Up In The Air

This has been a really hard post to write for some reason...I've started it like five times...but today I'm going to write it and hit "publish" so I can maybe quit obsessing over all that's going on...

My husband just graduated from college with an engineering degree (he went back to school on the GI Bill), and a few months ago we though he had found a job in Salt Lake City and that we were set. It was a great job, and I was excited about SLC because it's not far from my family and it's in the West where I feel most comfortable and there's so much great outdoor stuff going on (hiking, snowboarding, etc.)

Well, we found out right around the time the babies were born that that job is not going to happen. We were a lot less upset about it than we would have been otherwise, because we had just had two beautiful healthy babies and figured that's all that really matters, right?

So now my husband is job hunting. Which doesn't really scare me...he's got a great resume and I don't think it's going to be a problem for him to get a job. Plus we're living pretty cheaply right now and there's no financial pressure for him to start working right away. And honestly it's ideal to have him at the house at the moment 24/7...he helps sooooooo much with the twins....ladies who do this on their own, I am in awe of you...don't know how you do it.

So I'm not worried about the job part. The part that is freaking me out a little is the moving. My husband's looking in the town where we live, but it's unlikely that he'll be able to find what he's looking for (it's a small town without a lot of opportunity). He's also looking in Colorado and Utah, either of which would keep us close to family and so wouldn't be such a big deal.

But we're also open to moving away. Maybe somewhere I know I want to go (eg, Seattle). But more likely somewhere I've never lived (right now there's talk of Virginia and Minnesota).

I hate change in general and moving in particular. There's fear surrounding going to a new place. But the biggest thing for me is not living near my family. Especially with the twins...it's really important to me that they are close to my parents. I've actually got a lot of grief tied up in this...it's so hard, and also I don't want to hurt my mom and dad in any way. There have definitely been tears and sleepless nights on my part over this, and my husband and I don't even know what we're doing yet.

Anyway, I'm trying really hard to look on the bright side/focus on the positives, such as:

1. We might end up close by, in which case all this worrying is for nothing
2. My parents like to travel and will come see us (we'll make sure wherever we end up there's a nice place for guests)
3. We can come visit as a family, and I can come for extra visits with the kids
4. There's phone and email and iChat etc.
5. I was VERY close to my grandparents growing up, even though they lived in another state, because my parents sent me to stay with them twice a year (Seattle in the summer, Mexico in the winter) for weeks at a time...some of the best memories of my life...we can do the same with our kids
6. My husband having a job is going to be amazing. We've done fine while he's been in school, but it'll be nice not to have the weight of providing for the family on my shoulders
7. Him having a job also means I can work part time, which is huge, as all I want to do is be at home with the twins (I freelance/telecommute so I can work from anywhere, which is a blessing)
8. A new town/city is going to be cool. I like exploring new places
9. A new house to decorate will be super fun
10. Also looking forward to being somewhere where I can settle in and be a bit more sociable than I've been here. I've had a hard time making friends here, which has never been the case for me. Part of it is when I moved here, I was so overwhelmed with grief over my brother's death that I didn't want to be around people I didn't know well. Plus I traveled a ton for work and pleasure, and got to see a lot of friends doing that, so there wasn't a huge need to make new ones. And I had my parents to hang out with

Anyway, lots to look forward to with this next chapter in our lives, wherever it may take us. And wherever we go, it doesn't have to be forever. That's the other thing...I always worry so much about making decisions like this because I feel like I have to make the "right" decision. But whatever we decide, we can change if it ends up not working for us.

Just trying really hard not to stress about all this and enjoy the here and now, which is me and my husband at home (I have one more month of maternity leave), my parents close by, a beautiful spring-moving-into-summer, great opportunities on the horizon...

"The Aquarium:" Some Thoughts on Grief and Loss, Coping and What it All Means

A fish in the aquarium in Stanley Park, Vancouver, BC.

Do any of you all read the New Yorker? There was an article in there a month or so ago (June 13 & 20, 2011) that I've been turning over in my head ever since I read it. It's called "The Aquarium," written by Aleksandar Hemon. In it, he talks about the illness and death of his baby daughter, but I think a lot of what he talks about is more universal than just that particular (horrific) situation. 

For example, the isolation he feels during his daughter's illness (and I've felt, through my brother's death primarily, but also through our recent miscarriage and years and years of trying to have a child) is so beautifully described: 

"...I had a strong physical sensation of being in an aquarium: I could see out, the people outside could see me (if they chose to pay attention), but we were living and breathing in entirely different environments."

