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Brain fog

My brain feels like mush. I got an hour out of it this morning, but it has since handed in its notice. It is taking the day. It has resigned. 

This is typical for this part of my cycle. I am mid-luteal phase, and so I am a swirling ball of progesterone and anxiety. My boobs hurt, but not enough to mean anything. Nothing can mean anything yet anyway, that is the mantra. “If you have enough symptoms to feel them, you have enough hormone in your system to test positive”. We recite this over and over. If it meant something it would mean something, and it doesn’t, so it doesn’t. Never mind that I don’t actually take tests anymore, so I won’t know when it does. And of course I’m aware of that and so I keep noticing the damn symptoms. 

And yet all this is just background noise. I barely notice it in my life. The first few cycles were so overwhelming, I couldn’t get anything done. It was all I thought about. Nothing else mattered, because this might be it. And then it wasn’t. Again, and again, and again. 

But I wonder if maybe that never quite went away. The luteal phase causes issues even for women who aren’t trying to conceive. It decreases your energy levels, can cause bloating, it is known to reduce the efficacy of some drugs, such as ADHD medications. So it’s hard, sometimes, to disentangle what is a normal hormonal change from what is the overwhelming emotional toll of infertility, especially now I’ve got so used to it. I think I tell myself that I’m fine and that this is normal to try and convince myself that I can get by. That it’s ok really. 

And of course it’s not. Mornings like this remind me of that. I am not a fully functional person. I am not optimised. I am running at, max, 75% capacity at all times. The other 25% is with the baby who will be, or could be, or won’t be this time but maybe soon… It’s with pee cups, and temperature monitors, and egg-white cervical mucus. It’s with doctors appointments and waiting lists, insurance companies and the NHS. It’s “should I drink?”, “how many coffees is too many?”, “did I take my supplements today?” (no, because I have to take them after food, and all I’ve had today is a banana and two slices of cake, because proper meals felt overwhelming). 

Some people describe it as a second job, but a job can be compartmentalised. This is everything, everywhere, all the time. I just hope that once it’s over (if it’s ever over), I get my brain back. 

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The acceptance speech

The tricky thing, when talking about infertility, is that you desperately want to be doing it retrospectively. In my TTC support group (it’s a forum of sorts, but sufficiently intimate that “support group” feels more accurate), there is a ritual on Mondays where everyone who has had a positive test “graduates”. They post a long, detailed message following a set structure (time trying, medications, methods, and so on), and then at the end is a heading of “Misc”. Under this comes something that resembles an acceptance speech. Graduates thank the group for its support, perhaps express astonishment at their good fortune. Those who have experienced loss often reference their anxiety that this might follow the same path. If someone has been in the group a while, there might be in-jokes. Generally the length of time trying corresponds to the length of the acceptance speech. It’s considered bad form to leave a long post for a short time. You haven’t really suffered, after all. 

Over and over, I’ve drafted my version of what this would be. Who I would thank, how I would walk the line between wit and sentimentality. The lessons I’ve learned and the wisdom I would pass on. But so far I’ve never posted there. The wisdom keeps accumulating, as does the pain, and it has nowhere to go. It feels like until I know how this story ends, there’s no point starting it. 

But in practice, once the story ends, a new one dwarfs it. If you are successful (like the Scottish play, we dare not name the success lest we tempt fate), the fact is that you cannot hold on to the identity you formed here. It will be replaced by one that is imposed on you, by wider society but also by the very person you called into being through all this work. Infertility must give way to parenthood, partly because there just won’t be the time anymore, and partly because this person needs you to be fully present, not riddled with anxiety and still living in that pain. Most people who were infertile seem desperate to put it behind them, but even those who aren’t, who don’t forget, will never again be exactly in this state. You can’t reread a book and feel how you felt the first time, before you knew what the twist was.

Of course it might go the other way, and then you can have all the time in the world to contemplate your pain. But why would you? If you’ve stopped trying, whether through choice or circumstance, the desire will be to move on. Build something else. We mustn’t wallow.

The fact is that the pain of infertility cannot be held. As soon as you can let it go, like a boiling pan you will do so. So it falls to us, those living in it, to say where we are. Here, in the unknown. The waiting room for the rest of our lives. And even now, I’m hesitant to talk about it. Maybe in two weeks I will leave this place and feel like a chump for daring to speak for those who remain. Maybe I’ll get to make my speech and rejoin society, and forget all of this happened.

Then again, maybe not. 

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The rubbish past

Sometimes I think about the litter that existed in the past. We only see the things that survived, which shapes our perception of what the past looked like. Wrought iron gates, hardwood furniture, brass doorknockers. The aesthetic seen in period dramas. Elegant, solid, expensive. And while the poor that the majority of us descend from had some access to these things, the really nice stuff was then, as now, predominantly the preserve of the rich. 

I don’t know much about history, but I know people. As I walk around my street, I see stickers on lampposts, bags of rubbish, little signs on bits of card and a million other pieces of detritus. Litter, but also the tools of people who don’t have much. We can’t all afford a cast iron “close the gate” sign, but most people have a sharpie and paper. Some even have access to a laminator to really dress things up. 

And so it must have been then. How many gates were held together with string? What did they use to patch broken windows, before cardboard? Did their little front gardens contain bags of leftover carpet, as mine did until recently? Was there broken glass on the street outside the pub?

I feel like popular media jumps from the period drama, squeaky clean look straight to “everything in the past was awful and covered in shit”. But in that jump, I wonder if we miss the things that actually dictate how our streets look - the cheap, temporary tools we use to keep our world moving day-to-day. 

I guess I just want to see a makeshift “close the gate” sign from 1830.