chickandcoop

[chickandcoop]

Eggs With A Message

This morning I googled “can you feel your eggs dying?” Whatever mine are doing: suicide en masse or aggressively reminding me to get fucked, it’s making my life miserable. I constantly worry I have ovarian cancer. I am actually surprised my remaining eggs haven’t knitted me a crop top that says: “fertilize me!!!!!! ;-)”

The truth is, I’m panicking and I think my eggs are too. Our first round of IUI that we underwent last December didn’t work and I was completely shocked. The procedure removes every fucking obstacle in the sperm’s way. They basically cuddle millions of dudes up to one horny girl and light candles. Any clinic will only give you about a 20% chance of it working, but they remind you that’s data including all the 50-year-old women with maybe one mediocre egg left. With a twenty-year advantage, you feel like you’ll be the success story. In our case, my uterus hadn’t encountered sperm in a good long while, so I was almost giddy with confidence that biology was on our side. Ten days later when that wasn’t the case, I was deflated.

I don’t think I should have been surprised at all: I was such an emotional wreck. An overstretched balloon of neurosis. Pulling my hair out on the car ride to LA wondering if that would be the insemination day. Sobbing on the car ride to Bakersfield after hearing the tech say my follicle had ALMOST but not quite ruptured. I think Dave would have been happy to try again immediately, but I couldn’t.

For the last few years we’ve been focused on Dave’s issue and problem solving that. The truth is, after working so hard at finding sperm, trying a round of unsuccessful IUI, and then moving to a new city, the last thing I want to do is get pregnant. A big part of it is the emotional labor of making choices: researching the fertility clinic we should go to, figuring out how to transport our frozen sperm from another state, deciding what low interest credit card can pay for the thousands of dollars in insurance co-pays. It’s like foreshadowing the years of figuring out what highly competitive preschool our kid will go to. Fuck, I do not know how men get away with not carrying the same pressure of planning.

The process is so fraught with stress and disappointment and tension I am not sure how couples make it through the other side with the same level of enthusiasm about a baby. Keeping the baby alive is supposed to be the work, not creating it. And because I’m so ambivalent about when I’ll feel excited again, my eggs are rioting. Probably with tiny little signs. USE ME OR LOSE ME.

[chickandcoop]

Toilet Bowl of Dreams

Do you ever have a week so miserable that if someone said to you “this is your life now” you would 100% opt out? I did, last week. I’m watching a cat and dog at a house on Seattle’s south side and I’ve had a lot of free time to think about ways I’m failing at life and the reasons I should never be a mother (there’s so many if you’re willing to spend seven or eight hours listening to the gremlin living in your brain).

This very sweet family has, according to the various shrines dedicated to their mastery of life displayed around the house, two high achieving kids, who are roughly 19 and 25. I literally cannot imagine raising a kid and not having them move out immediately upon turning 18. I would be sobbing at their high school graduation from happiness that I didn’t have to pick up their tampon wrappers and empty bottles of axe any longer. If my future child ever reads this garbage: don’t even entertain the idea you’re living the life in mom & dad’s basement for free. Actually even if you pay me a million dollars, the answer is still no. You can have the furniture our seventeen family cats have destroyed, but you’re leaving. K love you.

In an attempt to exorcise the gremlin thoughts from my brain, early on Friday morning, during the eclipse, I lined all of my crystals up (believing in a sky god is stupid but believing in the magic of rocks is not) to soak up the energy. I pulled a piece of paper off a beautiful writing pad my mom bought me and wrote out two columns worth of brain fluff: things to let go, and things to cultivate. Under let go were broad activities, including “telling yourself untrue stories,” and “devoting hours of your life to feeling bad about things.” Under things to cultivate I wrote down most of my dreams and things to focus on, like being a writer, a doula, a mother. I underlined stay true to yourself, which I’ve finally realized is the cause of most of my grief. I know what I believe in and what I want out of life, but sometimes I’m too lazy to stay the path.

So, I fold up my acid-free, heavy weight writing paper into quarters. Then I hold a match to one corner, you know, to send that shit out into the universe so my gremlin can’t chew on it anymore. I lit a lot of shit on fire as a kid and I don’t remember almost burning anything down. Maybe it was the lack of acid or the fact that my window was open and the oxygen encouraged the flames, but this piece of paper was in a hurry to become ash. I realized, sitting on the edge of my bed trying to keep my fingers safe, that the main smoke detector in our apartment sits under my window. “Fuck,” I mumbled, knowing from a couple weeks earlier that it’s really fucking loud and disruptive. What would I tell my apartment mates? Sorry for your charred pet dog, I had to manifest my way out of this blood moon eclipse depression? So I ran, as gingerly as I could, across my apartment, dropping large, fiery bits of ash onto my vintage Turkish rug. When I got to the bathroom the paper was almost all black and I tossed it into the toilet. But the paper floated on top of the water, quickly filling the entire bowl with smoke. I thrust the lid down, but smoke poured out from under the edges. “Jesus fuck, Jesus fuck,” I cried as I flipped the fan on. Only then did I think to actually flush my dreams down the toilet. I quickly did so and backed out of the bathroom, pulling the door shut with me, praying to my gremlin that if I left the fan on the smoke would dissipate.

I did not burn my apartment building down, but I could have. I saw my doctor later that day and we changed my long-term anti-depressant, which we had been discussing for a while. Instead of being an activating SSRI, it’s a stabilizing one. I have high hopes for this week. I’m on a new drug, and all of my manifestations for a happy life are floating around a water treatment plant somewhere in Puget Sound.

