Out of the rabbit hole...

Whenever I deliberately show someone new this series of posts, I re-read them to remind myself what all I've been up to. In spite of the idea that by our mid-twenties we've mostly settled down in our development, I can honestly say that the difference in who I remember being three years ago and who I feel like now is almost as much as when I was 20. (I'm 33, for those of you playing along at home.)

When you grow up with crazy, harmful people, you develop a rather specific set of survival and coping strategies. Some of these can be useful later, many of them are not. It took years after cutting off contact with my abuser to create enough safe space to look at things.  It took years beyond that and several whirlwind, swept off the feet, dare I say manic relationships to start breaking some of those inner protective shells open.  Outnumbered, I was presented with incontrovertible trends and was forced to deal with them.  I also learn better by fucking up first. I'm aware of much more of myself, and don't have to try to fix other people so I can watch how I do it and use that technique on me later.

I was throwing myself into things, driven by questions I'd not dared to even ask before. Once asked and answers, the questions seemed to lose their hold on me, and I saw that it was the wanting and wondering that was keeping me attached, not the thing itself. A few of the things I've asked for have come to pass, many  have just been tried or entertained, and I realized it sounded better in my head and I didn't need that after all.  Still, you never know if you don't try.

The hardest thing has been coming to terms with my reproductive system. We finally decided to actually take a break from thinking about it or talking about it until this spring, and then if nothing happens by the time I'm 35, we'll bag the mission.  I'm ok with the idea now. I'm not *happy* about it, but I can talk about it without going moist and dribbly and have started looking for what comes next. To say this was a hard place to get to would be an understatement. There were many months of anxiety, disappointment, anger, depression bordering on suicidal, existential despair, crying on the buses home, fear that I would never find happiness or purpose again, a few self-destructive phases where I could see myself getting farther and farther out of control but couldn't stop because I was trying to crash just for the catharsis of an external disaster (thankfully it never came to that), resignation, grudging acceptance and finally coming up with at least a plan to make another plan.

My husband climbs mountains on the outside to keep things interesting. I feel like I'm on the other side of an internal one. I haven't actually solved anything yet.  I don't have a clear direction for a non-breeding plan, but I have a few leads and I can see myself working with kids again in the future. I can visit the stink-monkeys from the failed daycare and not cry in the car because I miss them and I'm afraid that was my one chance. I can imagine the things I'd like to do without children, and joke that it's not so bad being the only one at a kids birthday party who doesn't look ragged and starved for complex sentences.
Work schedules have changed and though it's taking some adjusting, I have more meaningful time with those close to me and more time to myself to get working on those things that make me feel like I'm moving instead of treading water.
I'm still too close to burnout to give energy to those who take and never seem to get full, but I'm attracting happier, healthier people into my life. I'm trying new things and going places that are uncomfortable and discovering they're not so bad after all (like rock walls).  I'm feeling kindness and affection from unexpected places, and remembering why I do what I do in the first place.
I'm writing again, haltingly, but steadily getting some of the things in my head onto a page. I'm remembering who I am at home. I'm looking back on all the things that were important or emotional or delicate and feel not entirely unlike I do when I look back on my high school writings. I'm not embarrassed, I don't think less of myself for having those experiences, but I'm really glad that Past Me was that way and Present Me is much more comfortable with and conscious of what's going on.

I haven't plotted a destination, but I've found my feet again and I feel a little like dancing.

random navel gazing

I've spent the last few weeks (months) going around in some kind of three dimensional figure-8.  Not quite a spiral, more just up and down winding up in the same places but different. It started out with a low simmer of anxiety over trying to have kids and not being terribly successful with it. We've not quite given up, but have put a lid on things, if I don't manage to get pregnant we're going to pull the plug. It was a bit of a rough ride coming to that decision, and the aftermath has been interesting.

The biggest part about this that I'm having trouble with is figuring out what to do with the rest of my time. At first it was a crush of "this is what I've spent my whole life gearing up for, what do I do now?" But I'm starting to come around on that front. I'm not entirely sure that I'm  being honest about this. Yes, I've been generally heading in that direction but it's possible that this is yet another in a series of excuses about how I'm trying to get ready for some big thing, about to start down a path, but it's really an excuse to not actually *do* anything now.

