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Places to Go:
30 hours, people
Hell is having no internet connection.
As I write this it has been nearly 30 hours since I have been able to get online. That is 30 hours that I have not been able to read e-mails, write e-mails, update my blog, read blogs, read the NY Times on-line, check my bank account status, update my netflix queue, or download the new Necko Case cd.
My life has essentially come to a screeching halt and I am laughing at how much it has thrown me off balance. It feels like I have been mute and silenced from the outside world. 30 hours where the only source of stimulus was listening to GM tell me the same stories about her cat that I have heard since 1993. & while I hear the story every morning when I wake her & I have mastered the art of listening to it as if I have never heard it before, there is something a bit maddening about not being able to then plunge into the present world afterwards.
I know that a dsl repair person is on their way, that the problem will be fixed. But at this very moment I feel so crazily isolated.
Why did I cancel my shrink today?
If I had kept my shrink appointment I would have been captivated by my own crazy head space for hours and would not have gotten so deranged over failed internet connections.
But alas, hindsight is a bitch slap, & when I made the call yesterday morning to cancel I was doing it to give myself a break. A little bit of time back just for myself. For the next two weeks I will be making almost daily trips to the clinic for injectable monitoring so by canceling one week of shrink it gave me back 4 hours. (2 hours to drive there and back, 2 hours to be shrunk)
Maybe time with myself (& not in the fun way) is not something that I need at all.
The good news is that my first night with my new best friend, the follistim pen, went really well. It comes with this massive instruction manual. No joke- my tivo had fewer directions. The manual is filled with warnings and illustrations. I read it twice then had Mom read it and then finally she read it aloud step by step as I assembled the pen. I felt like we needed an orchestra in the den to be playing the score for a nuclear power struggle action movie.
I don’t know if it is because of a shorter or smaller or cuter needle, but the inject didn’t hurt. I might even (gasp!) give myself the shot tonight.
[all you gals that did your own injections- this is where I bow down to you with due reverence. I have no problem getting shots – I had 6 million just to go to Africa, but I just don’t like seeing it be done. I’m a pussy. Sue me.]
With my old injectable medicine I had irritation, some welts and immediate discomfort. This stuff has been so tame. I have no marks on my gut from the shot, nor did I wake up 2 pant sizes bigger with bloat. I’m sure the bloat will come. I am (give me a gold star) what the people call a “good responder” when it comes to meds. I just wish I was a good responder when it came to getting knocked up. Oh the humanity.
And did you hear that the guy that was the game show host on ‘Press Your Luck’ died in a plane crash. Yes, the man that brought us “no whammies, no whammies”. I was a bit freaked by this news as usually my inner monologue when sperm is being shot through a catheter into my uterus is, “Please God let this work! No whammies!”
Would it be a fitting tribute if I still kept thinking that or would it be too creepy?
In other news I think I may want to be Anne Lamott when I grow up. I read her ‘Operating Instructions’ a few months ago. It’s a brilliant and gut punch memoir of raising a kid solo. It is fantastic stuff for a liberal, single, gal who wants a munchkin of her own.
But she has a couple of other books that I bought that have just been chilling on my bookcase for a while and on a whim I stuffed one in my purse a month ago to be my, “waiting for ___” entertainment. So as I waited for a friend at a bar I took it out to read it, as I waited at the shrink’s office I read it, & yesterday as I waited to go in for my ultrasound I read it.
Anyhow it is called ‘Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith’. Now before you heathens tune out let me just say that for me, faith is a very private thing. I don’t subscribe to most organized religions, but when it is done right, I like church. I like the ritual of it. But the spiritual stuff – well that has to come from within.
But this book speaks to a sort of universal spiritualism: the coincidences of the universe that bind us all together. Mostly it unfolds as an after thought. Something traumatic happens and the sense of it can only come afterwards – if at all.