[chickandcoop]

The Sperm Diaries Part 2

I was really disappointed for a long time that we couldn’t have sex and get pregnant. I was sad because our DNA wouldn’t join together, yes, but more upset that I couldn’t be relieved of the immense weight of the decision to actually conceive. I don’t think anyone, at least any woman, is like “I absolutely want to blow out my vagina, stop sleeping entirely, have a gremlin yank at my nipples all day and night, and resent my husband for wanting me to still be the same person.” You do think, however, that fucking your partner is a good idea. A baby is a reminder that you once had good sex (or just sex, let’s be real). A baby is supposed to be the end result of a fleeting moment in time, not a years-long slog through doctors’ offices and cold vaginal wands and insurance co-pays. At least in my fairytale mind.

But there we were, in the office of a well-known LA fertility doctor. Me, on my back with a cold wand inside me, and a dead-ringer for Tom Selleck at my feet, congratulating me on my bounty of egg follicles. We knew it wasn’t me with the reproductive issues, but the doctor had suggested, since we’d be doing some form of assisted conception, that we take a look. Very proud of my age (30), my follicles (like a dozen!), the doctor ushered us back to his office to talk sperm shop.

“Zero isn’t a good number,” he declared, providing absolutely the least shocking news of the decade. “I’ll give you a referral to a male infertility specialist who can offer a different set of skills, up to and including mining your testicles.” I heard Dave’s scrotum retreat into his abdomen. “BUT,” he announced, “let’s discuss alternative forms of sperm collection.” For the next half an hour we chatted all things donor: male relatives of Dave’s, including his nephews who are closer to my age than Dave is, friends, strangers. The whole time my brain was playing a loop of ejaculation montages. Men I absolutely didn’t want to see ejaculate, I was seeing.

On the car ride back to Bakersfield, we reviewed the pros and cons of using the sperm of someone we knew. The cons read like an outline of the worst episode of Jerry Springer. We laughed at the prospect, but didn’t rule it out right away, or even for the next couple of months, as we would casually ask our good looking male friends how they thought about knocking me up, mainly in jest, but doesn’t every threesome start with a joke?

During this time we saw the male infertility specialist. She had completed her residency in Canada and couldn’t believe we were infertile in America. “This country,” she shook her head. She was beautiful, and as she fondled Dave’s anatomy, I could tell he was working diligently to forget that fact. She didn’t feel any obvious physical impairment, but was worried about that Rhonda (Brenda) incident. She said testicular surgery could result in finding a few stragglers, but a zero count more likely had a genetic component, not a blockage of some kind. She told us that a few of her male patients had experienced success in boosting ultra low sperm counts with the off label use of a breast cancer medication. She said if using that for a few months upped his number slightly, she’d be willing to discuss the idea of surgery.

Dave started the drug and I started shopping, catalogue style, for sperm donors. One night on the couch I was ticking off a list of requirements on the cryobank website.

“Dimples, blue eyes … anything you’re particularly interested in?” I asked.

“Dimples?” Dave glanced over at me. “I don’t have dimples.”

“I know, but I love dimples,” I replied.

“But the baby wouldn’t look like me,” he frowned.

“People will know it’s not yours, duh. If we can’t have your personality it should at least look like a model,” I protested.

I know there’s something to do with genes being regressive, blah blah blah. But at this time I was shopping for DNA like people do for new homes. 4 bedrooms, check. No receding hairline on the mother’s side, check. (Yes, you have that much choice at some sperm donor clinics.)

Every week or so I would email Dave a list of potential donor ID numbers. OK, let’s whittle down from this list, I would encourage him. He would find something wrong with each of them. Favorite music is country? Full stop. High school GPA was only 3.7? I’m not paying for an idiot. Dave does not have a grumpy bone in his body and is 99% of the time, very agreeable. The fact that he was being miserable about this annoyed me, but within a few weeks his gloom had elevated into something serious. He was soaking his sheets with sweat at night, he was agitated. He woke me up one morning and said he felt suicidal. I took him to the ER and as he listed his symptoms to the nurse, said he was seeing things that might not be there. He suffers from anxiety and depression, but this was not in the realm of what I’d ever seen him experience. When she asked if anything had changed in his life recently, he mentioned the drug to increase his sperm. The nurse didn’t make like she found the coincidence to have any relevance, nor did the doctor we eventually saw. When we got home we decided he should go off it. He was back to himself within a week. When we next saw the infertility specialist, she was surprised. She had seen lots of men take the drugs and have odd side effects, but not to this extent. She took an inventory of everything he experienced, said we absolutely made the right choice in stopping the drug, and suggested we test his sperm to see if the medication had, by chance, made a difference.

Dave spoke to her later that week. Still zero. This let down felt more a relieving sigh. Our options were being narrowed, which is what I think both of us wanted. We knew, with certainty, it wouldn’t be his. I was back on my sperm shopping kick, and late one night in front of the TV, I begged him for more clarity about what he wanted. “Let’s start with no clubfoot,” he smiled. I scrolled to my list of things to exclude.

No clubfoot, check.

[chickandcoop]

Flailing Everywhere

I do really stupid things when I’m anxious. I buy things that I’m VERY CONFIDENT will be the one item that will fix my entire life. Like, a day planner. I’ve never used a fucking paper day planner, even when they were free in college. Writing things down in schedule form is highly anxiety-inducing for me. Because I’m lazy and irresponsible, I inevitably fuck up and feel worse about myself. An electronic schedule can be endlessly modified. I can move everything to the next day, avoiding doing any actual work AND the subsequent guilt.

