGAGE with my life right now. I think we're at the same place. I know much of it has to do with late January in Minnesota with nary a vacation on the horizon but I feel so completely out of touch with life and frankly, sorta uninvested. Its odd. I'm in limbo er something.
ReplyDeleteWhen Sattva was pregnant with her first child, she didn't realize it until probably almost 12 weeks. She recounts this great story of crying to her husband, insisting that she had clinical depression because she didn't feel like doing anything, was always tired and felt like crap. The HPT she subsequently did explained a lot. I think T1 feels yucky for a lot of women, however jubilant they are to be pregnant. Also, I have to wonder how much you are sleeping. Also, yes, winter in a cold, northern, grey place can be challenging for the sunniest of dispositions. Also, HOLY CRAP, has your life ever changed in the last 2 years. Perhaps there is a catch up period. Also (are you tired of my also-stems), you are alowed to feel whatever you feel.
ReplyDeleteHope that the feelings of discombobulation disspate soon.
Hang in there, Bunny. I'm sure everything is a huge adjustment right now and the shitty weather doesn't help. I've been trying to get out, even in the freezing ass weather, to go for a run to get my mind in the right place. It helps some days and others not so much. I just want it to be warm...or maybe I need to be somewhere warm with a big ass fruity drink in my hand...The sun'll come out tomorrow. XXXXX
ReplyDeleteIt certainly doesn't help that the winter has been like a perpetual November; that has felt unreal.
ReplyDeleteI hope you feel more live-concert, less eight-track soon!
Winter is hard on us sunny disposition types. I am on click from ordering one of those sunhinelamps for my desk in the hopes that it will improve my mood. This is the pre-teen era for defining yourself. You just made varsity cheer after doing your best routine to pump up the jam in mockery. Yeah, holy shit, being fertile throws you for a loop, but it doesnt negate the swirlies and years you spent locked in the bathroom stall with that overflowing toilet. There can be such a thing as shock when something you thought would be hard comes easy along with having the life you want rolled into one. Well, other than that substandard cleaning husband. :)
ReplyDeletePS. There's a lot going on in that head. Feeling detached from all of this is normal. One you've got some bits organized, there will be free space to let that other stuff in.
PPS. Yes. This story needs lots of vodka.
if i didn't know any better, i'd say you were knocked up.
ReplyDeleteand also in a midwestern winter. hang in there, and have some medicinal chocolate, i say. my mother will write you a prescription if need be.
Pregnancy brain sucks. It's not that it's any great suffering in and of itself... it's just that you don't feel like you. I hope your fog lifts soon!
ReplyDeleteRe Bun-bun's whine: oh, god, I feel for you. I hope she finds a new favourite noise soon.
I also think you shouldn't discount hormones. And in the first trimester, they be a'raging. It's a lot to take in, Bunny. I'm realizing that the first months of motherhood are all about not having equilibrium, then finding it only to lose it subsequently. Here, you have an entirely different variable factored in.
ReplyDelete(As long as it's not Dostoevsky and you don't murder some elderly spinsters during a robbery...)
Bun Bun must be in the dinosaur vocal exploratory stage. We have a pterodactyl living in our house. Known for amplifying qualities while in public.
ReplyDeleteDo you want me to make a count down calendar for the end of the spring semester? I have the perfect old calendar that I got from my sister in law in 2001 and cross out the cartoon character with a sharpie and gladly bold face some numbers for you.
I truly hate winter yet I live in the upper mid west where 70 degrees and above only lasts for 3 months if we are lucky so I know that it can add a much unneeded dimension to life and clarity. Unfortunately the dino whine stage seems to be sticking around for us.
Meh is all the screaming rage this month. :-)
ReplyDeleteT1 is not fun. But hopefully it gets better.
The pterodactyl shriek phase stops at a certain point. And then, when you forget about it, it comes back in full force and with words and longer screams. While running. And hurling stuff. Toddlerhood is fun.
I spice my dr. Zhivago-esque wintry scene with tea. Although a vodka would be also welcome.
I also say BLAME IT ON THE HORMONES!! I should tell you that I see your ability to manage all that you "have" (OK, I don't want to go there now but "have it all" is such a crock of shit - yes, you are fortunate - but you've DONE a whole lot to get where you are - and where you are is a place where you are privileged to be able to show the world that you can DO it all, ahem) as nothing less than inspiring. I felt triumphant for just getting off the couch at your stage of pregnancy and, whenever I had the choice, I did that only to avoid a nasty cleanup.
ReplyDeleteAs for the weather, I'm sorry. Any chance you could just ditch that gig and bring Bun Bun out here to visit for a bit? I am rather spoiled now in this department but I grew up with Midwestern winters and I remember (shiver). In my home city, you could even hear plenty of Russian being spoken if you hung out in the right spots.
-slowmamma (I can't figure out what blogger has against me)
Have you ever seen Dinosaur Train? Bug imitates the pterodactyl shriek. Also the gibbons from the zoo, during bath time. Annoys the living daylights out of me.
ReplyDeleteI'm sure the hormonal disaster that is pregnancy plus the cognitive dissonance of returning to work plus the inevitable, incessant grey of winter in Your State (did I ever tell you I went to college in Your State?)... couldn't possibly have anything to do with it.