Full disclosure

Warning: This post may turn out to be too dark and depressing for many people. If you’re in a low place, don’t read this post.
If after reading this post, you feel the urge to comment saying “Stay positive”, please consider not leaving me a comment. I don’t want to be told to stay positive anymore. It just makes me feel like more of a failure – I try to stay positive and I fail at even doing that!

Several people read my blog. Some I have known since elementary and high school. Some I went to college or grad school with. Some I made friends with after college. Some I “met” online on message boards or in the blogosphere. Some I met in real life through the IF community. I am finding it easier to confess / admit my dark emotions to people in the blogging world, and to those that I met through the IF community than to my other friends who have known me from before my infertility.

For people that have known me from before I became this manic-depressive miserable failure of a person, it’s hard for me to admit my state of mind. Every time someone asks me “How are you?”, I answer “I’m ok.” I wonder how it would be if I really started venting saying “I’m not ok”.

Many of you have told me I’m a strong woman. I’m not feeling that strong anymore. I’m feeling like I’m in such a dark place right now, and I have no idea how to get out of there.

I find myself wanting to say no to every invitation, every hint of getting together with friends. On the rare occasion that I do agree to go and meet up with people, I find myself projecting my strong face. I have a strong face that I show to people, I laugh, joke, kid about things. And then I come home. My silent empty home. Back to my failures and deep dark abyss of not knowing what to do.

And then there’s the face of me that I see in the mirror everyday. I see a lonely, sad, lost, spent and tired person looking back at me. The face that wants to just give up, and by give up I don’t mean I want to give up on TTC. I want to give up on life. Everything seems like too much of an effort. I’m just tired of living. That’s it. Sometimes, I feel like it would be so much easier if I could just die.

I feel like such a failure. In every aspect. I feel like a failure as a woman. I feel like a failure as a daughter, wife, daughter in law. I feel like a failure in my career. I feel like a totally crumpled person. 

My zodiac sign is Pisces. Many many years ago, I remember reading somewhere about the symbolism of the zodiac signs. Pisces has 2 fishes – in opposing direction. And in the description it had said that Pisces are governed by two driving forces: One that fights and swims upstream, and one that just goes with the flow and ends up downstream. Sometimes a Piscean has to struggle very hard to keep swimming upstream, against the odds.

I’m reminded of that symbolism very often. I kept telling myself I’m doing my best to swim upstream. There is adversity in life, yes. And I’m trying to not get swept away by it. But of late, every force in my life seems to be very strongly pushing me downstream. I don’t have the energy, the strength or even the will left to fight and swim against the odds. I’m feeling very defeated right now.

People say I should stay positive. They don’t live my life. They don’t tell me how I should stay positive. Or even why I should stay positive. What has staying positive brought me? I have nothing to show for each time I have picked my broken spirit up from the floor and gone ahead strongly to my next step. I have nothing to show for each time I have been strong and have endured one failure after the other. I have nothing to show for anything.

Yet, what people see is a smiling face. I get so many comments on my pictures on FB that I look young or pretty or relaxed, or how I’m “smiling through life”. Why can’t my outside face look like what my inner person feels like? My inner person feels like sh** - why don’t people see that?

I’m scared. I’m so scared of everything in my life right now. I’m scared of where my career has gone. I’m scared that it will never recover. I’m scared that my FET won’t work. Hell, I’m even scared that it WILL work. I’m scared of being pregnant. I’m scared of what problems are going to crop up next for me to deal with. I don’t trust my body to carry a pregnancy through safely. It had 3 chances, and it failed to “deliver” on all three. I’m scared of what I’m doing to my body with all the hormones and medications I’m pumping into it. I’m scared of where I am physically, emotionally and financially.

I’m terrified of life and of living, and I don’t know what to do.