What I didn’t realize when I left the world of conventional employment was how untethered I would feel. I work and do things, but I’m only accountable to myself. I wrote a story about all the jobs I’ve been fired from/walked away from and didn’t post it because I think my parents would die of shame. I’ve watched my dad and certain exceptional friends kick ass at entrepreneurship. I don’t know that I have it in me. But more than that doubt, I know I can’t work for someone else any longer. My doula training has begun and the first couple modules are very introspective, which I am naturally. I know what drove me to this spot. What I didn’t expect was this lack of self-validation. Being employed by other people was a part of how I existed and related to the world. I could get hired (and then fired numerous times, evidently). I could craft a very attractive resume, THANKS $20,000 UNDERGRAD DEGREE! I had no idea I was so dependent on other people & jobs I despised to tell me I was doing ok. Basically, without a 9-5 job, I’ve replaced those eight hours with a barrage of self-doubt talk. I even sometimes look at Amazon job postings and apply for ones I think I could get. I would sooner scoop dog shit in perpetuity than work for Jeff Bezos (I only support him by spending $1,000 a month at his creation). But I somehow want an overpaid HR assistant to look at my resume and scream “SHE’S WORTH IT!” It’s so fucking, desperately stupid.

Anyways I’m going to post the summary of my job history later, because it’ll definitely make some internet people feel better about their lives. I’ll sacrifice my parent’s opinion of me for you, stranger.

[chickandcoop]

I Don’t Know If Things Are OK.

The barista at the coffee shop today, when I went in for a latte at 4 pm, said “wait--do you have more than one of those sweaters or is that the same sweater?” It was covered in cat hair. She could have meant it as the insult that it is--I’m not sure. But I laughed and was like “no I literally throw this on most days.” It’s my feminist is my second favorite word sweater. As she handed me my coffee she giggled and was like, “I really like what it says.” A new thing in my life is drinking coffee. It’s by far one of the dumbest choices I’ve ever made. Instead of feeling panicked and worried, but also with a normal heart rate, I now feel panicked, worried, and also sweaty, on the verge of maybe passing out. How do people drink multiple cups of coffee a day? Were they former meth users? I don’t know how we as a society are like, meth heads are ridiculous, but I’m just in my office absolutely fucking flying out of my skull jacked on caffeine, heart rate at 470 bpm, words pouring out of me like I did cocaine at 8 am, INSTAGRAM #NEEDMORECOFFEE. I would just feel better if we fessed up and all said we want to do the bad drugs but feel shame so we settled on coffee beans.

The reason I started drinking coffee is because I am sad. I’m a heavy consumer of media: printed words, chattering mouth boxes, and the healthiest form: Twitter. Normally the ratio of horror to humor is about 50/50, but lately it’s been heavily skewed to feeling like pure liquid fire, and not the funny kind where you scream THE GROUND IS LAVA and your friends jump on something and you all scream and laugh. This is like someone shouts THE GROUND IS LAVA and you stand still, hoping to go quickly. The crazy thing is I don’t actually know if things are, objectively, any worse than they were a handful of years ago. Yeah, this President person is maybe doing all sorts of illegal/immoral/terrible things, there might be a war in Israel, no one my age can afford housing, all the creatures of the ocean are consuming plastic and dying, etc. But I haven’t heard about increasing instances of any particular kind of cancer lately, so maybe it’s balancing out.

My more acute fear is that my SSRIs, that I’ve been taking for eight years, have stopped working. That the world is exactly the same level of garbage/magic, but my ability to feel or react appropriately is gone. It’s fairly well documented that these types of meds can stop being effective. Who knows why. Not being sucked into the void is a delicate dance of doing everything right: being social, having a routine, feeling useful, creating, drinking enough god damn water, sunshine, normal sleep patterns. Some days I feel like I could literally change the world if I wasn’t attending to such basic needs, like an overweight toddler, asking myself if I’m hungry or tired or lonely. Yes, of course I am all of those things 99% of the day. But aren’t we all?

I went on Lexapro as a last ditch effort to stop from destroying my relationship with Dave. I had gone off birth control about a year earlier and each month, increasingly turned into a literal demon. I was scared of my own behavior; it wouldn’t be an exaggeration to picture me as a rabid possum, screaming and spitting if sunshine touched my skin, or god forbid, you tried to speak to me. I talked to my doctor about it for a long time--it wasn’t a choice made lightly, but she told me that she saw women whose moods were so unstable during their cycle that they were suicidal. I was not worried about ending my own life, but legitimately concerned about ending someone else’s, so we agreed to try it as a mood stabalizer. The medication was a life changer for me, and I’m sure it is for lots of other people, too. I wasn’t diagnosed with clinical depression and anxiety until a couple years later, and for a while cycled in and out of the add-on medications. When I went on Abilify I stopped sleeping and stayed up all night building Lord of the Rings lego sets. Seroquel was like being put to sleep for surgery, but you were expected to not sleep and instead pin your eyes open and float around on Aladdin’s carpet all day. Some of these drugs are really fucking wild. Pretty quickly I knew the add-ons wouldn’t lead me to any type of functional existence, so we upped my dose of Lexapro and I’ve felt really capable ever since. 

When we started plotting our baby making mission, I began tracking my cycle. I use Clue, and it’s so insightful. You can make the app alert your partner to when you’re expected to ovulate, or more importantly, experience PMS. Dave immediately turned his alerts off because he likes to live dangerously. What I’ve noticed over the last 18 months, though, is that my inner possum is returning. (Are possums actually nice? I would hate to give possums a bad name.) From about three days before I ovulate to five days before I bleed, which is HALF THE MONTH, I fluctuate between getting into arguments with the homeless kids outside the pot shop about who has a harder existence, sobbing about the baby sea turtles who never make it to the ocean, and yes, feeling quite homicidal towards my sweet husband for ... existing. The idea of changing medications, or even going off, sounds terrifying. Part of me hopes she just tells me to stop paying attention to anything going on in the world. Like, of course it’s awful. It doesn’t mean we all need to read about it. 

I typed this so fast. Coffee is a hell of a drug, man. 

[chickandcoop]

The Sperm Diaries: Part 1.5

Writing this, I wanted to jump right to part two. It has more things to laugh at. But as I sat with the words in my head for over a week, I realized this part was important to share, too. 

