Suddenly Thirty-One..

I’ve never felt so uninspired, yet so eager to NOT be mediocre, as I have in the last few weeks. I go through waves of thinking about all the skills I want to acquire (tennis playing skills, language learning skills, luminosity skills, piano playing skills, cake icing skills, crochet skills, etc), and then waves of, I JUST CANNOT BE BOTHERED. I’m currently a nurse, registered if you can believe it, and I kinda want not to be. Not that it’s not a great profession, it is, and I respect and enjoy all the amazing nurses that I work alongside, but it’s just NOT for me. Not that I don’t like helping people, I sometimes don’t mind it; I just don’t feel my true authentic self as a nurse. Sometimes I feel like a fraud. Sometimes when I have students with me I wonder why they want to be a nurse. I wonder why I’m a nurse, and then I remember that I still don’t actually know what I want to be when I grow up, I never really have. Is that normal thirty-something behaviour?

I feel like a lot of the decisions in my life have been knee jerk reactions to different circumstances, and thinking about this now, I feel so pissed off! I am so much better than a whole bunch of knee jerk reactions defining my life! I am destined to be something, someone remarkable, someone different, someone unique. I feel so annoyed that I have wasted some pivotal years of my life with half considered decisions. I remember when I was about eighteen, my uncle told me that the decisions that I made from about then onwards would be decisions that had the ability to affect my life greatly. Such a simple statement, but so bloody true. If only I had considered this advice when I spent every paycheck on clothes for the first 5 years of my twenties.. oy!

AN…Y…WAY… what I really want to do is make a career change. But I fear that I am not efficient enough, or perhaps not adaptable enough to make it in another professional field. I’m enrolled in a Graduate Diploma in Public Relations, and have been for the last 2 years almost, and really enjoy it, but fear that I’m not going to be good enough in the real world, outside of uni. My husband always says that I am courageous and hard working, but just as I am with being a nurse, I feel like a fraud when he says it. Why do I feel like such a fraud?

I’m not sure where my journey is headed, but I hope it brings some clarity to point the way.

M x

 

 

Ugh!  The day your period comes, when you’re trying for a little one, is one of pure insanity.  At least it is for me, and I think if it’s not for you, what the hell is wrong with you??  I go through all the ranges of emotions, usually in quick succession, and usually for long enough to make me feel like I am a legit crazy person.  It’s fucking horrible!  I am so so over it, and it makes me wish I didn’t want the cookie so so much.  The cookie in this circumstance is a baby/littlebug/littleone.  Life is hard when you want the cookie.

So with the menses, it all starts with the symptoms leading up to it, with my mind usually  hoping that these symptoms are in fact early pregnancy signs.  The dull abdominal cramping, the migraine, the breakout of pimples along the jawline… my mind is thinking, ‘Uhh hello, it could totally be pregnancy hormones!  And that spotting…let’s hope it’s the implantation bleed!’  Um, it never has been the implantation bleed.  So why the hell would it be different this time?  Now that last thought, is usually what I am thinking when I experience the actual blood shed, the fucking crimson tide of crushed dreams.  I’m somewhat devastated, but also tell myself  that deep down I knew that I was going to get it anyway.  So really, I’m not surprised am I?  Am I?  I can’t really tell anymore.  I then find a silver lining, like a real schmuck, like, ‘Oh well, at least it means we can travel to Europe in August.  I mean we probably won’t be travelling as much with a baby in tow, so best do it now’.  And other linings, like saving money, going out where we want, when we want, and having more time to be selfish together.  Those silver lining bastards!!  That false sense of everything is A-okay.  But, then again, those silver linings don’t sound all bad.  See, there we go again, that back and forth between really wanting the cookie, and then not really caring either way.  Cookie, no cookie.  Cookie, no cookie.