Another thing that resonated with me is how often it's so hard for people to communicate with those dealing with intense pain of some sort (and vice versa)...this is something I've definitely experienced:

"One of the most common platitudes we heard was that 'words failed.' ... If there were a communication problem, it was that there were too many words, and they were far to heavy and too specific on others. ... We instinctively protected our friends from the knowledge we possessed; we let them think that words had failed, because we knew they didn't want to learn the vocabulary we used daily. We were sure they didn't want to know what we knew; we didn't want to know it, either."

One of the things I find hardest about the tough things that have happened to me is people telling me to find the meaning/the good in what's happened. I don't believe there is meaning or good, and neither does Mr. Hemon:

"One of the most despicable religious fallacies is that suffering is ennobling--that it is a step on the path to some kind of enlightenment or salvation. Isabel's [his daughter's] suffering and death did noting for her, or us, or the world. We learned no lessons worth learning; we acquired no experience that could benefit anyone."

It's a heartbreaking article, but one that is so worth reading in its entirity.

Anyway, I hope something in these excerpts helps someone better understand/process what they are thinking/going through, the way they helped me.

XO

Facebook--Love It or Hate It?

First off, let me tell you what I love about Facebook:

1)    I love that it’s let me reconnect with a TON of people that may have been lost from my life forever

2)    I love that my friends are easy to keep tabs on…you can get a pretty good idea what’s going on in their lives by visiting their Facebook pages

3)    It’s also a quick and easy way to tell people hi or happy birthday or congratulations etc

I’m glad Facebook is there. I don’t want to get rid of my Facebook account.

But.

I don’t go on Facebook very often.

First of all, my friends are all over the country, and it makes me miss them. Terribly. And wish I’d lived the sort of life where everybody didn’t end up so scattered.

Then, I get envious, which is my worst personality trait, hands down. I think what it is is that I just miss people and places and things that I had in the past so very much…it’s hard to be reminded of those things. Like living in California. Seattle. Austin. Surfing. Snowboarding. Having my brother alive. Being super young and still having so much time to make choices and figure things out. Etc.

I’m also envious of things that I want that have not been easy to get. Like kids--I’m especially envious of ex-boyfriends who got girls pregnant accidentally, which is ridiculous because that’s not an ideal situation for anyone involved (although in the end there’s so much love for those kids…)

And there’s no reason for all this envy. I have a good life. I’m going to have a baby. I’m not that old. I snowboarded like crazy last year, probably more than any of my friends--had so many epic days and I’ll snowboard again. Ugh.

Also: No one struggles on Facebook. It’s just not the medium to talk about the troubles you’re having…thus, it presents this kind of skewed view of the world where everyone’s life is shiny and perfect. My life is not shiny and perfect, and it’s hard to see everyone else looking like that. (Not that I wish any sort of misery on my friends…it’s just good to know that you’re not alone in your struggles in this world, you know?)

Bottom line: I generally feel worse after going on Facebook than before. And I’m trying not to do things that make me feel bad.

Wish there was a way to use Facebook that didn’t make me feel so very sad…

Image credit: rafeejewell

Fear of Loss

So I watched a documentary called Exit Through the Gift Shop over the weekend. Great movie. (I love documentaries, especially when they involve creative people as subjects.) It's about a guy who spent years filming street artists, and actually before the street artists, spent years filming everything (family especially), went everywhere with his camera. 

One of the questions raised in this movie was, what was this guy's obsession with filming? It's revealed halfway through that his mother died when he was 11, and he hadn't even been aware she was sick, so her death came as a total surprise/shock. And now he's got this compulsion to document everything--because he knows from experience that at any moment without any warning life as he knows it could end.

I keep thinking about this guy and what he lived through and how he responded to it. Poor thing--I can't even imagine losing your mother at age 11. But I do know about suddenly losing someone incredibly important to you, whose day-to-day life is woven into the fabric of yours. And since that loss (my brother, nearly 6 years ago now), I can't do a thing without having the thought that this might be the last time everything is OK. Tragedy could strike at any minute. Must make an indelible record of this time as it could end so suddenly, so easily. I don't film, but I write things down, and save voice mails, and take pictures. And there's never a time I talk to or see someone I love that I don't think maybe this is the last time ever, and what can I do to fix this moment in my mind just in case that's true?

Probably not too healthy an approach to life. But the guy in this movie, he made me feel like I'm not quite so crazy--and not quite so alone.

Transitioning From Being an Infertility Patient to Being Pregnant

I so want to decorate a nursery already...