You know that feeling when you fall in love with someone and see a baby or toddler photo of them and your heart bursts? You instinctively paint the picture in your head of how much your baby together might look like him. There was a very uncomfortable feeling I sat with for a few weeks after we found out: I didn’t want to be a mother unless it was to Dave’s baby. I understood him, I accepted him, I craved him, I adored him, I obsessed over him, I loved him. And I would feel all those things for a baby that shared parts of him, but not for a baby that didn't. The feeling you get looking at other people’s children, where you understand why someone loves them but you also understand that you don’t, was magnified. I assumed that by retracting my desire for motherhood unless it was biologically Dave’s, I was exposed as a sham. Mothers somehow had bigger hearts, able to love whatever was placed in their arms, and I had assigned an asterisk to my love, and now the asterisk was written out on a piece of paper and, at 30 and childless, I had failed as a mother. 

Many people, very matter-of-factly, would support or rebuff my analysis of how I was feeling. “It’s ok to not want one,” some would say, while internally I would scream “I DO WANT ONE, I WANT HIS, DON’T YOU UNDERSTAND.” And others would say “I promise you will love whatever baby comes into your life—however it gets there,” and I would want to shove a book under their nose proving that some mothers want to kill their babies for reasons less glaring than they don’t resemble the father. It was like the news that we were infertile hit, I had been thrown in a rowboat, and everyone I knew waved at me from the shore, shouting positive words of encouragement, while I floated, terrified and angry, wishing they’d row out to me.

Dave was also floating, but we were in different boats. He had already started paddling towards the island where we would get help and find our baby. Every obstacle is surmountable in his eyes. I think it hurt that I was saying things like “if it’s not yours, it won’t happen,” while I was jealous that he had a big enough heart to feel able to love something that wasn’t his. I floated in my boat for those few weeks, and he listened to fear and hurt I tossed out. Eventually I clambered into his and we rowed together. Well, mostly him. Him and his stupid big heart, me and my cold one, off to the island of the fertility options.

[chickandcoop]

Things That Bind (Or Not)

In an effort to meet friends here, I’ve been using Bumble BFF. I’ve now gone on three dates, and a few things have become apparent to me about actively trying to find companionship in my 30s. 

One, I don’t want married friends. I didn’t know I had this bias until two of the three dates I went on were also married. They were also in their 20s and not married for very long. Ok so the problem isn’t that they’re married: it’s that they’re happy. I adore my husband, but yesterday someone asked me “when’s the last time you felt like a superhero?” (it was at a moderated story telling event—it’s against Seattle law for strangers to show interest in strangers). My answer to the question was “staying married.” Long-term relationships are not fucking easy, and I need warrior women in my corner, the kinds that have been through battles and seen some shit and who won’t judge me when I scream about starting a lesbian commune because I can’t with being tethered to a man who doesn’t like to wash his sheets every week. 

Second, I know I have that disease where you want to murder people for making specific noises. We went to see Deadpool 2 on a double date with one of the above-mentioned happily married couples. Deadpool is funny. Unfortunately, the girl thought he was REALLY FUNNY and, the whole movie, in a theatre full of other people trying to watch the movie in fucking silence, LIKE YOU DO IN MOVIES, she repeated the punch line to every joke. But not loudly. She would just sharply inhale and mutter it under her breath. Sometimes it’s good to find out really early on these annoying quirks about people so you can never see them again on purpose and not feel bad about it. 

Third, if you don’t have some sort of knowledge base that will help my yet-to-be-filled trivia team, we can’t be friends. I don’t need overly educated women, just ones who have significant interest in topics. Any topic. If your answer to the question: “what are you interested in,” contains any form of the answer “you know, I work for [large corporation], or, WANNA SEE A PICTURE OF MY DOG, I’ve already died inside. Jobs and dogs aren’t interests.

Much like the way I’ve bonded with most of my current friends, the one Bumble standout did everything right: she heavily over shared about her dating life (I live for that shit), she admitted to loving carbs and feeling guilty about it, she used words I would only know from a thesaurus, and she agreed to go on another date in two days, not the “god I should look at my calendar” bullshit. IF YOU LIKE SOMEONE YOU SHOULD WANT TO SEE THEM OFTEN AND NOT LEAVE THEM HANGING. I’m really happy to have made it through the virtual jungle and found a cool girl on the other side.

[chickandcoop]

Your Ass Doesn’t Matter

When Dave came home from work yesterday I was sitting cross-legged on my meditation pillow, two different cards of tarot decks splayed in front of me. His eyes met mine, he smiled, and asked how my day way. My eyes welled with tears.

“NOT GOOD!” I yelled.

“Oh babe,” he responded as he tossed his bag on the floor and walked over with his arms open. “What’s wrong?”

What was wrong was that I had just stood naked in our blue-lit bathroom, perched my phone in the medicine cabinet, and took a series of timed full-body photos. My thinking was that the last time I had done such a thing was a year and a half ago. I was unhealthy and thought taking the photos would motivate me to get fit. It didn’t, but moving to a new city did. Now that I was feeling good about myself, working out five days a week, and eating better, I figured a naked picture would be an awesome way to celebrate my results. Standing under the flickering bathroom light, flipping back and forth between the aged and new photos, a sick realization washed over me. I didn’t look much different. My ass was still flat. I still had a tummy. My shoulders still looked weak. I felt ridiculous for feeling proud of myself.

I pulled my bubblegum-pink cropped sweater back on, walked past our hall mirror, pausing just long enough to shake my head at myself. I grabbed my tarot cards and flopped onto the pillow. I grabbed my phone and started aggressively texting Dave. “I’m depressed, I don’t know what I’m doing with my life, and I should probably live in an alley.” He walked in the apartment before I hit send.

He listened for 20 minutes as I cried. I cried about not being able to do a proper push up, for deciding to become self-employed, for not having made real friends.

