Happiness Is...

It's unusual for me to draft a blog post. I usually just start writing and see what comes out.
Recently (ever since my last post), I've been thinking a lot about 'happiness' and what it would take to just be happy. I found myself making notes of the different thoughts that I was having, with a view to writing about them. 

I drafted that post over a few days, was happy with how it was looking and then... then I decided not to post it. I had logged on to Gordon's website and saw that his latest post was entitled 'Fertility and Happiness', and to his credit - this is the most amazing post he has ever written. This post made me stop and think. I felt that he had put things so clearly and so beautifully, and while there were quite a few similarities between that and what I had drafted, his words were flowing in a way that mine weren't. His writing carried you along on a weightless wave of pursuit until you can find a way to arrive at the destination that is 'Happiness'. That was very calming and settling for me to read and I genuinely felt that the topic had been accomplished and anything else that could be said about it would only serve to take from the beauty of Gordon's post.

I emailed Gordon to congratulate him on a fantastic blogpost and to let him know that I was so proud of what he had written that I would not be posting about the same topic. He responded telling me that he feels that it is important for me to post my thoughts on 'happiness', and he thinks it would be quite interesting to actually look at 'happiness and fertility' from two different angles.... so here goes...

Over the past 5 years there have been many times of uncertainty, many times where I have felt completely in Limbo, not knowing what path I was going to take or even what step to take next. 
I remember emailing Gordon (yes, I email him a lot!) during one of those times. It was just after we had gotten Patrick's sperm re-analysed and had been told that he has 100% anti-sperm antibodies. I was going through a really bad time with all of this and even though we still had 2 embryos from the original cycle in cyropreservation, I wasn't in a place where I could even think about going back to the fertility clinic for yet another cycle. (To give you some perspective... the cycle immediately previous to this one - resulted in the whole Ectopic Pregnancy - Emergency Surgery - Chemotherapy situation) I was going back and forth in my head for weeks, I could not make a decision. I would think that I wanted to go back for another cycle and then I would be struck by the paralysing fear of something similar happening again. This went on for weeks and weeks and eventually I emailed Gordon on a Friday to tell him that I was taking the whole weekend to figure this all out and I would force myself to have a decision made by the following Monday. I received an email from Gordon that Monday, simply asking 'Decision Made?'. I responded with ' I don't know what I am going to do, but I have decided that I just want to be happy'. He asked what is it going to take to make me happy?, to which I responded 'having a healthy baby' and therein the decision was made and it was an easy decision to make. When you can see the finish line and the prize that lies immediately beyond that line... the process to get there doesn't seem so daunting. I went through that process, I went through that whole cycle... knowing that even though I was really struggling from day to day, every day was one day closer to achieving 'happiness'. Unfortunately, that didn't quite work out as planned and what has transpired since then has made the achievement of 'happiness' seem almost unattainable.

I've been thinking lately about how much our fertility journey has impacted on our whole lives, and really, I suppose - how we haven't really had 'lives' since this journey started. It completely takes over. When I think back to when Patrick and I first got together. I was still at University and gosh, did we have a lot of fun. My friends from University still talk about the crazy nights out we all had (almost every week) and how I was so vibrant, so much fun, a party animal of sorts and the things we got up to... well.... lets just say there were many, many memories made :-) Patrick and I got engaged when I was still at University and married the following year. I had always known that I wanted to get married and start a family while I was still young, and in my head.... I had it all. By the time I was 25, I was married, we'd had our house built and had moved in, I had opened my own business which is running successfully to this day, We still met regularly with my friends from University and continued to make fun memories.... Life was as close to perfect as I thought it ever could be... so it was the perfect time to start a family..... and that is where life stopped for us.

Life became so meticulously timetabled, there was no room for spontaneity - no room for fun and definitely no happiness. Everything became about my cycles and what was to be expected on each day of each cycle. It became about a lot of worrying and anxiety if things didn't fully go as scheduled.  Everything became about being home at a certain time to take injections. We couldn't make plans. Nights out have been pretty non-existent, even the consumption of alcohol has pretty much become a bi-annual thing. (Yes... I am having alcohol pretty much just twice a year since this began).
My friends from University will call every so often to try and arrange for us all to get together and nine times out of ten, I have had to say 'I'm sorry, I can't go'. I'll either be having some surgery or procedure of some kind, or recovering from that... or taking hormones that are making me too ill, or in too much pain to travel, or just so fed up with my own pathetic existence that I don't feel like being around people. 
We have been on some pretty fantastic holidays in the past few years, but even those have not been to enjoy ourselves.... they have been to get away... they have been because I couldn't stand to be at home on the dates that my babies would have been due... and while it doesn't make the dates any less significant... I wanted to create good memories to have of those days to go along with the otherwise heartbreaking associations.