I felt like I'd lost some central thread, some major project that was going to give meaning to my life and be the thing I did that would be remembered. What was the point of collecting all this information if I wasn't going to pass it on? And then I read Herman Hess's "Siddhartha" after it had been sitting on my Kindle for quite a while. Hess points out that no matter how much you know, even if you've achieved "enlightenment", that knowledge is yours, and it was found by your own experience and you can't really pass that along because the things that lead you to your own understanding are not the things that will lead others to theirs. Mulling this over on the bus yesterday, vacillating between tears because I have no dreams left and admonitions about how this crisis of self is narcissistic wanking, I've circled back around to a few ideas. Yes, it is possible that the never ending journey to find one's essential self is a project born of Berkley trust-fund hippies who have more time than useful work on their hands, that personal empowerment retreats and walking on coals are all one big distraction from the unseemly truth that most people in the world have to actually work for a living, and yes, it's not necessarily fun or fulfilling, but they do it because it needs to get done. there was never some idyllic time when living off the land and being connected to nature was a magical, peaceful time that we need to get back to so we can commune with the spirits. Life has always been hard, nature kills us all the time and there's a huge difference between choosing to grow a victory garden with some chickens and watching your family starve because something went wrong with the crops that year. One is a hobby, albeit a useful one with real economic and ecological impacts, and the other is just another kind of work, great some days, but just that thing you have to do to survive all the rest of the days. whether I'm behind a plough or a keyboard, the net effect of having to spend a portion of my life doing things i don't really want to, but need to anyway is the same.

I have a job, it's not a magical, wish granting job, but it's a good job that I enjoy for the most part, I can do it, I get decent perks and give or take a few dollars, it's as reasonable a position that I'd find anywhere else at this time. I've tried a lot of jobs for many reasons, and no matter how much I loved or hated it, there were days I had fun and days I'd really rather have stayed in bed. After the co-op closed down, I'd pretty much exhausted the list of things I wanted to do without additional schooling, and while I'm in a bit of a holding pattern, I'm not sure that's such a bad place to be. To start, I *have* a job, which is no mean trick these days. I also have no idea what else I'd rather be doing right now. I could come up with another long-term plan, but I'm not unconvinced that wouldn't just be another stalling tactic to avoid making the most of what I have right now in front of me.

The thing I'm afraid of is becoming what i see so much around me, people who go to work to get money to go to the same bars and clubs on the weekends to get drunk and have the same embarrassing adventures, making the same mistakes and lamenting them loudly and publicly year after year. I'm afraid that if I settle into the present, I'll get stuck in a rut and keep doing the same things over and over and years will pass without anything real happening.  I'm starting to realize that perhaps there's a middle ground between "Office Space - Goth Edition" and a grand, unifying life that changes the world. I'm thinking, a job that doesn't suck, and maybe some projects that give me goals and things to do and make me happy.

I can't help but notice that when people have come to me for advice, I give the best I've got and maybe some subtle shift happens but mostly they keep doing things the way they were anyway. We all have to make a living and eat and wash clothes and bathe and get places, the differences between your life and mine are primarily in the subtle shifts. You have a different car, eat different foods, but most of you still go to a store to get it. maybe I'm focusing too much on validating my existence with outside measures, and the point of it all is really to do the things that make me happy and interested, so that I am happy and interested, and whatever effect that does or doesn't have on the outside world is beside the point. I'm not talking about becoming a sociopath, pursuing my happiness at the expense of others', but of not worrying about whether i make an impact on the world, and instead turning to cultivate the things inside me that might be useful for that. And if they're not, at least I was doing something that was meaningful to me.

I'm almost out of polite: the state of my pregnancies or lack thereof.

When people ask  in conversation how things are going in the "baby making department", I try to say something polite like "oh, still practicing" that reflects the way I'm pretty sure you meant it. I'm pretty sure the reason you're asking is that it's been a while since I've seen you and you remember I'd mentioned something about it before and it's a small talk subject you can think of.

Stop it.

