Waffles, Freud, and Dr. Mom

You may as well slather me with butter and drizzle Mrs. Butterworth's all over me.

I am such a waffle.

Mo, apologetic and sick, continues to swear that he wants to do this. That he will take the time off from work. The clinic says "we still have time!" and is willing to reschedule for next week.

I just injected myself with Lupron.

I am such an idiot.

* * * * * * * * *

My mom, on the other hand, is the most amazing person I've ever known. Just as she was willing to swoop me back into the nest yesterday morning, she's also supportive of my indecisiveness. "Take your time, be sure, don't rush. We're here today, tomorrow, next month. We love you and will always be here, no matter what you decide."

If it wasn't for my mom, I don't know how I could cope.

We had a long phone conversation last night in which we both cried. I just love her so much. It has to be hard for her, to listen to me go through all of this and be unable to do a damn thing about it. And yet, no matter what I throw at her, she has remained supportive of me 100%. I want to leave my husband? Ok. I want to stay and have a baby with him? If that's what will make me happy. Keep taking fertility meds while at the same time continuing to look at apartments back home, just in case? The most natural thing in the world.

I know I get a lot of my codependency tendencies from my mom. Her marriage to my father, which lasted nearly 20 years, mirrored in many ways my own. So she gets me, where I'm coming from. She, however, has also spent a tremendous amount of time getting healthy and breaking her previous bad habits. She's found genuine happiness with my stepfather, a man who has loved me more unconditionally than my biological father will ever be capable of doing. She is encouraging me to do whatever I need to do to keep my own sanity.

She isn't judging me.


* * * * * * * * *

I'm taking things one day at a time. I applied for three teaching positions back home yesterday (yes, they still have openings at this point in the school year). I found some rental homes (and discovered that the apartments my mom lives in will allow me to rent a one-bedroom AND keep my pups). I dis-enrolled from all of our automatic bill-paying services so that, if need be, I can utilize my full paycheck for whatever I need.

I'm not being unrealistic. I know that making it through this cycle is a long-shot. Mo still has plenty of opportunities to cause havoc. But, sucker that I am, I am choosing to take him at his word. I am choosing to trust him, knowing full well he doesn't deserve it.

You see, he knows it too, and though not at the heart of his depression (which clearly he suffers from), it certainly doesn't help. He KNOWS how fucked up his life has become. He KNOWS he isn't doing all that he promised, all that he wants to do. He KNOWS that this isn't what I want, nor what he wants. He is just so entangled in it that I don't believe he knows a way out.

As he said the other day, we're gonna take it one day at a time.






P.S. Comments are closed for this post. Not because I think you'll judge me -- okay, that's a lie. It's because I totally fear you'll judge me. And I may change my mind tomorrow. So I think it will be easier -- for me-- if I just don't open myself up to that right now. I hope that you all understand.

My Options

I still have them, I guess, despite the overwhelming feeling that I've been backed into a corner with nowhere to turn.

I woke Mo up no less than 5 times this morning, starting an hour before we were supposed to leave.

At five minutes until 8, he pulled the covers over his head.

I begged, I pleaded.

"Just reschedule," he said.

I tried to explain that we can't. That I am supposed to start Lupron TOMORROW and this stuff needs to be knocked out NOW. That next week is a bunch of other stuff that has to get done. That I bent over backwards to get him an appointment on his day off so that he wouldn't have to miss work. That the next IVF run we'd qualify for would be in January.

That I wasn't willing to reschedule, again.

That if he backed out on me again, we were through with treatments.

That my heart, my spirit couldn't take this any longer.

He remained in bed.

The message he's sending is pretty clear, isn't it? Of course, he's going to play the "I'm sick" card. Only he's ALWAYS sick when it matters, and it's because of the choices HE makes. He chose last night to stay up until three in the morning, knowing we had this appointment. He chose to stay in bed, despite my tears and my practically begging him not to.

He made his choice.

Now, it's time for me to make mine.

* * * * * * * * * *

Option #1: Call in sick tomorrow. And Friday. Head home to my mom's (12 hours away) with less than $2000 in my pocket. Leave behind my precious furbabies and try to sort this out from there.