Something in the book really connected with me yesterday:
A friend of the author was having an awful traveling day. Her flights were getting cancelled, her hotel accommodations were missing – things were fucked up. When she finally got on the right train she bitched to the man sitting next to her. Turns out the dude worked for the Dalai Lama. (of course)
“And he said – gently- that they believe when a lot of things start going wrong all at once, it is to protect something big and lovely that is trying to get itself born- and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible.”
So I am going to marinate on that for a moment.
I can now get on line and I have 600gazillion e-mails to read (no I did not elope with my follistim pen, but thank you for asking!) and I am so behind in the chicas in the blogosphere (so sorry!) but I have come full circle to finding the peace in the internet chaos.
Because I was not able to get on line I took GM & her friend for a drive to do some errands. We sang along to standards from the 40’s and marveled at how beautiful the sky, post storm, was. We drove around and looked at spring sticking its head out to see if it was time to bloom. Because I was not able to get on line I took a lovely nap. Just for the hell of it. Because I was not able to get on line I had a 45 minute phone conversation with Dr. Molly.
So who knows what events are about to be born out of this bit of chaos? Maybe taking a day off was what I needed.
Protected: I am a Failure.
I spent the better half of my morning rekindling my relationship with the shrink. I hadn’t seen her since my lap, the holidays, and two more failed cycles. So we had just oodles to catch up on. I have evolved from being tense around Shrink, to feeling guarded, to embracing her. She has awesome insights, sure. But I’ve seen her about 5 times now & each time she has brought up a story or quote by Madonna. & no, not the Surrogate Mother to Jesus. I’m talking about the other gal that feels like a virgin. It was when she began a paragraph about how she always wished that she could be a back up singer for Madonna that my mind just went, “Oh Shrink, you are on par with me for dorkiness.” I guess it makes me feel less like being analyzed and more like I am just telling my life story to a woman that has the key to a new perspective.
One of the things that we do in session is mind wandering. I’m sure there is a very scientific term for it, but whatever. What I do is close my eyes & let my mind wander. Well it is a bit of specific wandering. For instance this morning she says, “Close your eyes and think about the day in January when you got your period. The moment that you knew that you were not pregnant.”
So I thought back & immediately remembered the sobbing, the snot, the screaming into my pillow. Still with my eyes closed Shrink told me to start talking about what I was feeeeeeeeeeling at that moment. The words that came to mind were loss, emptiness, doom, fear, sorrow and failure.
She then asked me to think back to when I had ever felt that mix of emotions before. Immediately I thought of my Grandfather’s funeral. I thought of how I had to put myself together because the newspaper people would be at the funeral. How my Aunt (the one I don’t talk to anymore) told me to be “gracious” and not “overly dramatic” at the service. How I had to stand there with his dead body in a box behind me and shake the hands of hundreds of people and keep it together. I couldn’t do it. After the bazillionth person told me how sorry they were for my loss I just lost it and began to cry in a very, very inappropriate way. I had to be taken to the car by a stranger and I curled up in the backseat and wailed.
I felt like a failure even within my own grief.
When I said that to Shrink she stopped me and we talked about failures in my life. I have wracked up a few. We talked about my getting kicked out of schools, about not getting into Julliard, about dropping out of NYU…within all of that there is that theme of “failure”. But the emotional tags that I have attached to failure are the same no matter what I am, er, failing. & with each failure I pick away at myself like a kid picking a scab. I am brutal.
Next week we are going to dive into the EMDR process. I am going to work on reprogramming my responses. I’m not quite sure how it will work, if will work or when it will work. But I am drawn to the idea of it.
In writing about my session it seems a bit all over. I guess it is hard to replay something so mental. The truth is that I am scared of therapy. About what it will reveal about me. But I have come to the point in my life where I know that I do not have the tools to keep going. Depression, in many forms, runs in my family and I have hopes that by facing this shit now it won’t ruin my life later on.