This is a big shift for me. Some of the stuff that's on my mind today:

• Waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for my clinic to call with my second beta result, for which I had blood drawn this morning. A good result means I'm pretty solidly pregnant. A bad one means I'm probably miscarrying. There's no reason to think it'll be bad, except that things have gone wrong over and over and over again...it's hard to have faith that everything is going right
• Laying down for an hour or two in the afternoons...lovely. How much am I loving my work-from-home job right now? Haven't been sleeping well, so really need that rest. Plus, who knows what my body's doing/needing at the moment, aside from the insomnia?
• All the restrictions I was hating during the two week wait (no yoga, no hikes, no wine, no tea, no snowboarding, no baths, etc., etc., etc.) are no big deal if there's a reason for them, like it's good for an actual baby/ies
• Feeling all of a sudden like being social again. I've really isolated myself, with this cycle in particular and this past year over all the cycles I've done in general...and really the not wanting to be around people much goes all the way back to when my brother died...it's been hard for me to do things feeling like tragedy has changed me in a way that sets me apart from the world. It's a good sign I want to call and see people...that's not a place I've been for a while
• Speaking of my brother, it's progress in me getting over his death that my first thought after finding out I was pregnant was not about him. It was about my husband and our parents and a few close friends and my brother who is alive who is awesome...it's only when I called my alive brother that I got sad thinking I couldn't call my dead brother. But this is big for me...even my wedding two years ago...it ended up being an incredibly happy day, but I was hesitant to get married because my dead brother couldn't be there (my hesitation had NOTHING to do with my husband...he is wonderful), and the whole day was planned around making it so it would be OK if I lost it (very small, reception at our home, etc.) That feeling of not wanting to do something because my dead brother can't be a part of it--it's not here with this. Which is as is should be. I have to let my dead brother go, or I'm not going to ever have any chance of being happy
• I know a lot about what to do with infertility, almost nothing about being pregnant. Some baby books or some such may be in order
• My husband has already picked out boy and girl names. Too cute
• Overall, there is such a feeling of lightness that's coming along with all this...like I don't have to carry the weight of the world on my shoulders anymore
• I promised myself no matter how sick/uncomfortable I am during this pregnancy, I'm not going to complain. Not one word. (Well, I might talk about some things on this blog, but not one negative word to my husband. I'm just so incredibly grateful to be in this position)
• Pretty much all I want to eat right now is bean burritos
• Still waiting, waiting, waiting for that call from the clinic. It's 5:30 PM...geeze. My clinic's great but this is ridiculous...

Photo credit: Conor Keller.

Just Because You’ve Been Damaged by Tragedy Doesn’t Mean You Have Nothing Left to Offer the World

Here's where we got married, Glade Park, Colorado.

A sweet story, told to me yesterday about the little log cabin chapel where my husband and I got married:

“When we were building the chapel,” Alice, who owns it, told me, “we were getting wood from an area of Glade Park that had been ravaged by fire. The supporting pillars for the structure that you see in the front, we decided not to strip them of evidence of the burn. We did that to remind us--I could picture those poor trees saying ‘I’m so damaged by the fire, I’m burned and disfigured, I’m no good for anything anymore.’

"And look where they ended up--the most important part of a chapel that’s meant so much to so many, many people.”

An Ex-Boyfriend Contacted Me Through Facebook

My ex-boyfriends generally fall into two categories: those I’m friendly with, and those who don’t want to talk to me. One of the ones I though was in the latter camp sent me a message over the weekend, out of the blue after about 6 years.

He’s actually the last person I seriously dated before I met my husband. I’m sure his version of why we broke up is probably different, but my version is I was still in love with someone else, and didn’t really want a serious boyfriend, and he wanted to get married and have kids. Not necessarily to/with me, but that was his goal.

Anyway, really nice message, and his picture shows him with a baby so I assume he got the marriage and kids part figured out, which is great. Happy for him. And I’m glad we can be in contact, even though I’m sure it’ll be very sporadic. I hate losing anyone to the past.

But. Ex-boyfriends popping up make me feel unsettled. It’s got me thinking about that time in my past--things were complicated back then but they are infinitely more complicated now. I’ve lived through a lot since we dated, things I don’t necessarily want to talk about in a catching-up conversation with an ex-boyfriend. I feel a lot like I can’t really talk about how things have been. It’s too heavy. So I give the cheery “got married, still doing the same job, living in Colorado now, snowboard season’s going to rock, all’s well” reply, instead of “since we last talked my brother’s been killed, I’ve had to leave California and the ocean and I’ve been to hell and back trying to have a baby and we’re nowhere near through yet.”

And I feel more isolated than ever.