Option #2: Wait until my mom arrives for Thanksgiving. Have her and my stepdad help me pack, and go back home with them. This option still leaves me next to no money (although I'll get paid on the 30th) and forces me to leave behind Fat Girl and Big Boy, as my parents' apartment is not big enough for them.

Option #3 Make it until Christmas break. Try, try, to negotiate a settlement of some kind with Mo. Hope that he recognizes how much he's hurt me already and doesn't try to make me miserable for the next six weeks. The benefit of this option is that I will have more money to take, since we get paid on the 30th and will receive December's check before we leave for the holidays. An additional $4000 in your pocket is nothing to sneeze at when you are starting over from scratch. This also allows me some time to try to find a small house to rent back home, so that I can take at least Fat Girl with me. I can't imagine for the life of me falling asleep alone, without at least one of them to cuddle me as I sob over the brokenness of my marriage. If I choose this route, I may take the Thanksgiving holiday and head home (instead of my mom coming here), which will allow me to house-hunt in person.

None, and I repeat NONE, of these options is what I really want. What I really want is for my husband -- who is buried somewhere, hidden underneath this stranger I no longer know -- to emerge, to take me in his arms, to tell me that this has all been a bad dream. That we are going to be fine, that we are going to have the family I've always dreamed of.

It's taken me a long time to get here, but I finally realize this is never going to happen. No matter how hard I work at it, no matter how much space or time I give him, Mo is never going to be the man I thought he was, the man I want him to be. Our differences are too pronounced, even if our ultimate goal is the same. I can continue to spin my wheels for the next six months, a year or two. But the only result is going to be me older, and still unhappy.

Already, I feel myself wavering. I called my mom this morning, told her what happened, how I thought it was over. I went to the bookstore to pick up the "Do-It-Yourself" divorce kit. While there, I encountered a hundred books about sticking it out, making it work, not giving up. I could feel how easy it would be to do so. How easy to come back home, pretend it's no big deal. Pretend that Mo and I are still okay.

Even as I type this, I'm having a crisis of faith. Am I overreacting? Reading too much into his behavior/motivations? Could we possibly salvage this marriage and make it work?

My head knows better. It's just that my heart, as broken and shattered as it is, just doesn't want to listen.

Who's Surprised?

Come on, ya'll, a show of hands!

What? Just me?

Am I really the only one surprised at this turn of events? The only one who actually believed Mo was going to get his ass out of bed and make it to our appointment this morning?

Just me?

Wow.

It Figures

As soon as I give him brownie points, Mo returns to his usual tricks.

He slept all day yesterday.

He stayed up all night last night.

He slept again all day today.

He finally emerges from his cave, dressed and ready to go, at 6:45 this evening.

"I'll be home in an hour, hour and a half," he tells me.

Since aside from my meltdown this morning we've hardly spoken today, I'm curious. "Where are you going?"

To a friend's, he tells me. His phone has been ringing off the hook. Which is true. But I want to scream, "So freakin' what?" I've been home, basically alone, for two days. I've cleaned the house, done a million loads of laundry, played online, read two books. All while he slept. Now that he's awake, I'm not entertaining enough and he's out the door.

Tomorrow is our all-day appointment with the RE. We've got injection class, blood work, consent forms, and an embryology class planned.

Part of me wonders if I'm being unreasonable. He's got a right to have friends, I know this. But we've spent next to no time together during our mini-vacation, and I can't believe the first thing he does upon waking is head out the goddamned door. Did I mention that I was finishing dinner as he was leaving?

It won't do any good to get pissed off at him, as he's going to do whatever the hell he wants to do anyway. And so I'm bitching to you lovely ladies, who are all probably wondering why I'm even trying to have a baby with this man anyway.

Major Meltdown #1

You didn't think we'd make it through this IVF madness without a few of these, did you?

I have to say, Mo took it like a man.

In the throes of my absolute fury this morning about something quite trivial, he first attempted to hide himself in the covers, not un-ostrich-like. But when I melted into a puddle of sobs on the floor, he managed to be both soothing and comforting. "It's going to be okay," he murmured as he stroked my back.

"But. . . .but. . . .what if it's NOT?" I wailed. "What if this doesn't work? What if I never get to be a mother? What if I never get to hold my babies and kiss their faces and. . . ." I choked out.

"It's going to work."

"But. . .what if. . . ." (as I wiped copious amounts of snot on his T-shirt).