“Why is there no self-help book called, You’re An Idiot For Even Trying,” I wailed.

“Well, no one would buy it,” he said.

I glared and him and heaved a sigh. I figured being despondent about my body for a good hour was probably enough and uncurled my legs, which were unbearably sore from barre, stretching out on our faux-sheepskin rug.

“You look way different. You know I wouldn’t say that if it wasn’t true,” he announced.

I looked down at myself. I know my body has changed. Things fit differently, I feel better. I can’t do a normal fucking pushup, but I can do more shitty pushups than I could a month ago. I was skinny, sometimes really skinny, for the majority of my life. It made zero difference. I wasn’t happier or healthier or smarter or funnier.

I went to barre that evening and couldn’t get my sabotaging self-talk out of my head. My legs felt frail and my pushups were shittier than usual. The ultra fit instructors often chirp encouraging phrases like “control your mind and you’ll control your body,” and, “you can do anything for 20 seconds.” I got through class, and walking back to the apartment I stopped where Dave was playing pinball so we could head home together.

“I guess the only thing that matters is that I keep going. At least I haven’t mind fucked my way out of trying.”

I woke up today and my triceps and quads are jelly. The pictures belied what I know to be true: I’m strong. I do not know why every person (especially women) needs to go through one of these reckonings. Like somehow the shape of our ass determines our entire self-worth. A poorly lit, badly angled photo undermined my intelligence and capacity for achievement. I guess the point is that one day all our fucking assess will cease to exist, our strong quads will not stop our knee skin from drooping, and we’ll be too busy doing MORE IMPORTANT SHIT than asking our phones to tell us how awesome we are.

[chickandcoop]

Sperm Diaries Part 1

When I was in my fourth year of university I visited a new psychiatrist. My family doctor, who was solely responsible for my mental health care, had recently departed to work in the US and I was running low on medication and a general interest in life. This new doctor bore a striking resemblance to Daniel Day Lewis. He crossed his legs and asked me what was going on.

“I’m sad, I can’t focus, I’m failing classes.” I gave him my medical history and he asked about my life, relationships, hobbies. When I was finished talking he leaned back in his chair and said, “you and your husband need to have a baby. Your life will have meaning.”

I thought it was ridiculous that a man was telling a woman who very openly said she was fucking depressed to have a kid, but he also told me to exercise way more, eat better, and develop a solid routine. His ideas weren’t totally skewed, but since he didn’t refill my Xanax I chalked him up as a complete asshole.

At this point Dave and I had been married 4 years. We hadn’t used birth control since we started dating, but we also weren’t trying to conceive. I was also busy with school, drinking often, and working only intermittently. Our house was half demolished with intentions to renovate, and had we gotten pregnant, I wouldn’t have ruled out getting an abortion. There were never scares. My period was never, ever late. It wasn’t something we focused on, so I guess it didn’t surprise us that it hadn’t happened. When Dave was offered a position in California and I was on the cusp of graduation, the opportunity to try something new seemed fun. There was no way in hell we were finishing renovating our house on our own, and a realtor we consulted said the market was probably good enough that someone would buy the house and all of the flooring, bathroom fixtures, and tile that was collecting dust in the basement. We flew down to California with our two cats, and somehow, like our realtor promised, a couple gluttons for punishment bought the house.

I wasn’t any happier in California despite the constant sun and warm temperatures. I’m sure it’s been told to others, but I really needed someone to tell me it wasn’t weird to graduate and fall into a pit of despair because you had zero life plan. We ended up buying the house of our dreams three months after moving down. Very slowly my haze of depression lifted. We got chickens. I slowly started making friends. People from Canada visited. There wasn’t an exact moment where we were like “let’s have a baby!” but it became clearer to both of us that we could handle it if it did. We tried for a couple months, and then at my annual gynecological visit, she asked me how things were going. I told her my husband and I wanted to have a baby and asked that maybe there were some tests I could undergo to make sure everything was functioning properly.

“Why would you think things aren’t functioning properly?” she replied.

“Well we haven’t used birth control in almost six years and nothing has happened … but we also haven’t TRIED really hard, so I’m sure it’s nothing!” I said eagerly.

“You haven’t used birth control for six years and haven’t gotten pregnant,” she repeated. I’ve been to enough doctors to know that if you say something interesting enough for them say it back to you verbatim, something is fucked up, or fucking interesting, or both.

She asked if I had PCOS, a history of STIs, abortions, etc. No, no, no. “How old is your husband?” 45, I said. “Has he ever gotten any other woman pregnant?” I said no, he hadn’t been married before. “But he’s never gotten a woman pregnant … at any point … on purpose or not?” I said nope, but how well does anyone know their spouse, and I reassured her I would ask him. She put her hand on my knee and said, “you’re 30 years old and appear to be in perfect gynecological health. It’s probably not you. Get your husband to a urologist.”

I called Dave from the car, probably interrupted a staff meeting or something, and asked him if and who he knocked up in his past life. He was, like me, pretty sure there had been no one. “Fuck,” I muttered. You have to go see a urologist because my doctor basically blamed our non baby on you.”

I prepped myself accordingly, researching every type of male factor infertility. I pre-blamed the as-yet-untold outcome on everything stupid Dave had ever done. Obviously as a 13-year-old boy he should have been more considerate of his future wife and cloistered his jewels in a steel sac. We went to see the urologist together. He poked Dave’s penis, asked about his lifestyle, past traumas (this bitch Rhonda or Brenda once stomped him in the balls, but imagining Dave as a young man, who could blame her). He went over the litany of outcomes, from slow, stupid sperm, to misshapen sperm, to few sperm, to sperm that were stuck in places they shouldn’t be. We cursed Rhonda or Brenda on the way home. The next day I dropped a sample of what I assumed to be Dave’s warm, maybe a bit slow, possible stupid sperm, off at the lab.