The reason it seems like everyone knows I'm trying is because I've been trying for *five years*. That's a lot of time for conversations. I've had *four miscarriages* in those five years. If I see you and I'm not giddy with excitement and don't mention within my first three sentences the exact state of my uterus, it's because either
1. Nothing is happening. Again.
2. I am pregnant, but it's still so early that I'm terrified I'm going to miscarry again and could we please talk about something else because the "oh, hey, nevermind about the baby" conversations are getting kind of awkward.

But it's probably the first one.

The honest answer is that I'm finally starting to realize that I may never have a child. The honest answer is that I spend a vast portion of my energy in a given day not crying, that if I stop for three whole minutes and think about how my life is falling apart, I will begin wet, snotty bawling. I am not exaggerating, any given minute of any day, I am literally less than five minutes away from total meltdown. I don't look like it because I'm really good at putting up a good front, and honestly if you don't know when not to talk to someone about the personal details of their reproductive lives, you're even less likely to know how to deal with me losing my shit.

I talk about other peoples' babies because I work with them all day. I'm happy to talk to you about your baby. I'm happy to talk to you about your future babies, but if I have to excuse myself for a few minutes, do me a favor and just pretend that my eyes aren't more red than when I left and carry on. If I want to talk about it, I'll start the conversation.

If I want to talk about how my entire life I've known that I would have kids, I will. I didn't just wake up one day and think it would be neat to get pregnant.  For the last 15 years, every decision I've made has revolved around making myself a better person so that when I have my passel of offspring, I'm up to the task of raising conscientious, compassionate, creative, rational, reasonable, joyful humans. It's why I was a massage therapist for a decade. It's why I studied what I did in college. The careers that I've started, or haven't, the places I've gone or not, all of the forks in the road I've chosen because they would make me the kind of person I wanted to be for my kids. It's why my entire life is the way it is now.

And that may all be for nothing. It may well be that I've spent the last 15 years training for a mission that will never happen. There are a few steps more I'm willing to take, but not many. Clomid is my endpoint. That's the last thing I will try, and if that doesn't work, I'm done.
No, we're not planning to adopt. I don't have tens of thousands of dollars lying about, I've studied too much of the brain and what happens when to know that I'm not the right fit for adopting a ward of the state and I'm  not going to put myself in a position where I finally get an adoption through, bond with the child and then have some junkie mom find Jesus and decide she wants her kids back. Mine or none, the end.
No, I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of my life. I have no interest in going into public education or opening a preschool. I work where I do because these are the babies of my tribe and we have similar philosophies on how children should be reared and respected. I work where I do because I'm tired of being a generic button masher and I wanted to do something closer to what I really want.

 I'll figure something out, but I don't want to talk about it right now. I can barely say any of this out loud, with my mouth, when I'm alone. I certainly don't want to chit-chat about it with someone else. Please, for the love of fuck, stop asking.

Beat the Lizard

I find myself driving out of my way to go down familiar roads lately. Something in me needs to reconnect to my past, to feel myself in the world that was part of me outside my current work/home/VA circle. Lately I've been aware that while I've done a lot of head work over the last few years, it's only half of my experience getting attention. When I was constantly stressed from living in survival mode, I felt like i was living more in my body than I do now. Granted, most of that was in the form of discomfort or pain, but my inside and outside experiences at least matched.

Part of this disconnect was a deliberate choice, for a while at least. when i started school i knew that there were going to be classes and thought processes I'd need to engage that would be inconsistent with the experiences i had and things i knew in my bones to be true but couldn't scientifically prove. So, I made a choice to set aside the parts of me that weren't logical and rational and set to the books. Thing is, I've been kind of stuck trying to get back to it. I've always been a kinisthetic person, and my body was the one way I could relate to others in a non-rational fashion. Even in doing body work, I've been told facilitate energy work well, but I never really did it with intention. i would sort of just move my brain out of the way and do what seemed like it needed to be done and that worked. At the same time, I remember a time when I could direct energy with intention and be more deliberate in how I relate to the world and others.

As i try to get back to my roots, I'm finding that while a lot of the clearing has been done on an intellectual and emotional level with my past, and the effects thereof, it's not in my bones. It's exactly like any other emotional experience when you *know* better, but still feel your feelings. The Monkey brain doesn't care that you *know*. The Monkey must be felt, willingly or not. it works out well to have done it this way, I've managed to clear out a lot of deadwood, to see patterns and consequences that weren't obvious before, to make changes and form new patterns based on the way I want things to be.

