Boulevard of Broken Dreams

The irony doesn’t escape me. It’s 5:15 am and –thanks to our dog — who refuses to sleep, I’m wide awake.

It’s not as if I’ve had a dif­fi­cult time falling asleep … it’s more that I can’t seem to stay asleep. If any­thing, all I want to do is climb under the cov­ers and fall into a deep, deep sleep. Depres­sion can obvi­ously do that.

And with me, depres­sion can cause waves and waves of anx­i­ety, which only add fuel to the insomnia-​​fire.

Recently Hubby and I had one of our long dis­cus­sions (one of many we’ve been hav­ing lately). This one hap­pened to start off with an inno­cent com­ment our 15-​​year old nephew had said last Sun­day when we met them for lunch.

“Aun­tie,” he told me, “you look sad” . And I couldn’t tell him any dif­fer­ently, other than to say that I’d been tired a lot lately.

My hus­band brought that up dur­ing our dis­cus­sion as a means to show me how even a 15-​​year old could see my depres­sion. And if he could see it, how many other peo­ple would see it as well?

All I know is that over the years, I have changed. Oh … I think the heart of me — my cen­ter — will never change, but the way I’ve looked at things or approach things have def­i­nitely been altered from my life experiences.

I know these thoughts are no dif­fer­ent than any other per­son in their late 30’s/early 40’s. After all, isn’t this when we begin to look back at our lives to where we were and com­pare them to where we are now? Isn’t this where we reflect back on those dreams we had in our early 20’s and think about whether we’ve achieved them or not?

You see, as I approach 40 this year, this is one of the anxiety-​​ridden things I think about fre­quently. I think about our early post-​​college years where then-​​fiancé and I would dream about our future together. We’d dream about our mar­ried life together; of kids and the large house in the sub­urbs. We’d talk about how our kids would be into sports or some sort of activ­i­ties where we would be the proud par­ents who’d show up with video cams in hand to record such moments. We talked about vaca­tions as families.

And, of course, I also had my dream of want­ing to be a Stay-​​At-​​Home-​​Mom for a spell, while wait­ing for our four (yes, four) kids to all be old enough to go to school. I also dreamt about mak­ing friends with other Mom’s; friends of our kids, where we could hang out and com­mis­er­ate about daily life with kids. I dreamed of arrang­ing play­dates and birth­day par­ties and all these won­der­ful things I could do when I became a mother.

But we all know where those dreams went. Our best laid plans … right down the potty.

While mak­ing the deci­sion to live child-​​free has less­ened the “blow” to my need to mater­nal­ize (is that even a word?), it hasn’t taken away the fact that I have had to face the “Boule­vard of Bro­ken Dreams” when com­ing to terms with my infertility.

In other words, in order to fig­ure out what our next step in child-​​rearing would be … Hubby & I had to walk that “boule­vard” alone. Together, yes def­i­nitely … but alone.

So now that the we’ve passed that boule­vard … and even though it’s been almost two years now … what do we do now? What’s our next step? What’s our goal? I know that chil­dren aren’t in our future, but so what is our new future?

It’s all of those wor­ries that keep me from hav­ing a full night’s sleep. It’s what causes me anx­i­ety in the mid­dle of the night.

Which direc­tion in life do we need to be head­ing? What we can do with our lives now that we’re clos­ing in on 40 … the decade where we should feel more “set­tled” in our lives?

It has all the mak­ings of a dream­less night. A night where I’m not sure what our new dream is going to be.

Which, again. The irony doesn’t escape me.

How Winter Kills

Like the snow in Metro Detroit, I’ve been in and out of every­day life. And like the snow, my mind should be ever present dur­ing this par­tic­u­lar month, since it’s sup­posed to be the month of new begin­nings; of mak­ing res­o­lu­tions to change things.

But like the snow, I’ve only sur­faced in bits in pieces when­ever life seems to be most inconvenient.

This depres­sion sucks.

No. I mean lit­er­ally. It sucks the life and energy out of me. And throw in a (un)healthy dose of anx­i­ety with it … well it just makes life all the more interesting.

I’m try­ing my best to move past this depres­sion; doing all that I can phys­i­cally and clin­i­cally do, but the weight of this sad­ness seems to be omnipresent.

Thank God for an under­stand­ing Hus­band; one who has stood by me through thick and thin. He’s been there through the low-​​hanging, non-​​anxiety moments and all the way through the high-​​octane drama-​​fueled moments. Some­times I won­der – scratch that – I always won­der how I’ve man­aged to find my soul­mate and my best friend who still loves me despite all the bag­gage I carry.

