A clean hurt: Part 1

This is a relatively new experience for me.  It is pain, but it is a clean pain, which I suppose is comparable to the phrase, "a clean break." 

Last night my brother stopped by to give me a letter from his wife.  She and I have been friends for years, and I have always considered her one of the few people with whom I can share my deepest thoughts and trials.  It was unusual that she would send me a message this way, handwritten through my brother.  I expected it to be a note of encouragement because she does make a point to send me some Bible verses now and then. 

I opened the envelope and the first sentence written on a full notebook sheet of paper explains that she is telling me this news through a letter so that I have time to process it alone and without having to fake an appropriate response that would be necessary in person.  I immediately felt my mind and heart want to shut down, because I know what she is about to communicate, even without reading any more. 

She is pregnant.

Yes, this is not normally something that would hurt someone on perfectly good terms with her brother and sister-in-law.  And no, this is not a soap opera where maybe my pain could be explained by the fact that it was in fact my husband who impregnated her and she is thus revealing such a blow by letter.  Nothing as dramatic as that is happening here, and I am sorry to disappoint any reader who is looking for something scandalous (for your sake, find something with true meaning in life!).

The reason my very considerate and loving sis-in-law knew I would need to find out by letter is because a couple months ago I was sitting across from her in her living room and weeping.  The weeping stemmed from the fact that a mutual friend of ours had just told the world that she (the mutual friend) was pregnant.  I had had a conversation with this now-pregnant friend and learned that she almost immediately became pregnant as soon as she and her husband starting trying.

My sis-in-law knew that my husband and I had been trying for a few months to get pregnant.  This could have been just a minor situation of, well, other people can get pregnant, so we probably can, too, and while I'm a tiny bit jealous that a friend just received the good news for the first time, surely I will, too, soon have that news myself, and meanwhile I am very happy for her, well, it just was not that situation.     

I was crying in my sis's-in-law living room because I had given up some things in order to pursue having a child.  I had just the summer before finally felt like my life was coming together and having meaning.  The previous spring my church's music pastor had resigned, and I had bravely said okay when God asked me to step up and become the worship coordinator at our church on a volunteer basis.  This was huge for me, because confidence in handling real-life adult responsibilities is something I still struggle with, even at my then age 25.  But my moods had finally reached a healthy balance and joy had returned and I had energy and motivation and hope and a calling.  So I accepted the new responsibility at my church and loved it from the start, even if I was somewhat still intimidated.

I referred to my moods because I have what I now understand to be generalized anxiety disorder and major depressive disorder.  Yes, those are the technical terms and I can usually talk about them quite rationally, probably because I have a BA in social work and became familiar with the fact that these issues truly exist and persist even in good little Christian girls, unlike my dad who still has a hard time grasping that mental disorders cannot be easily overcome by simply "trying harder."  (Though my dad has come a long ways since learning that medication and counseling is something I definitely need at this point in my life.) 

I also learned this last spring that I have hypothyroidism and have gotten that under control through medication.  In addition, a visit to urgent care at about the same time revealed that severe pain I had suffered for the past 3 years could be attributed to gallstones.  I promptly had my gallbladder removed.

I will go more in depth later as to how these struggles have shaped my life in other ways, but meanwhile, this past summer was the first time I felt like I could be a "normal" person with "normal" pursuits and goals and dreams.  So for the first time in my life I fully considered becoming a mother and raising a child with my wonderful husband. I began to think that maybe I was "cured" so that when my doctor suggested I go off of my anti-depressant and anti-anxiety medications while attempting to get pregnant, I thought, "Sure!  I'll get pregnant in the next month or two, and then maybe my moods will balance out because of the pregnancy and I won't need the meds anyway."  This thinking stemmed from the fact that my moods were also balanced by my birth control pills and the doctor thought maybe pregnancy could have the same effect (even if the depression disorder diagnosis is not accurate, my doctor agrees that PMDD is certainly applicable to me).

Those of you who have tried to get pregnant and failed or had difficulty probably share a sad smile at my thought that I'd get pregnant within a "month or two."  And now I wonder what I was thinking.  My own mother tried for almost ten years before I was finally born to her at age 32, and then my brother followed when she was 34.  Genetics was one of my favorite classes in school, I know these things tend to run in families!

And while this may sound pathetic, I will admit it has only been five months of trying.  And I already hurt badly.  Because it turns out going off of my medications was a bad idea.  I did it because while they had not been proven to cause harm to a fetus, they had also not been proven to cause no harm to a fetus.   A couple months into my medication abstinence, I began to slide downhill, and this sliding increased in rapidity, until I had to quit my job at the church, turn my phone to silent, and revisit many old fears I thought I had said goodbye to for good. 

This is not a good situation in which to attempt pregnancy.  Stress of any kind does not aid in fertility.  Full-blown anxiety and depression is not so good, either.

So it has been a very long five months for my husband and me.  But it all explains why my sister-in-law and my brother realized I may not be immediately joyous to hear that they were in fact pregnant.  My sis-in-law and I had always talked about getting pregnant at close to the same time so that we could raise our children together and hope that they, too, would be close friends.  But I did not know that she was actually trying for a baby the same time I was. 

Those of you who have tried for children and failed will perhaps scoff at my pathetic pain of trying for 5 months with no results.  You may not understand without more explanation what it has felt like to for the first time have a purpose and a life, a life that can be respected and contribute to the good of others, only to give it up by going off of my medications in order to try to create a baby in what I thought would be the safest utero-environment possible. Some women at my church thought me brave.  A few months into it I thought I was just plain idiotic. 

I am back on my medications now.  But not the birth control, so I still fight anxiety and depression to an extent.  But it feels like I threw away my chance to have the "normal" life.  My sister-in-law is extremely compassionate and discerning, so she knows I feel this way.   

I love her and my brother very much.  I am very happy for them.  I just hurt for what I feel like I lost and am afraid to hope to get it back.  This is fairly common for Christians with depression.  I know better and yet I don't, all at the same time. 

This has ended up taking many more words than I anticipated.  I think I will explain the title of this entry further at another time.