His doctor called him the next day and asked him to come in to go over his results. Dave called me on the way home.

“The doctor was surprised because there’s none.”

“What?”

“No sperm.”

“That’s impossible.”

“No. There wasn’t any. Zero.”

It sounded shocking, but also so unlikely that I don’t think either of us was legitimately worried. The doctor said he wanted to run the test again because barring scar tissue from penile or testicular surgery, the odds of there just being not a single fucking sperm somewhere in there was … very low. So again, I dropped off a warm sample, this time feeling much more anxious. The results came back the same, except this time with the fancy name azoospermia. The urologist recommended a highly regarded fertility specialist in Los Angeles and wished us luck on our journey to become parents.

In the immediate aftermath of us discovering we were infertile, we laughed more than I would have imagined. All the wasted teenaged condoms. The girls in university who swallowed a bunch of plan b for no good reason. My husband had no sperm and I, at 30-years-old, was only a few years away from being considered on the downhill of fecundity. We made an appointment to see the famous LA doctor and we giggled on our old orange leather couches thinking about what the ball smasher Rhonda or Brenda was up to.

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Dark, awful nights.

What the fuck is wrong with me? I’m the happiest and most content I’ve ever been, yet I’m being plagued with nightmares. Every night, new nightmare. When I was younger I had such vivid, dark dreams where I would be like “ok I’m really over this shit” and I would commit suicide in the dream. Just casually hurl myself out a window or walk in front of a car. And I would wake up thanking the stars it was over. I don’t know why the parachute feature has been removed as I’ve aged. This morning Dave left for work as the sun came up and my brain heard him, departed the sex/abandonment-themed adventure, and I yelled “JESUS COME HERE!” and recounted the trauma. Half asleep I also asked him to paint a cross on my forehead because I am literally out of options. I meditate, I drink tea, I journal. In my waking hours I am delightfully peaceful. And somehow every god damn REM cycle has me mudering (or watching murders), being frighteningly promiscuous, being abandoned (and naked of course) or drowning. I just really, really need them to stop. Because it’s hard to wake up refreshed when every repressed trauma of 32 years waves hello every night.

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Healthier. Still No Friends.

I was FaceTiming with my family on Sunday morning. “Do you have contacts in?” my mom asked. “Your eyes look weird!” I stared at my little face on my phone and agreed that yes, they did look quite glassy. The day before, Dave and I sat in H&R Block while a very young accountant figured out how to input Dave’s share dividends. “How is my skin looking?” I asked him. He got really close to my face and started individually pointing out the pores on my forehead that looked big. “Kind of rashy, maybe,” he offered. I asked if under my eyes looked puffy. He very assuredly said yes. I told him to fuck off. I normally don’t consider what my family or husband says about my looks as being terribly important, except that since moving here I’ve completely overhauled my lifestyle. I walk many miles each day. I’m taking barre and yoga a few times a week. I’m drinking at least 3 liters of water a day. I cut out fast food and soda and upped my veggie and fruit intake by like 3000%. I realize that some people are like “bitch this isn’t amazing at all,” but I’m really proud of myself and I feel COMPLETELY different. I think my skin looks better. I have so much energy I contemplate running (don’t worry I would never actually). My anticipated moving/lonely depression has been nonexistent. So I’ve kind of been waiting for Dave or my family to be like WHO IS THIS GODDESS AMONG US and they’ve only noticed my pores and eyeballs.

The other night, with my excess energy, I created a Bumble BFF profile. If you’ve ever used Tinder or Match another dating/hookup app, you can view it one of two ways: really trying to sell yourself or writing DTF (Mom that means down to fuck). I mean, if you’re using Tinder you’re probably not serious and 100% DTF, but there are people who put work into finding their someone online. Trying to make yourself sound like a neat person to be friends with, however, is a completely different level of biography creation. I spent no less than six hours crafting a witty, but not pretentious, bio that included (obviously) my chosen fitness activities and favorite beverages. It sounds ridiculous, but everyone in their post-school life or past the age of 28 knows how hard it is to make real friends. So when I matched with a couple women, I was really excited. Both never wrote me back. It’s kind of like being dissed without ever knowing why. Was it that I called myself a feminist? That I don’t drink coffee? That I hate hiking? So my friend count still stands at zero. But my dog sitting has made it painfully obvious that Seattle people are fucking dog people. Even when I was walking a lab mix who freaked out at a black person and I got called racist, it was still more interaction than I’ve had yet. People especially love this little rat I’m watching now, but I know when I’m done sitting their interest in me will feign. So it looks like my options now are to start hiking or get myself my own dog. Both are terrible ideas because I’m lazy. Well, less lazy now that I’ve lost like 5 pounds, but if anyone has friend-making ideas that don’t involve partner exercise or being ignored online, please let me know.

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New City, No Friends

Moving is one of the least fun things to do in life. With Dave and I at the helm of this move, we somehow hired the most incompetent group of fucktards (and a Russian mobster), and it was a painful exercise in how to almost lose your stuff and your spouse. We’re both generally over the whole experience (I’m still going to eviscerate our moving company, obviously).

When we first moved to California I got really depressed, really quickly. I developed the worst insomnia. It was a strange place, with strange people. I think the same applies here, except I’ve learned a couple of important lessons. One being that you have to adhere to a schedule, even without a job or a social life that require you to leave your house. For the first time in my life I am without a car (so far, a vast improvement to my mental health). I leave the apartment first thing in the morning to get some fresh air and move my body. Since our stuff is now unpacked, I’m in the midst of purging everything that won’t fit in 1,000 square feet. I walk to do laundry. I walk to drop off & pick up dry cleaning. I walk to get groceries. It feels so strange to move so much that I messaged my best friend who recently moved to Vancouver and also lives without a car and was like “wtf is going on with my heart pounding so much.”