If any­thing, Hubby (and the furkids – although the fur-​​dog has been on my last nerve lately … ) is the rea­son why I keep get­ting out of bed every morning.

Even though I’ve writ­ten the occa­sional post about the grief I’ve been expe­ri­enc­ing, I know I’m not usu­ally so out­right with my depres­sion. But it has been sug­gested to me that I start writ­ing more about it, because this seems to be the only out­let where I can openly talk about my struggles.

And although this blog is (and always will be) about liv­ing child-​​free after infer­til­ity, I thought that this was my lit­tle cor­ner of the uni­verse where I can tell you about my life, both good and bad. So here’s where I lay it out on the line:

  • I’m still griev­ing over the death of my father. Between my two par­ents, it’s become appar­ent to me over the past year and a half that I truly was a “Daddy’s Girl.” I thrived in the moments when my Dad would play around with me and tease me. And there were the silly jokes the two of us would play on each other that only the two of us would get. And I miss those things horribly.

 

  • In the same aspect, I real­ize how much dif­fer­ent my rela­tion­ship with my Mom has always been; par­tic­u­larly now that my Dad had passed. I’ve always known that we never had that “Mother-​​Daughter” bond that is con­stantly seen in movies and TV shows; we’re just two very dif­fer­ent peo­ple. And with­out Dad being there as a buffer, this rela­tion­ship has only inten­si­fied … and not always in a pos­i­tive way.

 

  • Even though it’s been over a year since decid­ing to move back to Detroit, not a day goes by that I don’t miss liv­ing in Chicago. I miss the city and the atmos­phere. I miss the late night trips to Dim Sum or Korean BBQ with my cousins. I miss walking.

 

  • But what I miss the most is that Chicago rep­re­sented a new life for me. A life where Hubby & I carved out a place for our­selves; where the two of us really started focus­ing on us as a “Fam­ily of Two.” And while I love my home­town and take pride in telling peo­ple that I’m from Detroit, I miss that part of our lives where we were just far enough from “home” where Hubby & I could be our own family.

 

  • And finally … even though Hubby & I have decided that child-​​free liv­ing after infer­til­ity is our life, there are still those days where I worry about our future and what other things in our lives we can con­tribute to the greater good of our world. Will all I have to show at the end of my life is that I’ve worked hard for a liv­ing? That I loved my fam­ily and friends to the best capac­ity that I could? What about my legacy? What will I leave behind? And will I have made a dif­fer­ence in someone’s life? I know now that hav­ing kids won’t nec­es­sar­ily “sat­isfy” or pro­vide answers to all of those ques­tions, but hav­ing lost my Dad … and know­ing the per­son he was … this is some­thing that weighs heav­ily on mind.

 

I could prob­a­bly go on with more “issues” that seem to run end­lessly through my anxiety-​​ridden head, but these are the ones that are con­stantly in my stream of con­scious­ness. These are the things that keep me from doing the things I would nor­mally enjoy doing.

Like read­ing.

Or knit­ting.

Or tak­ing pictures.

Or writ­ing.

Or sim­ply watch­ing TV.

But I’m try­ing … at least I’ll try to work on the writ­ing bit.

And maybe Mother Nature will be kind enough to work on a mild win­ter for the rest of us.

Too Pieces

The day stretched on as if it were the longest day of sum­mer; yet it was the mid­dle of win­ter. It was only 4:30 pm, but dusk was around the cor­ner; the clouds in the win­tery sky mak­ing it seem darker than it should be.

She should be doing some­thing to keep her mind busy; any­thing to take her thoughts off the shades of grief that lay inside the pit of her stom­ach. Instead, she sat at her local bookstore’s café mind­lessly flip­ping through the lat­est gos­sip rags and fash­ion magazines.

Nor­mally read­ing such things would enter­tain her; would make her laugh at such ridicu­lous­ness. Or at the very least, inspire her to change her wardrobe to some­thing other than jeans and a t-​​shirt. But today, she nei­ther felt nor heard noth­ing but the silent hum inside her head that told her that some­thing about her was defective.

That silent hum had always lived inside of her for as long as she could remem­ber. She never felt pretty enough or smart enough to accom­plish any­thing sig­nif­i­cant in her life. And although she had a good career and an incred­i­ble hus­band, she never thought she could deserve to be happy.