P.S. Shrink asked me why I wear a ring on my left hand. I told her that it just feels weird to have it on my right — off balance or something. She says, “Well I wonder how many men don’t approach you because it looks like you are already taken?” SHUT UP! She wants me to switch my ring to the right hand & just SEE if more guys approach me. I am going to humor her because it makes me laugh.
Boomerang of Denial
This weekend was a full one. Alert the media: I was social!
But it didn’t start off on such a great note. Saturday morning I woke up around 4am, and for whatever reason, I tasted metal in my mouth. It was if I had slept all night sucking on a penny. So even though I was still suffering from cramps there was this new voice in my head that said, “Oh! metal taste! Isn’t that a pregnancy symptom???” It is seriously a new level of denial when you are changing a tampon and convincing yourself that maybe you ought to go out & buy another pregnancy test. I had at least a good thirty minutes of crazy where I thought I was one of those women that get their periods but are really pregnant.
So did I take (another) pregnancy test?
Oh you know I did. & guess what, people?
I’m not pregnant.
So then I had to beat myself up a bit. Even as I was counting down the minutes before I would allow myself to look at the test I started smacking my forehead with the palm of my hand. I’m such an idiot! The very idea that I could sustain this deranged hour of denial is maddening. This break is very much necessary. But I won’t be on it alone - you will be relieved to know that the Shrink is making a comeback. Clearly I have some issues.
Reminder of my request for snow photos!! I know all of you foxies in the North East are swimming in the powder. Hook a girl up with some snow pictures.
I have emotions.
Back from my 2nd therapy session & GM is, once again, being uber clingy. She seems so young & child-like today.
Today the shrink, clinician, whatever, looked more like Gilda Radner than Julia Louis. We got right down to working through some relaxation techniques for me to use next tuesday. They involved visualizing a place of extreme comfort (for me it was the labyrinth on the floor of Grace Cathedral). Once I had the image fixed in my mind she taught me how to use breathing to induce relaxation. It was a lot like the breathing at the end of a yoga session.
We also talked about working through my feelings at my failed cycles. She had me close my eyes and visualize myself at the time of my most recent attempt & to just say out loud what emotions were there. I was surprised that shame & embarrassment were the most powerful emotions. We talked about other moments in my life where I experienced those same emotions on that level.
It was intense. I have a pretty shitty memory, but the stuff that come up just when I was focusing on a feeling rather than an incident was powerful. I’m talking stuff that I hadn’t thought of in years. YEARS!
I’m still processing a bunch of stuff so I’m sorry for being so vague.
GM is shouting for me. I think she wants me to turn the t.v. up. I’ll try to post more later today.
This is How it Went:
I survived.
That is now how I feel on many levels after my first encounter with real (non NYU student) therapy.
The shrink, who often referred to herself has a ‘clinician’, looked like a photo double for Julia Louis Dreyfus. I almost felt a bit star struck when I first saw her & immediately found the irony that GM has just discovered the joy’s of Seinfeld.
She shook my hand & asked me about the origins of my name as she led me back to her office. The room was average sized and dimly lit. She turned on a white noise machine under her desk and told me to sit “wherever”. Of course I felt like I was being tested. Wherever I sat would answer some deep, dark, question. Right? Shit I hope not. I chose a seat on the end of a couch that was a little too fluffy for my tastes. My large ass sunk deep & I had to have some negotiations with a variety of pillows before I felt safely propped up.
She began with a basic enough question. Well maybe a basic question for a normal person. “What brings you in today?”
Shit.
My head immediately filled with all sorts of images. My Mother’s mental illness, the death of my Grandfather, all the shit with my sister…I was a rose ripe for the plucking. Somehow I managed to squeak out that I was trying to have a baby.
Then we were off: Who was my RE? What had I gone through so far? What did my family think of my choice? Was I swearing off a husband?
She was pretty chatty, which I liked. It completely relieved me of my fears that I would have this need to fill a void with my comedy routine.