After the silver linings, and the back and forth, cookie, no cookie, I then feel irrationally angry and frustrated.  The mere look of my husbands face sends me into meltdown, into fits of rage almost.  Like hello, support me some more would you please!  Nothing he could say could placate me.  I am irrationally unreasonable.  I must pick a fight in this instance, and do so, at first in jest, and then for serious, and eventually I am crying my eyes out.  Because I have hormones okay!  Fuck these fucking hormones and this fucking shit fight of fertility!  I want to scream until my voice is gone.  I want the world to know that I am not a happy little vegemite.

But then I calm down… Eventually, and I realise that this journey is pretty hardcore, but it only makes me stronger.  It will hopefully be a testament to how much of a miracle those little ones will be.  Those little ones that are mine, and ours, and are waiting to be loved on by us.  I can’t wait to be someone’s mum and to feel that motherly love and instinct and bond.  I want to be a mama bear so so much, but it seems so out of reach;

DAMN YOU FERTILITY GODS/GODDESSES!

They go hand in hand don’t they.  It’s so annoying, because I hate feeling irritable, but I also hate feeling fat.  I have always fancied myself a salad dodger (that was my MySpace name…also my Instagram description), and I guess I forgot to mention in my first post, that I also live by the notion, ‘You don’t make friends with salad’.  But as I’m now 30, I guess I have to adopt some salad into my life, which is why I am so bloody hungry right now!  Salad does not a meal make!  For me at least.  I need some carbs.  I need some knife and fork action!  Anyway, whatever, weight loss talk is boring right.  I cannot stand when people catalogue and verbalise to me what they eat during their diet.  BORING!

What I want to document right now is how frustrated I have been feeling when discussing my fertility with people I know.  I know that people probably only mean well when they ask me how it’s all going, but when people phrase the topic with, ‘Are you pregnant yet?’, I get all kinds of annoyed!  I mean, if I haven’t mentioned anything, then you can only assume that, a) I’m not pregnant, or b) I am pregnant but clearly haven’t chosen to tell the world (or you, and by you I mean nosy person) just yet!  It really irritates me, which is probably also working with my hunger to make me one major bitch!  Like I said, I know they mean well, but seriously, how about just kindly asking how I’m going, and recognising that if I don’t bring it up, then I probably don’t want to talk about it.  Some people are so nosy, and it’s always the acquaintances or the colleagues.  ALWAYS.

But, in saying that, I find it the most difficult to tell the people closest to me about it all.  Even when they ask me about my husband and I, and our plans for children.  I find it so difficult to mention that we’ve been trying when they ask, and not because I don’t want them to know, but because I find saying it awkward and I don’t quite know the words to say in the moment.  When I have opened up to friends, when they’ve probed politely about the subject, I feel that I have always downplayed my situation, made it seem all hunky dory.  My friends always say something along the lines of, ‘Oh my goodness, that’s so exciting that you’re starting a family!’, and I just think, really?  Is it exciting after 18 months of negative pregnancy tests?  Definitely not.  Don’t get me wrong, the prospect of a baby is, definitely, but the process, the process is the most anxiety ridden rollercoaster I’ve been on.

You know what also disgruntles me?  When people tell me stories about a friend of a friend of a friend, who tried for years, and then when she stopped stressing she fell pregnant!  Like, OMG, it’s a fucking miracle!  I get it now!  I have complete control over my fertility, and my stress, me rather, is what’s preventing conception.  I know how to nail this now, I got this!  Thank you so much for nothing asshole.  Not that they mean to be an asshole, but clearly, they are.  I understand that they perhaps want to connect with me on the topic, but really people, sometimes the nicest thing to do is to say, ‘Jeez, I’m sorry you’re going through all this, it must be really hard’.  That’s it, that’s all I need.  When people start on with the success stories it makes me feel as though my anxiety and frustrations are discounted.  As if I should start looking on the bright side, because hey, you never know, anything can happen!  Yeah, anything can happen, just like it did with your aunt and uncle when they literally had just stopped trying!!!!!!!!

I love it when people have the audacity to tell you to stop trying, as if that is the secret that they are bestowing onto you.  These are the types of people that will respond to your pregnancy announcement with, ‘OMG congratulations!  See I told you it would happen when you stopped trying!’.

