July is OVER

For what has felt like forever, I have been alluding to the ugliness of July but not ever saying why.  This is mainly because I haven’t felt that I could state my reasons without becoming emotionally raw again, nor could I eloquently explain why and feel like it makes sense.  I have been trying to write this post for a month, I start and stop, write, re-write and delete, I even try the ‘ignore it and it will go away’ philosophy that works for so many other things.  July is over, but I have spent so much emotional energy trying to survive it that I haven’t been in a headspace that is even close to functional.

Why I hate July is really quite simple.  Everything, and I do mean anything in my adult life that has been life-changing has direct July implications.  Of course not every change has had negative implications but it is the negatives that have taken up so much room in my already crowded head that I can’t see all the amazing things around me.

The first major July incident was our move to New Zealand.  Aside from giving birth to an almost 9 pound son, this was the biggest thing that ever happened to me.  We moved to Auckland for 6 months when boy-child was 5 months old, in July.  Without a child, I could have lived in Auckland indefinitely and had a fantastic time traveling and doing all of the amazing things that New Zealand has to offer – tramping, kayaking, zorbing, bungee and the list continues.  Moving with a child made me get involved.  I needed support, I needed other mums around me, I needed contact with places that involved children.  Knowing that I needed this forced me way out of my comfort zone and almost into another reality, a reality where I was a ‘joiner’, where I introduced myself to strangers in the park or at cafes.  It was a whole new world.

As well as being one of the most positive experiences for me, it was also debilitating.  I found out that I was pregnant when I was there.  It wasn’t long before we were to return, so we planned on keeping it a secret and surprising everyone when I stepped off the plane with a baby belly.  Shortly after finding out I was pregnant, I miscarried.  First I started spotting, but a trip to the only doctors clinic open late at night confirmed that at this stage everything seemed to be OK.  I was to return back to the apartment and rest completely and go for a real ultrasound the following day.  By the following day the bleeding had slowed but there was no heartbeat.  I had no physical pain, but there was no heartbeat.  Our baby, the baby that was due on man-childs 30th birthday was gone.  I was all alone, in another country trying to cope with losing a baby, chasing a now 10 month old and planning the move back to Australia.  I had some great friends in Auckland, but they were helpless, most of them in similar situations to me – dealing with international relocations and toddlers and/or pregnancies.  They wanted to help but how could they help me when I didn’t know what help I needed.  

I felt couldn’t call home to say what had happened.  No-one in Australia knew I was pregnant, how could they help me deal with suddenly not being pregnant?  I didn’t tell my family as I knew that they would want to fly to NZ to be by my side and help me.  I didn’t want to be a burden on anyone so we kept it a secret.  Still they are unaware of the pain I felt at losing a baby.  Man-child had taken time off for doctors appointments, blood tests and the ultrasound.  He didn’t take time off for the visit to the doctor confirmed officially that yes I WAS pregnant and now I wasn’t.  I sat there in the doctors office in shock, listening to the list of what to expect, would I need a d&c, what I could do and what I shouldn’t do.  I didn’t hear much of what was said, I was merely aware that I was not going to have a baby in July, that I wasn’t going to complete our family for man-child’s birthday.  

Never in my entire life have I felt so alone.  Still to this day I find it impossible to describe the overwhelming sense of loss and the total isolation I felt.  Since then I have told a few people about the loss, usually as a way to help them, to illustrate that pregnancy is unpredictable, to help them feel better about their pregnancy difficulties.  I have never felt able to express my sadness at losing a baby and also feel the overwhelming relief, joy and happiness of having girl-child, of knowing that if I didn’t miscarry I would never know the amazing person that she is and the way that our family is completed.  

By the time July arrived, I was too busy getting our house ready for sale, boy-child was finally recovering from pneumonia, I was still working full time AND I was pregnant with girl-child.  I was doing way too much but I was extremely happy with being able to complete our family.  Perhaps I was doing too much to try and hide from myself and my grief.  I didn’t allow myself the time or space to be sad or even contemplative over the miscarriage.   I still feel like I haven’t grieved the loss but feel unable to do so without imagining life without girl-child and mother-guilt kicks in to overdrive.

We ended up selling our old house (for a very decent profit – yay) and going against our instincts brought this house (even bigger mortgage), both during July, amidst celebrating man-childs 30th birthday.  