Like the Monkey, the Lizard also has a place. While I have also done work and reclaimed much of the emotional experience I shut out either in defence or deliberately, the visceral, body state experiences I've largely ignored. I honestly didn't give them much thought, and as I wasn't ready to before now it's just as well. I can see where trying to do PTSD clearing all at once would get messy and overwhelming really quickly. These are big files, it's best to manage them in small bites. I'm working with someone these days who is helping me get in touch with the Lizard brain. By creating intense experiences that recreate some of the states of fear, panic and pain I've felt before, but in a controlled and consensual context, I'm slowly reclaiming my pieces. I'm realizing how much power I'd given up to fear and anxiety, how much potential had become tainted by misuse, how much of what's mine I've left in the hands of the one who was supposed to protect me and was instead the source of my terror.

One key difference this time, in addition to being able to stop, is that I can finally fight back. It's just now hitting me how much having to take abuse without complaint or trying to protect myself made me angry and broken. The few times I stood up to my mother when she was in a black-out rage were to step between her and my siblings, because I didn't trust her not to do more damage than even she meant to. I didn't fight to protect me. The battle over my will was already lost, the flesh was just collateral damage.

When you hear "I beat you because I love you" all through childhood, is it any surprise it makes things a little weird later on?

Vitriolic Fear Based Rant

For the first time in a long time, I'm sitting in an empty, quiet house in the evening with no expectation of company. Mr. H has left for a three day hiking trip into the mountains, and I have no one to "keep it together" for. I'm surprised at how close I am to tears. I started work again, and after months of waiting for a short sale everything happened this week and we move in on the 30th. That's roughly two weeks to pack the house, clean one house, move, and start cleaning another house. I think i could handle all of that just fine, except...

I'm in the Schrodinger's Box phase of my cycle, also known as the luteal phase. For those of you playing along at home, that's the two weeks between ovulation and menstruation when you could be pregnant but don't know yet. This. is. tearing. me. apart.

This is the first cycle after my first period after my miscarriage. I've been pregnant three times. All of them died. My hands are shaking because I'm terrified. If I'm not pregnant, I'm worried it will be another Frigg-knows-how-long before I do. If I am pregnant, I'm terrified this will end like all the others.

I don't generally let on how much this bothers me. People feel bad and want to help but there's nothing they can do and all their suggestions sound like "the reason you fail at this is because..."

That drove me fucking mad the last time. I had some very well meaning but clueless people try to "help". My yoga teacher kept offering to teach me the "fertility series" which is a set that needs ot be done regularly, like clockwork. I told her that I would really mean to, but I just don't start new habits very easily and it wasn't the appropriate solution for me, but thank you. She offered over, and over, and over again until I asked her to please stop. She didn't know what else to do so she had one thing and used it every time until it felt like judgement. There's no scientific evidence this series helps, she doesn't know what's going on with my system, there's no guarantee this would help and it would just be one more thing that didn't work.

Also, I'm a fucking adult and fully capable of asking for help when I need it and knowing what's appropriate for me and not, and so stop telling me what I should do. This was the same person who, after my last miscarriage before I'd even stopped bleeding, was excitedly showing off her new hand-me-down baby clothes for her pregnancy. "isn't this cute? look at this one. Aww, this is adorable!" As I stand there and smile with dead baby dripping into my maxi pad. While I'm happy for you in the long run and this is a joyous occasion and whatnot would it fucking kill people to think for a second and maybe guess that this isn't appropriate?

I see people treating their kids like shit and i want to scream. I can't even look at "cute kid" photo collections anymore. Every time there's a baby on the bus I have to be careful how much i smile at them because I'm sure I'd start to lose it and freak them out.

I'm not "baby crazy", i'm not responding to my biological clock ticking and suddenly oh, hey, I want to do this now. This is *all* I've wanted to do. All of the work I've done on sorting my shit out, all of my education, all of my life to this point has been living a full and educational life so that I can be the best parent I can and make contentiousness, puzzle-solving, curious, accountable people. I want to get my house set up with kids, and once the last one's able to totter and ask for things, I want to take in foster kids like we had when we were little. I want to create a safe space for everyone and shelter at least a few from the fucked up system.