Yesterday I was walking home from the post office and noticed a girl waiting on a bus bench had her cat beside her. I used to walk my cats when we lived in Edmonton, and I was so excited I stopped and exclaimed “OHMYGOD your cat is so adorable. What is she wearing!?”

She blew her marijuana cigarette smoke in my face and said, “A jacket.”

“Oh yeah haha ok awesome it just … I mean it’s so cool … your cat is cool and outside and ... it’s noisy … does she try to run away?”

“She’s trained,” she replied as her eyes turned away from mine and skyward.

It’s pretty much how I’ve felt trying to make any friends here. People are welcoming, but my excitement about being here seems to exasperate them. They’ll chat with me, but their eyes say, “calm the fuck down, soon it will rain for 200 days straight and tears will flow and existence will be painful.” Very Jon Snow screaming about the white walkers and no one believing him. Apparently it’s called the Seattle Freeze and people know about it. You can’t actually meet friends because the weather has turned their insides cold, or something like that. Someone else suggested that because SO many new people move here, Seattleites are just summarily uninterested. Maybe you just have to live through a winter and then you get a badge and you graduate to people taking you seriously.

My work visa just expired, and because the federal government is busy gathering up hard working immigrants and booting them out of the country, it could be a while before authorization is renewed. In the interim I’m pet sitting, which, I actually can’t believe hasn’t been my full time job since I was 14. I hate people. I love animals. And now people are paying me … to hang out with their animals. I have to now go deal with the troglodytes of letgo. I need to get rid of a six-foot tall bookshelf (amongst other shit) and a girl messaged me and was like “can it fold down so I can carry it on the bus?” She might already have died from stupidity, but I’m really hoping the rest of the cave dwellers needing free stuff show up today.

[chickandcoop]

A Christian Nation

When we first started looking for a house to buy in Bakersfield, our relator suggested we look on the west side of town. Primarily new construction, we looked at a couple show homes. Millions of years ago, Bakersfield existed at the bottom of a giant lake, so there isn’t any native vegetation to protect from the scalding summer sun. In some older areas of the city, green spaces have been created with large magnolias, eucalyptus & oaks, but in the newer areas, for some reason (perhaps money), builders plant palm trees. Palm trees are fun to see; they remind you that you’re somewhere that doesn’t snow. As a tree, though, they are fucking useless. It’s like putting a 100 foot matchstick in your yard and being like, ah, foliage. We knew that greenery was important to us, so Dave & I started looking more centrally, and found a house for sale in a historic part of downtown. Our realtor, primarily concerned for our well-being and not at all racist, cautioned us that downtown living came with its unique features, like crack houses and people with shopping carts. Once she realized that Dave and I are intrinsically drawn to non-coventional places teeming with weirdos, she changed her tune and we put an offer down.

We moved in on my birthday in October of 2015. The neighborhood, like our realtor said, is an amazing hodgepodge. Tiny rentals, multi-generational family units, burned out former flop houses, columned mansions. We lived beside a family in a 9,000 square foot victorian style, and across from a family in a traditional 1940′s house. One of the very first questions from people living in the neighborhood was “what church do you attend?” And quickly followed by, “could you imagine if a woman ran this country?” (Hillary had announced her candidacy earlier that year). Everyone seemed very sweet, if frighteningly Republican. Freshly barbecued tri-tip arrived from one house, cookies from another. But ideologically, I knew we were far, far out of our comfort zone. One day, about a year after we moved in, the family living in the mansion next door invited me in to see their newly remodeled kitchen. I knew from chit chatting with them that the remodel had been a long, drawn-out, expensive process. I felt bad upon seeing the kitchen that it looked awful. Their house was fucking gorgeous. A historic gem. But for some reason they chose an ultra-modern, sleek, stark kitchen. I complimented the brushed steel appliances, and then the mother of the house asked if Dave and I had found a church we liked. I was kind of puzzled, but said no. The father of the house then asked, “well what kind of church are you looking for? We can recommend a great Christian one.” 

I froze. These people, who had been so kind and welcoming to us, asked me a question that, had it been anyone else, I would have rolled my eyes. Possibly made fun of organized religion and sex abusing priests and tax shelters and rampant hypocrisy and every other reason I think churches are cults. But they stared so seriously and so inquisitively at me that I actually blurted out “CATHOLIC.” And the father very sweetly pointed out, “well honey, Catholics are Christians.” I basically blacked out as I somehow pieced together my VERY limited knowledge of churches and like two bible verses (or maybe it was a commandment?) and explained that we hadn’t found the right church for us. It was so absurd I think I floated out of my physical body, pointed down to myself, and laughed. They then told me all about their church’s mission. How they had been called to Bakersfield, how they had been called to live together as a family. I then, in the throws of a mild panic attack, lied and said Dave was literally calling my cell phone and that I needed to leave. I ran into our house and hurriedly tried to explain to Dave how I had just turned us into confused Christian-Catholic church seekers. I was really freaked out by the experience for a long time. At first I felt such disappointment in my inability to stake my truth when asked what it was. I could have simply said, “I’m not religious,” and we might have ceased talking about Jesus’s second coming. 

I’ve disliked a lot of believers in my life, but these weren’t those people. I liked them and was so scared of disappointing them. They’d think I was going to hell. They might lose sleep over my soul wandering the underworld. In that moment I cared so much more about how shocked and saddened they would have felt than about my own values. I guess part of me was scared that’d they’d toss holy water on me or tie a cross around my neck. Or maybe they would have given me a little pocket bible and sent me on my way, encouraged to find God on my own. I’ll never know. They probably still think we’re out there, looking for our church. 

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Mom, I’m back!