One of the techniques she likes to try is something called EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing). She gave me a site to do some research to see how I responded to the concept. I’ve only just started reading about it, but from what I can gather it is a method that teaches you how to process various situations in life. It is sort of a mind over matter approach.
I appreciated that she viewed my 6 failed cycles as something traumatic.
Here is a quote from the website:
“After EMDR processing, clients generally report that the emotional distress related to the memory has been eliminated, or greatly decreased, and that they have gained important cognitive insights. Importantly, these emotional and cognitive changes usually result in spontaneous behavioral and personal change, which are further enhanced with standard EMDR procedures.”
huh.
It is a bit weird to get my head around, but maybe after having a dialogue about it it will make more sense.
We talked around my childhood, touching on the basics. One of the things she brought up was that I have lived my entire life as a care-giver. When I was a child I took care of my Mother. When I lived in L.A. I took care of my boss. & now I take care of GM.
huh.
Another thing she pointed out was that I am a deliberate person. Meaning I don’t fuck around in my life choices. When I want to do something I do it. Which is why this not getting pregnant thing is forcing me to deal with those issues.
We talked about my upcoming surgery and my hopes to inseminate in December.
(she did ask me if I wanted her to help me make sure that being a single Mother was something I really wanted. I told her that like she said, I was deliberate, & this was something I was on the road to doing. I am way beyond debating it. It isn’t a ‘what if’. It is a ‘when’. She said, “great.” huh.)
I am seeing her again thursday. As in the day after tomorrow. I balked a bit at that. (shit, how fucked up am I?) But she said that she wanted to teach me some relaxing mind/body things before I went under the knife. & since I won’t be able to come in for the next two weeks (surgery one week, Thanksgiving the next) that she wanted to bring me in sooner.
So I did it. I feel, well I feel like I really need this. I did feel like a traitor for talking about my family. I was aware that I was trying to sugar coat some things & some things I told her I wasn’t ready to talk about. But as far as being ok about this first step - I am proud of myself.
Shrink re-visited
Well my pussy whipping is done with. Something about Lorem’s comment on my last post set me back in motion (thanks Lorem!). If I do feel that I sabotaged myself then I at least owed it to myself (& my mental health) to correct it. What’s it called when you are hydroplaining a car & you have to turn the steering wheel a certain way to avoid going all over the place? Well that is what I needed to do.
So I got on the horn & called the shrink’s office. I had to leave a message & it went something like this:
“Hi. Yesterday I showed up for an appointment with Dr. S & was told I was not in the system & I may have overreacted a bit and stormed away. Then I realized that I was a day early to my appointment. So I wanted to see if that appointment was still open & if so may I have it back please.”
5 minutes later the phone rang & the sweeeeeeeeeetest girl helped me through. She typed my name into the system & actually said what the receptionist said to me yesterday - I wasn’t in it. At all. She was so very, very apologestic. She said they were upgrading to a new schedule system & somehow my name & appointment had not gotten saved. So what happened yesterday would have happened to me today if I had gone on the right day. I would have been turned away, freaked out & cried. But instead of coming home to proof of my own scheduling corruption I wouldn’t have had anything to blame. I would have slid down the downward spiral staircase.
So as far as scenarios, as oddly as it may seem, my fuck up was the best thing that could have happened.
& it gets better. You ready?
When the sweetie on the phone tried to reschedule me with Dr. S she had a problem. Seems Dr. S isn’t really seeing new patients at this time & if I had been booked with her I would have soon been transferred to somebody else. The girl asked if she could help steer me towards one of their other stable of shrinks. & I said FUCK YES PLEASE!
She asked what, generically speaking, sort of issues did I need to focus on & I felt very comfortable telling her. Before, when I had 1st made the appointment I got a weird vibe from the male mouth breather & clammed up. So girl says, “Oh! You want to see Dr. B! She is wonderful & she specializes in female patients going through what you are going through.”
