Finally Willing To Talk About It
Originally published at Welcome To The Dollhouse. You can comment here or there.
’ve avoided posting about this. Why, I’m not quite clear. Generally writing about something I am struggling with helps me become more clear about my issues. Yet I’ve avoided mentioning it here and have left my struggles inside. Perhaps if I just begin, the rest will come.
What I am wrestling with? The decision to move to donor eggs.
As all who read this blog know, my fertility seems to have gone out the window in the past 12 years. All those years of dating Mr. Wrongs did not leave my ovaries in stasis, ready to wake up when Mr. Right came along. I’ve got to face the fact that I got old during the past 12 years. There is no escaping it…at least as far as my fertility goes.
I’ve done 7 cycles of IVF with only 1 getting as far as a transfer. I’ve got some ideas for my one last try, but if it still doesn’t work, for my sanity I have to move on to other options. To that end, this week I sent my deposit to my IVF center to get on its donor recipient list.
But this is only the logical part of myself acting here. There is a large, screaming lunatic woman inside me who is resisting moving on to a donor with all her might. When I even say “donor,” I feel such a chill inside me. It is hard to put into words what goes through me. It just feels like failure.
Let me vent some of the irrational thoughts that come into my head when I contemplate this next step.
You’ve failed at getting pregnant. You’re old and useless. The baby will love Mason more because you won’t be his/her real mother. You’re not good enough to be a real mother…just a fake, geriatric pretend one. You don’t deserve to see your eyes in your child’s face. This is your punishment. This is your just desserts. Everyone in your family will know that you weren’t good enough to have a child of your own. They’ll laugh at you. They’ll pity you. Everyone will know how utterly useless you really are. Life has passed you by, my dear. Understand it. Nothing you’ve ever done has gone right. You are just a failure.
I know, I know…there is no logic or reason here. Just self-abuse and shame. Lots of shame. The sane Liana knows that these thoughts are madness, but as the tears flow while I sit here typing, I know that Liana the shamed, unloved little girl is doing the sobbing. So much in my life has been a struggle. I wish I had a rational answer as to why. Unfortunately when I get upset, I go back to the thesis that I’ve used since I was little: you’re at fault; you’re just a mistake. You don’t deserve to be here.
It amazes me that after 50 million years of therapy, I can still return to such primal hurt. There is something broken in me that I have not been able to fix as yet. It is better than it was, since I actually do have more confidence and a better sense of my being than I did 12 years ago. But there remains the wounded little girl who feels like such an imposter. Who feels like she just doesn’t deserve to be.
Somehow this is not about having a baby to love. This is about my wounds…my feeling of being “less than.” The damaged little girl sees failure in the move to donor eggs. Forget the fact that we will finally have a real chance at getting pregnant and growing our little one for 9 beautiful months before s/he joins our family. No, no…all wounded Liana sees is that once again, she has failed. Once again she can’t be as good as the other kids. She can’t do what everyone else can do. She’s been shown to be an imposter.
Clearly I need help with this. The problems with my fertility are so triggering of self-critical and damaging emotions. I need help with cleaning the old dirt off the window so that I can see my future more clearly and untainted by primal pain. I think that a few sessions with a therapist who specializes in fertility problems will help. I’ve made some calls. I can also help myself by getting cognitive. Affirmations, I tell my patients, can change how you feel. Yeah, let’s get cognitive.
Some affirmations for right now:
- You deserve happiness.
- You are a wonderful and loving woman.
- You are not to be measured by the function of your ovaries.
- You will be a real mom to any child that is part of your life.
Thanks for letting me share…