YESTERDAY, TOMORROW, TODAY
GALLERY

Yesterday, Tomorrow, Today

Somewhere between fertility, loss and hope

Yesterday

I just remembered that saying “Today is the first day of the rest of your life”

It kind of feels a little bit like tomorrow might be that day. And I don't mean “tomorrow” the day that is eternally chased and pined for but never caught up with. I mean Monday the 25th June 2018. Tomorrow I continue a journey that started many years ago. Potentially I learn something, something changes, or a decision will be presented.

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We can start in the place where it starts for many, realising that menstruation is no fun.

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The mark of an an uphill struggle and a reminder of pain, failure and loss, loss of carefree youthfulness, loss of a chance, loss of dignity. It's actually only been regarded by myself as the beautiful amazing, natural, empowering, powerful thing it is in the last two years, if that.

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Before there was always a sense of foreboding.

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It was irregular to say the least. I was bleeding for a full seven days up to 3 times in a month, sometimes with just a day between. Feeling sick, writhing in pain, regretting my sex, resenting my misfortune and the constraints it put on my life. The stains, the expense, a strange unwanted kind of knowledge and reason to be less than cheerful. It could be the misty watercolour memories but I actually don't remember having a reason to complain at all before those days.

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Jump

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The next beginning was Christmas day, the day my partner and I decided to start a family. We planned to begin not to “try” but to “not-try-not-to” the pressure free and undaunting version of conception. We didn't want to reduce our sex life to temperatures and routines, that was not us.

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“Not-trying-not-to” didn't really have an effect.  We began to “try” a year later and hey presto on the second month it worked! We enjoyed a full week of bliss together, I was off work and we spent the days walking, planning, holding hands and looking deep into each others eyes searching the souls of the parents we would be.

At the start of the next week I went back into work, Things weren't great at work for me at that time, I was acutely aware of my mental health having an effect on my unborn child, I was also worried because it is a rather physical job and I was concerned about lifting heavy objects without being able to legitimately ask for help (early pregnancy secrecy). I was also in quite a lot of pain for most of the day. I was trying to stop moving around so much but we had a lot to do and I was on my own, I remember feeling as though I was killing my baby. My partner picked me up from work and we went to A&E where we were assured I was still pregnant and everything was normal but that I should go to the early pregnancy unit in the morning to be safe.

I went alone, I was excited about hearing that all was well and maybe getting some information, leaflets, anything that would be a tangible way to be attached to my child, the new love of my life.

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It wasn't the news I had been hoping for and I was taken pretty immediately into surgery to have my left fallopian tube removed and with it the baby we had conceived, caught in mid-air, unable to land.

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A year and a half on and pretty much everything has changed. 8 days ago my partner of 8 and a half years told me our relationship was over. With him I loose not only a best friend, the person I have been through most of the hard experiences (and joyful ones) of my adult life but also the promise of a family. We had planned to start trying again this November but that, like him, is now gone.

Tomorrow – the first day of the rest of my life I will undergo a hysteroscopy, laparoscopy, biopsy, adhesiolysis and dye test. This is the first step into finding out what is going on and taking my reproductive health into my own hands.

Tomorrow

Actually a positive outcome despite my brave, yet negative outlook this morning. I had the feeling that because life was crumbling around me it was time for another terrible twist, a kick when i'm down. My fears ranged from death during surgery to some terrible discovery under my skin, including a chid somehow curled up and ungrowing inside me for months to add pain and loss and horror once more. I get like that sometimes a great believer in both the pessimistic and Eternal Optimism, a strange yet welcome cocktail that allows me to feel my life in glorious technicolour from fuck-yeah yellow to what-to-do blue.

There is a certain danger that's linked to any surgery, a risk of some kind. The films you see and some kind of internalised voice will tell you that if you really want to survive then you will. But if you have lost everything and have no hope, when that moment comes and the doctor has caught an artery and you are bleeding out (as always is the case) they have cracked your ribcage open and are massaging your heart....and you on the outside, you walk towards the light or are absorbed by stars, or look down on your poor body from the side of your bed and stroking your brow say “be at peace now”.