The idea that I might not be able to birth children is too big for me to even contemplate right now. Save your platitudes, I know "there's always adoption". I'm not fucking stupid. And by the way, don't *ever* say that to someone. All it shows is how grossly you've missed the point, how disconnected you are from what's going on and what an asshole you are. Someone in this situation doesn't need advice I can pick up from bus adverts. If that's all you have to say, shut the fuck up. People in rough emotional situations need you to *be there with them*, they don't need fucking advice and pithy statements. Just shut up, give them a hug if they want it and sit next to them quietly if you want to help. Don't expect anything, don't try to engage conversation that's not forthcoming. The person you are trying to help should not feel like they have to entertain you or make you feel comfortable. This goes double for funerals. Learn how to be a person, not a sound bite.

I'm worried I'll get more disconnected with each failed pregnancy. I'm worried that my failure to get really excited is what causes them to fail, like maybe i'm not channeling the energy right or something. the last one had a strong, clear heartbeat. two days later it was in my hands. I don't know what to do but go forward. I pretend that everything's fine because people don't know how to react so they wind up costing me more energy to reassure them or politely grin through their "help" than it's worth. I feel like a river of lava running under a thin shell of rock and I don't know if that rock is going to thicken and cool or break through. My courage is screwed to the sticking place, but the sticking place is starting to crack.

Letter to management.

I’ve observed a few times now that S. has made a point to highlight the dissolution of the entire team or firing of individuals if we fail to produce good quality work. This needs to stop. It didn’t work with the old team and this team is scarcely two months old and is already showing signs of breaking down. One of the reasons the last team did wind so far off was the building fatalistic attitude that caused a “we’re already dead in the water, why do we care” mentality and the results of that were not pretty.

Threats work when you need oars pulled or rocks smashed. We work at a business. It is a given in the business world that liabilities get cut. Unless this is a done deal and you’re announcing severance, this threat is not what judges get paid to deal with, and it is *exactly* the wrong thing to do to get the results you want. Reminding people on a regular basis that their jobs are at stake is not just hurting their feelings, it is threatening their resources, their money, their food, their house. The same parts of our brain that respond to a bear attack also respond to social danger, including the loss of a job.

When in danger, blood flows away from the cortex, the thinking part of the brain and flows to the amygdala and brain stem, triggering emotional response and automatic functions, respectively. When a person is threatened the “fight or flight” response is activated. Blood flows away from digestive organs and higher brain function to the heart, lungs and limbs, adrenaline is released and the body gets ready for an intensely physical reaction. In the modern business world, this is inappropriate, so people sit there with these stress and anger chemicals running through them, indigestion and they start to take it out on each other. The unconscious part of the brain says “I feel a threat, you’re in the room, you must be it.” This starts the bickering, the refusing to see other perspectives, territorial behavior and attempts at forceful group dominance. This has happened before and it is happening now.

People *cannot* be creative and cooperative the way you need us to be when they are anxious about survival in this context. We are hardwired like this so the species didn’t sit around pondering the nature of the universe when there were wolves at the door. We are a species that prizes immediate self-preservation over Descartes. If you want rational, reasonable people who can cooperate, they need to feel it is safe to be wrong, to listen to what others have to say and to find solutions that solve the problems of judging, not the problems of ego or survival. I cannot do my job well if the people with whom I am supposed to hold intelligent discourse are terrified beyond the capacity for rational thought. The only worse way to “motivate” the team would be to threaten physical harm. People respond to danger with physical action, verbally defending their territory at all costs or by shutting down and backing out. None of these is useful to (the company).

People respond creatively and constructively to confident leadership, confidence in the validity of their contribution to the team and a neutral-to-safe workplace.

Sincerely,

Delta Hranek

Dead babies aren't much fun.

Two chemical pregnancies, two miscarriages. Each one gets a little farther in the process, this last one had a strong heartbeat, 150 bpm three days before I cramped up badly and passed a little foetus. We went the emergency room, again, because the books and the internets tell you to go to the ER if you experience XYZ. I think I'm done with that now. My husband is a nurse, I'm no simpleton, I'm not going to the ER unless it's an emergency anymore. They were condescending, probably because they see that sort of thing all the time. A nurse came in to tell us she was covering for another nurse on her break, she was the first person we'd spoken to.