"Give it a chance, babe. It's going to be okay."

(sniffle, snort, wiiiiipe)

"Let's just take it one day at a time."

Huh.

For once, I think he may be on to something.

My Hurricane(s)

Having moved to the Gulf Coast from the Midwest, I've always claimed to prefer hurricanes over tornadoes. Though both leave devastation in their wake, the advance warning you get from a hurricane allows time to prepare, time that I desperately crave. I love to plan, to organize, to get ready.

IVF is, in its own way, a hurricane of sorts. You've had time to plan, to prepare. You know what's coming. And yet, when it arrives, no one knows exactly what kind of damage it's going to do. Will the side effects be minimal, a minor "rain" of discomfort? Or will the winds of Lupron and Menopur destroy what's left of your fragile emotions? As you flood your body with injections and your mind and heart with hope, who can imagine what the fallout may be?

Hurricanes, like IVF, are unpredictable. No matter how many you've experienced, you can never know just exactly what to expect when the next one blows through. How many days of stims? Will you respond well, or not at all? Perhaps you'll overstim, and be forced to cancel. Or maybe, just maybe, you'll be a textbook case and make it all the way to retrieval, to transfer, to the day in which you finally see those two pink lines of legend.

My joint hurricanes, Ida and IVF, seem to be bumping into one another. My medications are scheduled to arrive tomorrow, just as Ida makes landfall. Should the fallout from the storm allow it, our injection classes and bloodwork are scheduled for Wednesday morning.

The whirlwind has begun, and I can't help but feel that, though I know exactly what to expect, I really have no idea what's in store.

My Mondrian(s)

Several months ago, before my birthday, a few bloggers I know posted about this site.

It's a simple concept: enter your demographics, behold your personalized art. One blogger even posted about how her art really "fit" her personality.

So, of course, I had to try it.

My pre-birthday Mondrian looked like this:



Just for fun, and considering I was about to change demographics, I did a post-birthday one, too.

It looked like this:



What struck me at the time, and what I keep coming back to in the months since, is the shift in balance. If I was red, and Mo was brown, then the first picture demonstrates the inequality found in our relationship prior to this summer. Without meaning to, or perhaps simply because I let him, Mo's wants and needs dominated our relationship. Somehow, in my codependent fog, I let him take the lead, and I began to shrink.

Not long after I did the Mondrians, and celebrated my birthday, I started to work on changing this imbalance. The second picture, I believe, reflects this. I've begun to stand up for myself, to defend my choices, and to demand a more equal partnership. In this process, I've begun to once again take up the same amount of space as he does in our relationship.

Is this a case of art imitating life? Or life imitating art? You can judge for yourself. For me, the creation of this piece has forever altered the way I view this particular year of my life. It's the year of ME, the year that I once again take charge of my own destiny and rediscover who "I" am.


* * * * * * * * * * * * *


And, because I can't leave well enough alone, I did a hypothetical Mondrian for my next birthday, too.



I'm going to try not to read too much into that one.

Here We Go Again. . . .

We've been here before, last August.

The appointments have been set.

The schedule has been created.

The meds have been ordered from the pharmacy (just over $400 worth, due to the insane generosity of my clinic that still sits in my fridge).

This is the point where Mo backed out last time.


This is the point where the ball (once again) rests in his court.

HE has to call the pharmacy with his credit-card info to authorize the shipment.

HE has to go get his bloodwork done next week.

HE has to follow through on his promises.


Will he? Won't he?


Like I said, we've been here before.

Reaching Out

It seems as though I'm not the only one feeling the need to do so lately. I came home this afternoon to find Mo (who has been home sick with an ear infection the past two days) on the phone with "our" pastor -- yes, the one we haven't spoken to or seen since July. Mo had called him, reached out to old friends whom we haven't touched base with in some time. There was no specific reason for our falling out -- it just sort of happened. I left for "home" in July. . .and upon my return, spent some time with Mo and skipped church. And then skipped again. And then football started and we got busy and . . . .

Excuses.

I stopped going to church because I felt like a fraud. Standing there, praising God, telling people that I believed He had some sort of "plan" for me. It felt fake, artificial. One Sunday I found myself completely unable to even mouth the words, let alone sing along. And so I stopped going.