I don't want to die, nor has it ever been something I have truly considered as a way out even in my most lost and alone moments but I really felt this morning that if I had to kiss goodbye a future with my children that I wouldn't be able to fight death off should it come knocking. I wouldn't be able to open the door due to lack of energy though so if she's really keen she'll have to bring her own key. (Jokes to cover up feelings that are too hard to be present.)

So I get to the hospital with my ex at 7am, the pedestrian entrance from the park is locked and the vehicular entrance is a whole other way that I can't get to or figure out where it is so we jump the fence. Never a dull moment! Check in, sit in a room, have an awkward chat, pretend that we need to watch the news, have a nap, wake up to knock on the door and pretend we weren't sleeping. At this point the nurse tries to admit my Ex, when we say that I am the patient she looks very concerned indeed and looks at me and back at her notes then at him and then at me again and says she thinks she may have the wrong notes. I can only imagine what kind of surgery swap fun could have ensued if we played along. Eventually another nurse joins us and I am taken to surgery, during the walk the nurse asks if it is my first surgery and I tell her no, appendicectomy 10 years back and an ectopic February last year. She tells me that she had an ectopic when she was 21, it was a terrible experience and she thought she would never get pregnant again, 12 years on and she has 3 children, “it just happens” she says. “I always want to tell people that”.

This spurs me on.

People want to talk about early pregnancy. The fact that every time there is an opportunity to discuss it people do just that, this woman almost didn't let me finish a sentence because she wanted to speak out. I tell her I want to de-stigmatise early pregnancy, question the secrecy that surrounds the first three months, why is it that the Bob Hoskins message of “it's good to talk” doesn't apply here? “A problem shared is a problem halved”. “Don't suffer in silence”.. except when it's this... then do it alone, in pain and ashamed, misunderstood, estranged.

I wake up and am presented with photographs of my insides where a cyst and adhesions have been removed and a blue dye passed through my remaining fallopian tube indicating that there is an uninterrupted path there and all of these things point to hope. The surgeon nods to me and my ex, there is no need for a follow up, the next time we see you will be when you are pregnant he beams. I want to laugh but it would be quite painful for everyone involved.

https://www.verywellfamily.com/reasons-we-dont-talk-about-infertility-miscarriage-1960260

Today

Not the first day anymore. A time has left space for doubt. My doubt springs from all possible gaps and the mental headspace of being needy in a house with my ex who is looking after me. I feel my requests should be limited. I make conversation but end up feeling like I have taken more than was offered. It is emotionally draining and weakening being in this post op state. I have surrounded my self with the most perfect and worst person to do this. Not selected with the care and sense I thought but with some sense of closure for the subject matter, a journey we started together and now have seen complete with a relatively happy ending. 

Today has been sore and full of questions, I have been a burden and a martyr, but worst this has all been accepted and ignored and I have apologised for it more than once today and then been unaffected by the ill done to me. This is so off topic.

Today has it's ups and downs and sometimes it's hard to see the future or the past from where you are especially when today there is a wall in your mind that all the little you's walking around in there are finding and banging their heads against. They all have a slightly different approach and methods, one has stumbled upon it and hit her head by accident, one has questioned the action and is bringing her head forward and backward mathematically working out the best angle and force with which to make the strike. One is just turning her head to see, something, but the wall jumps ahead of her each time and she is unable to foresee it as she is innocent and hopeful and unable to get a grip right now. All the me's in here just need a big hug and that is the one thing I will definitely not be asking for, so I will have to hug her from in here.

I keep deleting the nice words I write, how can I do this, what do you need?

I need a hug

what are you getting from that hug?

a connection with another person, equality, unity, peace.

I know you, I am here with you, I love you, I will always be here and it's ok if this doesn't quite sink in, it will be a part of you that will have to grow again, I promise I will try to water it every day until you are brave enough to keep your heart open even though it is vulnerable to the grit and chaos of the world around you, absorbing the pollution of the atmosphere and letting that be, opening further so there is more to stick to and letting all of this be a means for growth and not tarnish. Love, strength, creativity and the ego. A battle ensues. Oh let it!

Today is the greatest day Ive ever known, Today, just get through today, Someday when I'm dreaming deep in love not a lot to say, then I will remember the things we said today. You can write down anything you want coz Yesterday, Tomorrow, Today.