At times in her life, the silent hum would sur­face out­wardly. When she and her hus­band found it dif­fi­cult to start their fam­ily, that hum became a silent roar. When she lost her job, the silent roar returned. How­ever, even­tu­ally that roar would once again return to a hum.

She knew that her antsy-​​ness today was because that hum was slowly turn­ing into a roar. She even knew her actions over Christ­mas was its root cause. But just like those other times, she had no idea how to silence the roar. She had no way of stop­ping such neg­a­tive, self-​​defeating feel­ings that lay rooted inside of her.

Although she knew she had the sup­port of her hus­band, her best friend in life … her fam­ily … she also knew she would ulti­mately be the one respon­si­ble for tam­ing the beast inside herself.

She also knew that in order to tame the beast, she had to get rid of the hum all together. She had to stop depre­ci­at­ing her­self and start to build up that self-​​esteem.

This will prove to be a dif­fi­cult task for her; espe­cially since she never par­tic­u­larly had con­sis­tent, ongo­ing self-​​confidence. Her entire life had been rooted in self-​​doubt with only fleet­ing moments of con­fi­dence. It would take a lot to rid her life of that silent hum.

What could she do? What *would* she do? She had already sought the help of pro­fes­sion­als; she already had the sup­port of her lov­ing hus­band. The only thing she could do is uproot those thoughts of self-​​doubt and self-​​deprecation and replant con­fi­dence and self-​​esteem in its place.

It sounded sim­ple enough; replace the neg­a­tive with the pos­i­tive. Believe that the glass is half-​​full rather than half-​​empty. Begin to believe in herself.

But why then, did it seem so much more com­pli­cated than that? Why does the silent hum persist?

Delayed

I’m sit­ting here at Ronald Rea­gan Inter­na­tional Air­port, delayed for my return flight back home after a pro­duc­tive work week away from Detroit. What should have been a quick half-​​hour lay­over has turned into a nice 2-​​hour one, thanks to a won­der­ful win­ter storm cur­rently hit­ting the Midwest.

When book­ing this flight, I didn’t hes­i­tate to pick this air­port as a lay­over since it would have got­ten me back at a rel­a­tively early time on a Fri­day evening. How­ever, what I failed to remem­ber was that this air­port had played a large part in the cir­cle of my father’s life.

It was at this air­port that my Dad had fallen down while rush­ing to catch a con­nect­ing flight … And hit his head. Three weeks — and com­plaints of a headache the week­end before his hos­pi­tal­iza­tion — later, the whole fam­ily found out that the cause of his pass­ing related back to that one fall.

As I sit here at the air­port, I can’t help but think of what had hap­pened here in Novem­ber of 2010. How this one inci­dent had sig­nif­i­cantly impacted my life. And it makes me sad; so very sad.

It seems so stu­pid to mourn like this; over a year later. I know that grief has a time­line of its own, yet some­how I feel as if some­thing as sim­ple as a lay­over shouldn’t affect me so much. A delayed flight shouldn’t cause my eyes to well up.

But it does. And once again, the grief takes over.

Grief Bacon

I love bacon.

There, I’ve said it. And I’m not ashamed to admit that the smell of bacon brings back mem­o­ries of cook­ing break­fast for my par­ents when I was in my pre-​​teenage angst years. You know, back when I was a rel­a­tively obe­di­ent kid who only wanted to do some­thing nice for her parents.

And the taste …. Oh, the taste! Noth­ing com­pletes a great break­fast like bacon can. Espe­cially those thick, maple-​​cured strips that they serve up at Orig­i­nal Pan­cake House.

I mean after all, there is the say­ing that noth­ing can make a veg­e­tar­ian go pro-​​meat more than bacon can.

I’m guess­ing that with all this talk about bacon, you’ve fig­ured out by now that I’m not the health­i­est per­son in the world. And it’s true. I’m hyper­ten­sive. I’ve got high cho­les­terol (no sur­prise there!). And I’m at high risk for heart disease.

And given the events over the past year, I guess you can say that I’ve been lax at keep­ing myself healthy. In fact, you could prob­a­bly say that I went the oppo­site of healthy. What can I say? I’m an emo­tional eater.

In fact, I’m not just that; I’m an emo­tional over–eater. When things get tough or stress­ful, not only do I munch on chips or choco­late or candy … I over-​​indulge myself with them. And because of that I’ve gained a sig­nif­i­cant amount of weight over the past year.

So what does this all have to do about bacon?