Despite mostly loving the new house and area we live in, owning this house has been hard work and in some respects very restrictive.  That brings me to the next July dramas…

Perceptions and Reality

I found a great post over at 22 Words (Experiments in Getting to the Point) that says When we communicate with others, there’s one thing about us that they’ll always understand better than we do:  How we come across.

Now this got me thinking about how I look to the rest of the world, not just now, but in the past and I guess also in the future as some things are difficult to change.  I hit comments to leave my statement on the site for the first time and realised two things.  One that my comment would be way to long and convoluted for a site about ‘getting to the point’ and two, that the site is full of Christian commentary.  Now I know this shows my ignorance, but I do not belong to a Christian community (this doesn’t mean that I am a total heathen but that is another story in itself) and therefore I do not know or understand the bible.  As a result of my lack of knowledge and my inability to get to the point, I don’t feel adequate to post on this site just yet, however I am happy to write my own entire post about my interpretations.

 

Clearly the perceptions that others have of me and the way I view myself often vary greatly.  Essentially I think of myself as an introvert and am often crippled by the fear of doing or saying something that could be seen as offensive to someone else so I hold back.  Other people seem to see me as extroverted, a strong and publicly involved person who is compassionate about what I am involved in.  I guess that this is a result of me knowing how introversion limits my interactions with the real world so I throw myself into situations that force me to overcome my introversion.  

Hmmm, that doesn’t really seem to make any sense at all.  I guess I am trying to say that I can go from being totally nondescript one second to being at the centre of everything the next.  

I look normal, average in every way and can easily blend into a crowd.  People who have studied alongside me are adamant that I was never in their class, I was never noticed.  Yet people often think they have met me before.  I have been told that I have ‘doubles’ in all sorts of unlikely situations from a music student to a topless dancer, a bottle shop attendant to a ballerina, even the partner of one of man-child’s closest friends.  

As a child I was a painfully shy child but very conscientious, I didn’t want to let anyone down – ever.  If someone expected me to do something I would do it.  I feel like my childhood was full of doing things that were expected of me rather than the things that were important to me.  Don’t get me wrong, I did have a fantastic childhood I just didn’t have the strength in my convictions to make a stand for what I wanted, assuming of course I knew what I wanted.  

I guess I never really knew what I wanted, so I followed other peoples suggestions and directions.  I did what was expected of me.  To some extent I was an over-achiever; I got good grades without really studying, was athletic enough to make teams without trying, creative enough to at times be referred to as ‘artistic’.  That being said, if I wasn’t sure that I could do something (and do it well)  I didn’t do it at all.  I wouldn’t draw a picture if I wasn’t convinced that everyone would know exactly what it was.   I wouldn’t compete in an event unless I knew I could be a finalist.  I wasn’t able to take risks.  Unfortunately I see this debilitating behaviour in my son and I don’t know how to discourage it.  I want to be able to try new things without fear of failure, and I want him to experience the same.  

Somehow, despite being afraid of taking risks I do take risks, sometimes huge life-changing risks like moving to another country and even occasionally admitting defeat or that I can’t do something.  I might have developed a very real fear of heights as I have grown older yet I love the challenge of rock climbing. 

Essentially, I didn’t know how to deal with not achieving, so I had no option but to achieve.  I didn’t know how to deal with adversity or confrontation.  I still don’t know how and avoid confrontation whenever possible.  

I am a thinker and not a talker, but I am a do-er.  I have lots of friends and I tend to be the person that people turn to in an emergency, yet I don’t feel secure enough to ask for help when I need it.  I deal with most things alone and I am a loner.

I don’t do social situations and am content to sit and read a book or wander through a park rather than meet people and be sociable.  I am the sort of person who if I was to go to the party I would be there on time, not just because I am slightly OCD, but because I am totally overwhelmed by the thought of going into a social situation alone and being seen as being all alone.  My kids are my shield from the world of being alone, yet my fear of them growing up with the same irrational fears of being alone force me to interact with people and groups regularly and get involved in community.  

 

After rambling on for far too long, it is apparent that I have no idea of how I come across, particularly in the blogsphere where I am posting infrequently or posting and not publishing.  I think this space reflects me as being confused and confusing, very publicly private and wanting to belong but not knowing where or how.