The Doc kept saying things like "so you think you've had a miscarriage" "so you passed a clot?" No, I don't think I had a miscarriage, I did have one. My uterus went "squeeze" and my nerves went "ow" and the in-tact, multi-colored and textured capsule of dead baby went "splot" in my underpants. I held it for a while, showed it to my husband (the nurse) we consulted his maternity nursing text book, the one the nurse who hasn't bothered to check in yet also read, and now we're here because it's procedure. The reason I'm not freaking out or a big mess is that I don't tend to have big emotional reactions in front of people I don't know, and the bigger something is, the less you'll know about it because I play the important cards closer to the breast. So fuck you, I'm here because I'm supposed to be even though I don't want to be and really don't need to be. You have a problem with that? Take it up with the other doctors who write this shit.

I said that on the inside, later. At the time I was too tired and getting kind of pissed that clever coherent rants were hard to come by. The next day I went to my already scheduled primary care appt., originally to check my thyroid (turns out it's fine, pregnancy just makes it do more) and for the first time since I got pregnant I had a health care person in front of me who wasn't insulting or a noob. The midwife clinic I went to had students doing most of the hands on stuff, two weeks later my arms are *still* bruised where they tried to draw blood. We took another reading with a frightfully efficient phlebotamist whom I complimented on the best draw I'd had in weeks.

Went home, cramped some more, passed the placenta, put it in the freezer next to the baby while I rested enough to build a boat out of foil and plaster so Peter and I could have a viking funeral. The next day or the one after, we took lots of cedar sticks and made a pyre on the boat, then put the boat into this vessle with some water in the backyard. A few rose petals and salvia flowers on the grass made it pretty and we sent the little one along into the smoke and air.

I laid low for a while because the attention was a little overwhelming. Sometimes I feel like I'm supposed to have the reaction people expect and it's always a little awkward when I don't. Ya, I'm bummed that didn't work out, but I'd suspected something for a while. Even the heartbeat didn't convince me that the spotting was completely innocent. So when someone was like "oh my god I'm so sorry, how sad for you" it was like "well, yes, that sucked but I'm pretty over it now. I still have moments where I wish it would have worked out, but these things all happen for a reason, it'll work when it's time, in the meantime I've got stuff to do"

It was one of the few moments that I have ever actually hated my body. I don't care if my ass is big, I can do something about that if I really wanted to. But this whole "not supporting life" thing is starting to grate. I'll give it one more try before we go in and start testing for non-obvious reasons, as everything seems to look fine inside and out. I'm better now, I don't have the constitution for a serious grudge, I get that things weren't right, that when the guys upstairs get their acts in order and someone's ready to make a go of it, it'll match up.

The hardest part has been remembering that I have to heal at the speed of chemistry. That just because I'm rationally ok with things, the hormones still have to sort themselves out and find their level again. Just as I was starting to get some of my energy back I was hit with a wave of depression that was more annoying than anything else. I wasn't sad, I was depressed, the muting and absence of sensation and feeling. I had no motivation and didn't care about it. It took a while for that to pass and it was an interesting reminder that my body will do things at its own pace and it doesn't really care what I have to do today.

I've never really wallowed in feeling down, I don't really get people who do. I start thinking about the things I can do now that the timetable has been reset and it's not all bad. There were a few things I was hoping to get to before I got pregnant and now I've got another month at least before we start trying again. I may be able to lift boxes when we move, I won't have a fresh infant on my hip while feeding pros at NWC next year (though I may be a hippo), and I don't have to cut my MSFT contract short yet. I'll also be able to go to Critical Massive and not worry about people using my cooler or making some of the adjustments that go along with camping for a week while pregnant.

Yes, I find silver linings if i have to hunt them down and nail them on. Finding good in bad and not living in yesterday is how we survived growing up. I'm not entirely convinced it's not still a useful coping mechanism, especially when I'm taking time to honor and acknowledge the bad and then move on. "Nope that didn't happen" has issues. "Yup, that happened and it sucked, what's next?" seems fine to me. Though it does still smart when my other pg friend shows off her baby clothes that are so adorable. I'm only human.