I started this blog in 2010, the idea being that people needed to be lectured on the importance of being vegetarian. I stopped writing on this blog in 2013, after a post about an adventure on magic mushrooms caused dramatics involving my husband’s family. Eight years later I eat meat again and I haven’t done magic mushrooms since. 

I love writing. I also suffer from a crippling fear of criticism. It wasn’t just my story about drugs that got my husband in trouble, it was my own father, worried that I swore too much and THAT MY GRANDMOTHER WOULD READ IT. It was my self-doubt telling me that what I had to say wasn’t worth making other people uncomfortable. 

I left most of my old posts up. I didn’t want to because they don’t all sound like me, but some really do. So much has changed since I was in my mid-20s, but the stories & ideas I’ll be posting are based on what’s happened since we moved to California three years ago. 

I know my mom will be happy. She always loved that I wrote. 

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On Walking With Cats

When Dave asked what safety award he should pick up from work a couple weeks ago, and the choices consisted of a Nike watch, a Kindle Fire, or a GoPro camera, I based my decision on what would be the easiest to regift. Settled on the GoPro, the conversation shifted to our cats—where each had slept the night before, who was the cutest upon waking (always a tie), and who had been let outside in the morning. He then brought up a fairly ingenious plot: let’s outfit our cats in the GoPro! Not only can we talk about how fucking cute they are when they roll on their backs, we can talk about how fucking cute they are when they kill entire flocks of baby songbirds!

As our excitement surrounding this new venture builds, we are fully enjoying the summer weather and our nightly cat walks. Our trio (Moses, Nigel, and Montgomery) are achieving a bit of neighborhood stardom. People actually stop and ask if the trail of felines belongs to us. Last night, while everyone was waiting for Monty to stop shitting in the neighbor’s lilies, I spotted a middle-aged Chinese man walking his German Shepard down the street. He was on the other side of the road when his dog spotted our cats. Moses, the oldest girl, was quick to fuck off up onto the fence. Monty was still shitting. And Nigel, apparently in some great act of chivalry (or rabidness), decided it was high time to move up on the list of Discovery Channel’s “Top 10 Most Dangerous Predators.” Once the Chinese man and his dog had passed our house, Nigel quickly started stalking them. His fur was entirely on end and his back was arched, rendering him unable to slink along quietly; rather, he kind of pranced alongside the dog in a crescent moon quickstep. The dog was, unsurprisingly, fairly pissed off. I was doubled over in laughter, screaming “DAVE LOOK HOW CUTE!!!” all while the Chinese man sped his pace, attempting to prevent a mauling. Mistakenly, the owner probably thought his dog would be the one doing the mauling. Once the dog lunged and barked at Nigel, our sweet cat swiftly attempted to slice the dog’s jugular. Judging from the fear on the man’s face, Dave tried to casually extract our cat before someone collapsed from blood loss. Nigel, still hell bent on parceling the dog into 18 different segments, wasn’t going quietly, and tried to “flying squirrel” his way out of Dave’s grasp. Almost amputating his hand in the process, Dave tossed Nigel a safe distance away and waved politely at the Chinese man, who, we anticipate, won’t walk his dog past our house any longer. I, still laughing, cuddled Nigel for being such a good big brother. Minutes later, another dog walker passed our house, making sure to create a safe distance between herself and our fuzzy flesh eater. Monty, finally done shitting, was bouncing around the driveway, oblivious to all the imminent death. We resumed our walk. This GoPro experiment is going to be fucking amazing.

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Those Days

I was profoundly sad today. 

Dave and I stayed up really late last night. He drank; I was too hungover to do so. We talked about our childhoods, our desperate struggles with teenage angst, and about the loss of his dad. He said he didn't understand why people use the euphemism passed away. "My dad died," he said, "and it was dark and ugly and hard." We don't talk about his dad much, except when he is occasionally struck by their quirky similarities. It's weird to miss someone you've never met. His dad died long before I came into Dave's life, so all I know of the man are things people tell me. When Dave's mom recently moved, we inherited boxes of old memorabilia. There were newspaper clippings from when his dad served as Alberta's Minister of Finance--a front-page caricature had him resembling a cackling, penny-pinching devil. We laughed as Dave recounted how when the media would call for his dad, the kids were instructed to say, "he's vacationing in the Bahamas." I love hearing about him. Dave never says it, but I know he enjoys being told how much he's turned into his dad. His clever sense of humour, the way he pretends to know everything (and bullshits everything he doesn't), the mischievous sparkle in his eye. 

I didn't sleep well. Talking about death and dying gave me nightmares. I woke up and crawled into Dave's bed. I told him how sad I was--that our talk only reminded me of how harsh life really is. How it pains me to watch everyone around me getting older. "I'd be ok getting old," I said, "as long as those I loved could just stay where they are." I wanted to be 13 again, adventure in the forest near my house, bury myself beside a little creek and marvel at how perfect the world could be. He said he wanted the same.

Tonight I made myself a casserole dish that my dad made for us growing up. It warmed my soul. I feel a little bit better. 

[chickandcoop]

Thanks For The Words

I stay up late. Usually trying to calm my anxieties about the next day. I read. Garbage mostly. But sometimes I find a beautiful little story, and it reflects perfectly me and my thoughts and everything whirling around me. And then I usually feel better, because it's nice to think that we're only as far apart as our words. 

My friend had a baby on Friday. I think a lot about having babies and what it will mean and how I'll change. It's a scary fucking thing. It's also a lovely thing, a thing I can't wait to experience. I also think about how my friend and I used to be, which is perhaps the biggest contribution to my anxiety. I always wonder if I enjoyed it enough. It's a useless thing to wonder.

I'm happy when I find pieces like this one, written by Amanda Magee. I am the parent and the child all at once.

I saw shimmers of my own tendency toward melancholy. Not a hopeless melancholy, more of a focus on the things that are so perfect that I literally need to mourn that they won't last forever.