So, this month I turned 30, and I can actually say that I feel liberated to call myself a 30 year old woman!  I know most of us say that, but I really do feel a sense of adultness about myself.  I feel like I have stories to share and wisdom to impart on the world!  Do we all think that too?  I should probably mention that I may make grand sweeping statements, and I’ll apologise in advance.  I can get carried away in trying to get my point across, though I do value all the differences we have!

In continuing with my self-indulgent introduction, I’ll let you all know that I firmly live by the motto’s, ‘Life is too short’, and ‘You only live once’, though I’m not a bogan so I don’t say ‘YOLO!’, and even, ‘If you stand for nothing, you fall for everything’.  Correction about that YOLO part, I think I used to say it, but before it was cool.  I’m big on claiming that I knew of things before they were cool.  I cannot express to you more how sure I am that I invented ‘totes magotes’!  I may have even invented ‘amazeballs’, though I do watch a lot of reality TV, so maybe I heard it way back when and feel like it’s been a part of my vernacular since day one. I believe in placing a double space in between sentences, and was taught at an early age that a sentence should never start with ‘because’!  But sometimes I do!  Because I’m crazy like that!  I should also note that I was the first in my class (year 2) to learn how to spell ‘because’, so it is one of my all time favourite words to write.

Food is like my life.  Not really in the full on gourmet foodie way, but more in that way than in a heifer way.  Which, isn’t to say that I haven’t ever put on some pounds due to the gospel of tasty delights, I have, and would like to acknowledge that in my opinion (I’m really trying to curb my sweeping statements), it happens to the very best of us.  So I’m here for you if you just love all the food, I get it!

But!  I really must mention now, that this blog was started by moi, on this very summer night, not only to talk about my favourite topic ever…me!  But to also open up to the universe about my struggle with fertility.  I don’t expect the entire universe to read this.  I really don’t even know if anyone will, which is okay, because it’s therapeutic for me to just get it all out in the open, much like a journal, but better and funner!

In the grand scheme of things, my husband and I haven’t been trying for an inconceivable amount of time.  I understand that some people try for years and years with no results, just heartache, and I am only just starting to realise the pain that would cause.  We have been trying to conceive a little love bug for 18 months now, and it feels like an eternity already!  The months of disappointment, of thinking to yourself, ‘I shouldn’t need to buy tampons this month, I have a feeling this is the month!’  Then it’s not, and you wonder if the two of you are even doing right?!  You wonder if you should have sex every second day, or every third day, or maybe every day during your fertile period.  Who the hell knows?  I just know that I hate conception based sex, it is the actual worst!  Not that I don’t enjoy it when we do it, but the anxiety of having to keep track of the fertile window, and doing it during those times when we might not feel like it, and perhaps not doing it when we want to do it.  That kinda sex mantra is the worst.  The amount of apps that I’ve downloaded, and entered my cycles into, and just pored over the data for what seems like an eternity is ridiculous!  Surely it shouldn’t be this difficult?  How are we all here if it can be this difficult?

I heard that profound endings are ones that are ended with questions so I will leave it right there for now.  xx

I am turning thirty-one in a few days….what the actual f*#k!!!!  I only just started using eye cream a few months ago, and I haven’t had enough time to prepare for being thirty something!  It’s too real and I can’t even.  Actually, I HATE when people say that, but it’s so of the time that when I read this when I’m 80 (god willing) I’m hoping that my sassy older self will chuckle and reminisce on a time of youth and less wrinkles.

So….I started some blog posts about one year ago, upon turning 30 and feeling fabulous/smug about my new found wisdom, and after only a few posts I stopped.  It wasn’t just my newfound smugness that compelled me to journal my thoughts/opinions, I also felt it would provide psychological relief for me during a time that I felt was a struggle.  And even though I only posted a few times, I did feel it was a cathartic release in the moment.  So 2017 is here and I’m committed to keeping this blog as a journal, if for nothing else!  I’m going to post my previous entries, because they still reflect where I am in my life, and also because they were so genuine and kind of funny.  So… here goes!!

xx