Let me be clear about this: She is a Shrink that specializes in women diagnosed with fertility issues.
I asked if the girl actually knew Dr. B or if she was just reading her bio off a form. Turns out she really did know her & she really did like her.
So it is all back in the works. I have put myself back in charge of my life.
But I have to wonder if the Universe unfolded just the way it was meant to. Not get mushy, but I feel so much less anxious about going to a shrink now. I feel like I just passed some sort of mental stamina test or something.
NEW shrink appointment is next Tuesday morning at 9. PLEASE don’t let me fuck it up!
Self Sabotage
Sabotage: Treacherous action to defeat or hinder a cause or an endeavor; deliberate subversion.
What I did yesterday was that.
I went to see the shrink yesterday. When I came home all upset & pissed I found on my desk where I had written down the appointment information down: directions, what to bring, & the time. My appointment was for today. Not yesterday. Today. I had it written down three places.
Yes somewhere in the cables of my mind I moved the appointment to wednesday. I would have sworn on a bible, on life, on everything, that the woman in the reception yesterday was fucking with me. That an injustice had been done. Well I would have been half right. The injustice was that I let myself sabotage my need to get help.
Sure based on the office environment I probably would not have been happy with going to that particular shrink. But I should have at least met the woman before I bailed.
Seems like bailing is a big problem for me. Not finishing things.
I am pretty disgusted with myself. But at least I am aware of my little covert mind trick. Not sure what to do with that knowledge other than to beat myself up with it. I am embarrassed & humiliated.
ugh.
The Appointment that Wasn’t
Well I went to Birmingham to see the shrink. I was a bit early & proud of myself for not getting lost at all. I signed in & went to the waiting room to examine the place. The place reminded me of a company my Mom worked for right when she got out of law school. That company was an Insurance Group. There was a corporate vibe that I couldn’t place. The people in the lobby were in suits & didn’t even look up when I sat down.
I waited for about 15 minutes (it was then 10 minutes past my appointment time). I could feel my arm pits getting moist and my heart was racing. I just wanted to get the thing fucking started already. I had worked myself up in a tizzy & I wanted to plow forward.
After the lobby had been cleared (a buzzer over an intercom would zap & a sterile voice that told a person where to go. Very jolting.) I went back to the receptionist to make sure I was in the right waiting room. I saw that there were two. It took a bit of courage to even go to the receptionist as I was worried I would get flagged for being “pushy”.
me: Hey, um, I’m new & I just wanted to make sure I was waiting in the right place.
her: Who are you here to see again?
me: Dr. S
her: Are you sure?
me: Yes. Quite.
her: What is your date of birth?
I gave her the date & she typed. And typed. & typed.
She then asked me to spell my name & she searched the incorrect ways to spell it as well.
Survey says: I did not exist in their system.
Then a new bunch of people in suits crowded behind me & I was overwhelmed with this massive panic attack. The receptionist said she had no record of me and that if I wanted to see Dr. S I needed to have my GP call again. & maybe she didn’t really sound like a cunt when she said it, but it kind of felt like one. All at once her tone made me feel foolish, ashamed, fat (go figure), and dumb. I could feel my armpits big time now & was certain my sweat was seeping through my jean jacket.
I nodded at her. Got my parking validated (the ONLY validation of my day, damnit) & got the fuck out of there.
Luckily Mom had leant me her convertible t-bird to make the drive to & fro. I found a radio station playing Tori Amos & sang ‘Crucified’ at the very tip top of my lungs. Fucking shrinks. Fucking Dr.’s. I can’t do anything right. blah, barf. ugh.
I allowed myself to feel like a nimrod for about 20 more minutes on my drive & then I shifted gears. Newsflash- I didn’t like the office before I even met teh shrink. The decor, the vibe, the people in the waiting room were not right for me. This could be a blessing. I need somebody that is more Earth Mother. Scented candles. Vivid colors. Fricken ART in the lobby instead of fake plants. Dude. FAKE PLANTS?! I feel like I just busted out of a bad relationship before it even began.
