Damn his eyes and drive-bys

I have a lot of venting to do, please bear with me while I work through this on my blog to save me from shouting and stomping my feet. First of all, I am not a shouter, and secondly, the guy beneath us probably won't appreciate either outburst.

Let's start at the beginning -- I had a bad weekend. I have a habit of dealing with things in an odd fashion. I do not cry right away when things go wrong, I seethe. Seething then, after a day or two of festering, turns into sadness and depression, which usually incorporates crying at some point. Friday night I was angry, but able to push it aside enough to go out and have dinner with The Dude. Saturday I realised how shit things are for me at the moment and I confined myself to the bed, crying and snotting over myself. The Dude was less impressed; cue lengthy talks at me whereby I should "Cheer up." and "Not let things get me so down." or, or, my personal favourite: "If you want things to change, change them! Don't sit here feeling sorry for yourself!" Haha! Ha! I've married fucking Dr Phil!

In his (barely sustainable) defense, he was not referring to the infertility that I should "just" cheer up about. Unfortunately I am the type of miserable bitch that once I am depressed about one thing, I am depressed about EVERYTHING. At the moment I am choosing to focus on my overwhelming corpulence and the paper that I have due in two weeks that I have barely started. I sometimes throw a little bit of IF in there just to mix things up a bit.

So after I voiced my displeasure with his little Mary fucking sunshine, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps shit, he chose to ignore me until Sunday afternoon. Yes, the best treatment for a depressed and inconsolable wife is to give her the silent treatment. I would advise partners against utilising this measure in future, as rather than making me apologetic for my ever-so-selfish actions, it made me detest him. Not that I would actually do it, but I was daydreaming of hopping on a plane to visit my Mom and leaving this life behind. See, that's the danger in being an ex-pat. If it all goes tits up you feel like this was a play life, an experiment. You can ditch it and forget those three years of your life existed in the first place.

Late Sunday afternoon The Dude shuffled up to me and said, "I don't like fighting." Ah ha, say I, patiently awaiting his apology and promise that I can carve out his eyes with a blunt butter knife if he goes all Dr Phil on me again. It was not to be, as he follows this attempt of extending the olive branch with: "You can be such a bitch sometimes." Uh, eh? So then I cried a little more, flailed, shouted, clutched tissues angrily...the usual. He never really took back that comment, but I hope he felt just a tiny bit guilty.

Onto my next issue...also involving marital strife. As mentioned, I have a final project due in two weeks. Due to my mystery illness whose effects I have only just fully shaken in the past week (touch wood), I have not been up to much of anything at work, let alone after work. Additionally, I have had overall malaise, pumped full of medications, and dealt with another failed cycle. I've got a lot on my plate.

Yesterday the urgency of the project situation dawned on me and I broke down. My stress breakdowns are different than my bad news breakdowns. Stress breakdowns also involve tears, but in addition I shake and get weird tics. I started in the bathtub, trying to wash my hair while gasping for air, my hands trembling, and my head jerking to the side every few seconds. I told The Dude how I felt I was in way over my head and how I wished that I had never decided to do so much at one time knowing my predisposition to depression. Rather than trying to convince me that not completing the project or failing it would not be the end of the world, he was insistent that I could get all the work done in this limited amount of time and quickly changed the subject.

The Dude could not be any more of a Type A personality if he tried, and in his world everyone else deals with life just like he does. Stressed about life? Face all of your problems head on and work hard until they are sorted. Depressed? There is no such thing! It's just a behaviour constructed by the evil liberal psychologists to convince us we are weak! Pick yourself up woman, be strong!

Unfortunately this is not me and I do not live in his world. All I wanted was his acceptance that things are a bit rough and hectic for me at the moment, and for me to make it as far as I have without losing my mind is a motherfucking miracle. It will never happen. For once I want to surrender and admit that it is all too much. I want him to acknowledge that I graduated from college with a 3.8 GPA despite dealing with clinical depression, working 30 hours a week, and more or less supporting myself financially. I left college to enter the :::ahem::: "real world" which brought me more depression, infertility, a full-time job and a part-time postgraduate programme. In all of this I have not faltered once to the extent that it affected my school work or professional life. Not once have I submitted a late assignment or missed a day of work for anything other than genuine physical illness. I want to be weak just this once and not push myself into insanity for the sake of not failing.

Speaking of failure...I was subject to a drive-by pregnancy announcement yesterday. I've spoken about this former co-worker before, both here and here. She's pregnant again, 16 weeks along. The silly smug fertile has learned something now though, as she has kept the pregnancy until she thought she was out of the danger zone. Not to minimise miscarriage of course, but when I was supposed to feign concern for the blip on her otherwise flawless conception record I failed. Sorry, I wish miscarriage on no one but I cannot drum up too much sympathy for her given my rather lacklustre reproductive history. The fact remains she will have two children in the time that I have been attempting to conceive one. This is the first time I have been lapped, and if that don't beat all...I've been lapped twice.

I had a vision of my future today. A colleague of mine was telling me about her excitement surrounding a friend's new house purchase. Innocuous enough, yes. Until..."I'm just so happy for her, having this beautiful new house. She has tried and failed to have children over the years and I'm pleased that this can fill that void." Meh. Will I be this woman in 15 years' time? "Pru and The Dude just moved into a lovely house. I hope the prospect of a large house with character features and fancy new appliances is enough to compensate for their prolonged barrenness." I'll be the IFer's version of the crazy old spinster with 40 cats. The future is indeed bright.