In the past few months, Mo has made some comments about how he misses church, misses the people and the positivity. I let those comments slide, occasionally hinting that I didn't feel quite the same way, but never quite verbalizing exactly how confused/angry/alone I felt.

One day, we had an argument. Mo mentioned that I wasn't behaving in a very "Christian" way. I retorted that that was all well and good because I didn't know if I was even a Christian anyway. "Oh, my, God. We've got some serious issues!" he responded.

You think?

The funny thing is that for a very long time, it was my belief in God and in His "master" plan that kept me and Mo together, that kept me staying when most wouldn't. I believed in marriage, in the sanctity of it, believed that God was using it to mold and shape me. I even believed that our infertility served a greater purpose -- one that someday we would come to appreciate.

I don't believe that anymore -- but I'm still here. Granted things are better now than they were then (although some of you may find that hard to believe), but there are times when I wonder what exactly keeps me here. Is it love? Loyalty? Desperation? A combination of the three? Or some other reason altogether?

I know we're not the first couple to face what we're facing. Some people choose not to fight, or choose to finally stop fighting. Others choose to battle it out, hoping to emerge victorious. For those of you who have chosen to stay in a difficult marriage, what keeps you there? How, exactly, do you keep a marriage going through its darkest days?

And most importantly, what do you have faith in, when you no longer have faith in God?

More Decisions

I'm opening up again, it seems. I love my bloggy internet circle, but lately I've felt as though I could use some more outsider opinions. So that necessitates a few changes around here, some welcome, some not. Among my decisions:

1. I've re-opened my blog to the general public. Whether or not that serves to bite me in the ass later remains to be seen. While the issues I'm blogging about remain uncomfortable and a definite source of agitation for my beloved Mo, I'm getting to the point where I. DON'T. CARE. (Gawd, that sounds bitchy!) What I mean to say is that MY need for support is outweighing my fear that he will find this blog, connect it to him somehow, and be so angry/hurt/mortified that he up and leaves me.

2. I've signed up for both IComLeavWe again (it's been a while) and NaBloPoMo (for the first time). By doing so, I hope to find some new blogs (my Google-Reader has shrunk almost as much as my own blog readership has since July), some new sources of support/advice, and some new bloggy friends. You, my internet "inner circle" have been amazing, and I need MORE of that these days. I also hope that by blogging daily I will gain some new insights/perspectives on this crazy life of mine and begin to put things in their proper perspective.

3. I'm still debating (read: putting off making a decision about) being 100% honest about all Issues around here. Now, don't freak out, I'm not a crazy TSA blogger or anything -- I simply have avoided actually TYPING THE WORDS because, somehow, that makes it more real. Naming it and all of that. What do I fear? Judgement, pure and simple. Why do I fear that from people whom I've never met? Well, friends, if I knew the answer to that then I'd market it and make millions. I don't know WHY -- I just know that I do. And I'd rather live in denial (I'm not crazy, I'm not, I'm not!) for just a wee bit longer, thank you very much.

4. I think I've reached a decision about IVF as well. It's probably not a popular decision, especially for my favored commenters. But (bad idea #1) I talked to my MIL for almost an hour on Sunday over coffee, and broke down about some issues (most of which she already knew about) and my general concerns. She gave me her opinions, and (bad idea #2) I listened. I know she's INSANE and all of that, but she made some points that have been rattling in my brain for ages, and for some obscure and unknown reason, I left the conversation feeling better about myself. Go figure.

It boils down to this: my marriage is rocky, yes. Mo and I have issues that may never get resolved. Having a child will NOT fix these issues. I KNOW THIS. But, I want children. I do not want to wait until I'm in my thirties to have them. I have the opportunity, the finances, and a willing spouse. No matter how it turns out, I'm not going to be able to move on until I've given it a try.

A year from now I may be typing this blog from an apartment near my parents, alone except for Fat Girl and Big Boy. Or I may be updating you with pictures of my ever-expanding belly or even (dare I say it? think it? jinx myself?) a newborn. I simply have no way of knowing -- I just know that I have to try.

I am putting it here, in writing, though -- and I expect Nina and Rebecca to hold me to this: if Mo backs out on me again, I'm done.

D.O.N.E. = DONE.

I simply can't stay in limbo any longer.