Yes­ter­day, at one of Hubby’s work-​​related events, we had sat with some friends and another cou­ple I had just met for the first time that night. Some­how (and I can’t exactly remem­ber how) the sub­ject turned to bacon. (I mean, really. When does bacon come up in a con­ver­sa­tion?!) That’s when I learned that the Ger­man word kum­mer­speck … which is the excess weight one gains from emo­tional overeat­ing … lit­er­ally trans­lates to “grief bacon.”

So there you go. Now I have a name for all the weight I’d gained.

But lest you’re wor­ried, Hubby & I have been mak­ing efforts to regain our health. First off was join­ing a gym to make time for some weight train­ing and daily car­dio. Sec­ond is re-​​learning to eat healthy again. Third … and this is the most dif­fi­cult … is main­tain­ing the moti­va­tion to keep up with both.

I guess this means I won’t be eat­ing too much bacon in the near future …

Search Terms

To the guy (or girl) who stum­bled on my blog using the term:

“Hot Girl with Only Apron” …

I hope you found what you were look­ing for! :-)

Now Comes the Night

One Year Later from Emily Ty on Vimeo.

 Cel­e­brat­ing the life of my Dad … One year later.

Unsettled

It’s Thurs­day night. And even though I had the evening I had for myself (know­ing that Hubby had prior oblig­a­tions that kept him from stay­ing in tonight), I find myself with noth­ing to do.

I had planned on knit­ting all evening, but didn’t feel moti­vated to do so. I had also planned on clean­ing out the closet and dressers to donate more clothes to the Sal­va­tion Army; which I only par­tially fin­ished. Then I tried my hand at play­ing some online games and didn’t quite feel myself get into the rhythm, so I just gave up. There’s noth­ing on TV and no new movies to watch on cable.

So here I sit with my lap­top on and a blank page beck­on­ing me to type some mean­ing­ful words into sen­tences and sen­tences into para­graphs. Yet I don’t know exactly what to say. Well, except maybe this:

It’s been a dif­fi­cult year.

And yet as much as I’m try­ing to move for­ward with my life, I some­how can’t seem to take any­thing big­ger than baby steps.

I strug­gle to remem­ber if it was this hard to “get over” my failed IVF — the loss of a total of three “would-​​be” babies — as it is to “get over” the death of my father. The lines are so blurred these days. But I do know I’m in the same place that I was close to five years ago when I pretty much gave up hope of ever hav­ing bio­log­i­cal chil­dren of my own.

Oh yes, I’m in that deep dark space below. And it sucks.

I’m not sure if these feel­ings are mag­ni­fied because of an upcom­ing anniver­sary date this Sat­ur­day or not. What I do know is that this rest­less, unset­tled feel­ing is very unnerv­ing. And I wish it would just go away. But some­how I just know that it’s only going to get worse before it gets better.

So if you got a moment … and I truly don’t mean to be such a pity-​​party right now … but if you can spare a few sec­onds, could you say a quick prayer or a pos­i­tive thought my way just so I can make it through the next few days? Because I could really use some blog­gie love right about now.

 

Like the Deserts Miss the Rain

A year ago on the 28th of Novem­ber, Hubby & I drove back to our Chicago apart­ment after spend­ing a won­der­ful Thanks­giv­ing week­end with our fam­ily. Upon arriv­ing home we found our 20-​​year old cat, Rain lying right by her empty water con­tainer. She was meow­ing weakly, but inces­santly, let­ting us know that she was not feel­ing well.

The last time she was that vocal was when she had frac­tured her femur and was in a lot of pain. But that time, we knew that she was “fix­able” and a large amount of cash later … she was healed and back to her usual self.

This time … well, this time we knew. We knew she was becom­ing dia­betic. We knew that she was slowly going into renal fail­ure. But we also knew that she was well past her life expectancy for a medium-​​haired, domes­tic runt of a cat.

So we did what we thought would be best for her. We took her to an emer­gency vet clinic, who con­firmed that Rain had gone into acute renal fail­ure. We were told her prog­no­sis was bad. So sadly, Hubby & I made the deci­sion to let her go peacefully.

And even though I was dev­as­tated by this event, I would later find out that Rain had inad­ver­tently given me a gift. She gave me the gift of accep­tance to know when to let go of the ones I love so that they can pass onto the next world.

And that gift proved to be valu­able over the next week as I learned to accept the inevitable pass­ing of my Dad.

Rain … I know that this past year I’ve spent mourn­ing the loss of your Grand­fa­ther. But know that not a day goes by that I don’t miss the uncon­di­tional love you pro­vided. You will … and always will be my first and favorite “furbaby.”

 

Up and Away …

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