I remember on my very first visit to Gordon's clinic, he told me of the importance of having fun, of enjoying myself. He said just one hour of real fun and enjoyment per week is enough to make a huge difference. That sounded like such an easy task at the time.... surely everybody manages at least an hour of fun every week..... but even that became too much to ask. While you are going through an IVF cycle, you are afraid to do anything, because you are afraid that anything that you do will affect the outcome of the cycle. You constantly question and second-guess yourself. I didn't allow myself to drink coffee, or eat chocolate, or run, or dance, or walk too fast. It even affected the clothes that I wore... because what if the waistband of that skirt or trousers might be a tad tight and might cause the embryos not to attach. I remember suffering with migraines for weeks and weeks and just putting up with them because I was too afraid to even take paracetamol. You live in fear.... and in turn... when things inevitably did go wrong, It was so easy to look back and think 'Oh, I shouldn't have run to answer the phone that time..... Or I should have drank more water... or maybe it was the time I was a minute and a half late taking that hormone injection'.

Everything that we have been through has sucked the fun and enjoyment from our lives. I don't know what it is to be 'happy' anymore. Sure, we have many fleeting moments of contentment, but that is not enough. I guess I thought that we would be able to inject some 'happiness' into our lives during our current 'break from all things fertility' and perhaps we will be able to, but I am still suffering so bad from my last surgery. I am uncomfortable all the time, the really bad intense pain does not occur as often as it was doing, but while I thought I would be pain free by this stage... its looking like a long road ahead to getting to that point, if I ever get to a point of being pain free. 
Sure, we have plans. We are going to Dublin for a weekend in the coming weeks, something we have had booked since last October... and while I am so looking forward to it, even a weekend away comes with an arm-long list of restrictions. I can't do this, I can't do that, that will be too far to walk, I won't be able to spend that long sitting down... etc... etc... 

Gosh, how I wish I was able to just let my hair down, to have a good time and not have to worry about the damage I am doing to myself or how it will affect things in the future. How I wish I could just be ME.

When I think of who 'ME' is.... I think of the vibrant, sparkly, feisty young woman who was forever on the stage, always singing and dancing, always involved in productions, always doing 'something'. I think of the young woman bouncing around, exuding 'happiness', so bubbly that she gives everyone she meets an emotional 'lift' with no effort, just by being herself. I think of the young woman who would always be the life and soul of any party.... and now, I think of what I have become.

Certainly, I can be any one or all of those things.... but only with effort... only by consciously suppressing how I am really feeling and putting that front up to the world.

I don't know if I will ever return to that version of 'ME', but perhaps there is a way to figure out who the current 'ME' is and to come to terms with that in a way that is acceptable to me. Unfortunately, the quest for the achievement of 'happiness' is still one that eludes me, as I genuinely believe that I will never truly be happy until I am holding my baby in my arms... the likelihood of that actually happening is anybody's guess right now and therefore I feel that I must stop trying to find 'happiness' for now, but more find a way to accept myself in the place that I currently find myself.

One thing I am happy about though is that I am finding myself no longer trying to sugar-coat how I am feeling. I feel that even my writing has changed and I am a lot more candid and true to how I am really feeling now. This journey was never going to be all rainbows and butterflies, but instead of some rainbows and butterflies... well, we are left with no rainbows or butterflies... and in many ways I have come to terms with the fact that there are lots of things that are going to upset me or that will bring to mind upsetting memories, and while I do not want anyone to feel like they have to walk on eggshells around me for fear of upsetting me, I have to accept that all of these things are part of me and part of who I am.

Sometimes it strikes me as quite strange at how raw things can feel to me, even though this has been going on for so many years. I wanted to share a story with you about something that happened yesterday. I was chatting online with some of my closest friends from the UK, it was quite a lighthearted conversation with lots of joking and laughing going on. I was vaguely conscious all the time that yesterday was one of those 'significant dates' for me, but felt like I was doing pretty well and was managing not to dwell on it. The conversation somehow came around to the subject of 'ugly babies' (looking back, it was a humorous conversation... kinda like the Father Ted 'Hairy Baby' skit). The three other members of the conversation all seemed to be finding this quite funny, but it sent me into total meltdown. With the mindset that I was in, I just could not see how they could think that it could ever be okay to call any baby 'ugly', nor could I understand how they could ever think that this could be funny. In my head, all I could think of was about the babies that I have lost and how every baby I see is the most beautiful baby that I have ever seen. I found myself thinking 'How dare they say that about anybody's baby, they don't know what that person might have gone through to have that baby and they think it is ok to say that the child is 'ugly' '. I got soooooo mad with them. (Anybody who knows me knows that I do not get mad very often, but gosh... when I do... its best to run fast and run far coz it ain't gona be pretty). At that point, I was completely beyond any reasonable level of communication or comprehension that they were in fact just kidding around and would never actually refer to or even think of any baby as being 'ugly'. I spent about 30 minutes being mad... and about 4 hours feeling embarrassed at how I had reacted. I am thankful that these people are actually friends of mine and have some understanding of why I reacted in the way that I did, but it just drives the point home to me that I am still very unsettled and not at all 'myself'... and still very much 'recovering'.

So..... Happiness is..... well, I have absolutely no idea..... but I know this is not it...!!!