Phew.
Right?
I did the right thing by not rescheduling. Right?
So on the way home I zipped by the Winn-Dixie & video rental place. I picked up 4 chick flicks, a bottle of white & a frozen pizza. Nothing like a little self medication to help me through.
Shrink Wrapped
Yes, I know it is Halloween & I should be writing something seasonally appropriate. But screw that. Halloween is really just the thing that causes me to pause the TiVo so I can answer the door & begrudgingly pass out candy that I wish I was eating.
If you are into the holiday - I salute you. Somebody should be. I won’t give you shit about dressing up like a hooker or Hillary Clinton if you don’t give me shit about my Easter Bunny obsession. We cool?
Now what I really want to vent about is my boiling fear of finally sitting down with a shrink on Wednesday. I went to see the movie Prime this weekend (enjoyed it!). I figured it would calm my mind and quiet my nerves. But as the day looms near I am all kinds of agitated.
Not to mention I am feeling PMS like nobody’s business! It is so weird that all those months I was waiting to see if I was pregnant I must have had PMS but it managed to manifest itself as “possible pregnancy symptoms”. & this month, a month that I was on break (ergo no possibility of pregnancy) I am not only aware of PMS but it is like the worst EVER!
Seriously, this morning I woke up & thought if I don’t hide the bags of candy I will consume them all before 9am. I satiated myself (is satiated a word?) with a bowl of peppermint icec ream & then (MISTAKE!) turned on CNN. There I watched in horror as the ‘prez’ nominated the whitest white conservative male for Supreme Court justice. The image of that, inter-spliced with the sad images of Rosa Parks in state just pushed me over the edge. Mom found me bawling in the den and I think I freaked her out a bit.
So wednesday. Shrinkage.
Fuck.
I know that I need this. I need to be able to vent and work things out. I need a safe place to grieve for all of the failed cycles. A place to process how fucked up my body is. A place to verify that I am making the right choice.
But what I am truly scared of is what if she doesn’t like me?
I have this horrible, nasty social habit: I am an overacheiver when it comes to a 1st impression.
I am the funniest, cutest, zaniest, wittiest person you have ever met. When you first meet me that is. I recognize that sounds incredibly vain, but you can poll my friends. Or better yet - poll their family. I do good family.
Usually I can maintain this front for quite a while. But the people that have known me longest know that it is a mask. In reality I am funny and sarcastic, but I am also sad and vulnerable. But this front is learned behavior. Something I mastered as a very young girl as Mom moved us around the country every year. I HAD to make insta friends or I was a wreck.
So how long do I keep the front going with the shrink? Part of me wants to write some sort of written disclaimer: You may find me amusing today, but it is all an act & I am just trying to please you.
How do you get to the nitty gritty?
Counting Down
It feels like I am counting down to everything:
2.5 months & it’s 2006
2 months & then I am 30 (!)
1 month & I start cooking massive Thanksgiving feast
1.5 weeks until I meet with new shrink
1 week until I can read the new Astrology Zone horoscope
1 day until I meet with R.E. to go over my HSG results
20 minutes until the recycling guys show up
Just goes to show that I am certainly not ‘living in the moment’. Not sure how to make that transition.
Yesterday I got a sweet e-mail from J thanking me for coming to the wedding, etc. In the note she says that she “really wants to find a way to visit me in ______, Alabama.” My response to her was that in no way would I allow her to visit me here. That ______, Alabama is my waiting room.
Now that I think of it, that is kind of a sad way of looking at the present. As if there was no there there. True I am not happy living here. True I have never felt less like myself. True I feel like God has forgotten to unpause me. But shit, what if I die tomorrow? What if THIS is really it. I kind of owe it to myself to be a bit more active & present.
Just…how do I get started with that?
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