2021: Non-Resolutions
It’s been years since I bought into the theory or idea of resolutions. To me, New Years is presented as an ideal, and we easily buy into it with self expectations that are seemingly purposeful and fulfilling, full of the potential for personal growth that we quantify by way of goals we had no ability to wrangle and master for all the days prior to the strike of midnight. Pessimistic? Perhaps. Science shows resolutions are mostly talk and a waste of time, more for show than anything else.
If anything, I use my own personal experiences as launching pads for growth and resolutions. Those awful, negative parts of life that push me down and kick me hard give me reasoning to stand up and roar. Reason for all parts of me to go to war to prove that I am bigger and better than any part of my self and my life experiences that try to tear me down.
It just so happens, that one of those experiences happened in tandem with 2020s changeover. So here I am, writing to the ether, with a promise to do better.
IVF fucks with a woman’s body on so many levels. So does a miscarriage.
2020 was a shit-show for most. For me, the highlights of the shit were three frozen embryo transfers followed by subsequent miscarriages.
The most recent one found me between Christmas and New Years. A phone call from my clinic resolved that the low and slow growing levels of the pregnancy hormone HCG from the 3 blood tests I had done every few days that week had withered down to nothing in the 4th test.
I felt more sorry for the nurse having to deliver the news than I did for myself. I have come to expect this news.
However, unlike the 3 previous miscarriages, and 2 ectopics, this loss took it’s time and showed no signs other than the blood tests which exposed the hard truth despite all the Google searches I tried to use to convince myself otherwise. It remained that way for 4 days after the call. Its stagnancy stayed the same until the day we went out for lunch and drinks for the first time since March of 2020 and the start of the pandemic. On New Years eve as I went to use the washroom, the year ended with everything I hated most about the year. Loss, and lots of blood and some tissue.
Stripped down and angry, exposed and vulnerable, frustrated and tired. Like so many times this year, I swallowed my tears and flushed my dreams down the toilet.
You see — with pregnancy loss, and with IVF, it is not just the mental and emotional lows, it’s the physical changes that occur too. My body becomes not mine, but just a body. Injected daily with blood thinners till my belly is bruised, steroids and estrogen are swallowed every morning, progesterone is strategically placed 3 times daily, and injected into my ass every third day, my family's life revolves around my med schedule. I’m not allowed to run, I’m not allowed to be intimate with my husband. Everything is put on pause for a possibility that never comes to be. Instead, I turn into a balloon, swelling and changing. I try to tell myself I am proud of it’s capabilities, it’s strength, but the more it goes through… the more I lose sight of myself and my worth in the mirror, the more detached I become, and the harder it is to find reason for self praise and acceptance. With each loss, as my body seeps out any remaining residual hormones, with the headaches and the nausea, my skin dries up and itches and scratches, and I fight hard to find any ounce of self love. Resentment is the easiest thing to embody.
The emotions from loss after IVF are held hostage by the overdose of hormones, coupled by this primal urge to hold onto hope to the point where I wrestle with this constant battle between denial and fear. I have long ago stopped the inner dialogue with future baby when I become pregnant. I fear allowing myself to touch my belly with any sort of attachment, and use the bruising as a reason not to. I hate myself for failing. I hate my body. I hate looking at my husband and feeling completely unworthy of all his love. I dissolve into tears daily. Crushed by the weight of grief and Facebook announcements that make me feel like a terrible person for feeling so terrible.
The hardest part when I reach this point is being hyper aware that I am aging with each loss, not wanting to give up, while simultaneously so badly just wanting to run. Literally and figuratively. I just want to run. I want to run to be a version of me before all of this sadness existed.
So here I am. Exposed and admitting to having sat last night with my husband and my stepdaughter, we burned notes containing all the worst of 2020 to rid ourselves of any residuals we am holding on to, no matter how fresh and wrote out goals for 2021 to try and give myself a reason to continue.
This is one of them. To write. To share. To release.
I will also run until I feel strong enough to try again, and again. I will focus on learning how to love my body, again. All of it. I will do so by taking time to cleanse it and honoring it with nourishing food and herbs.
I did not come this far, and go through all of this, to not allow myself to reach a place where I can say that all of this sadness was all worthwhile.
