It’s been a long while since I’ve posted anything here. I don’t know if my blog posts ever reached anyone before and since it’s been so long, I doubt even one person will read this, but, I don’t care about that because writing this is therapeutic for me.
Here we are in the absolute fucking shit storm that is 2020. I’m going to rewind a bit before 2020 started because it sets up what I want to say. My wife and I had a devastating personal loss in October 2019. Our wonderful, loyal, feisty freight train of joy passed on. She was our dog, an American bulldog, and she was our whole life, she was our baby. We wanted so badly to start a family of our own. We tried, and we failed. The first was an ectopic pregnancy, fail. We eventually went to a fertility specialist who basically said that our best chance was IVF treatments. If anyone is reading this and has dealt with IVF, it’s not easy. It’s stressful and emotionally draining which is NOT conducive to actually becoming pregnant, in my opinion. We were told that before we try any treatment however, my wife would need surgery to remove one of her fallopian tubes. Let me just say that through everything that you’ve already read and what you’re about to read, she is made of fucking pure champion stuff. Through all of this she was a fucking warrior and I will never forget what she put herself through to try and give me a child, her words. During surgery it was discovered that along with the removal of the tube, one of her ovaries was just gone. Yes you read that correctly, fucking gone, poof. The tube that was removed was so twisted and damaged that the doctor thinks that it simply didn’t get enough blood flow and simply died, it looked as though her body just absorbed it. So….to recap that’s two surgeries already during this pregnancy stuff.
Let’s fast forward just a bit, she’s recovered from this major surgery and is ready to start the IVF treatments. I won’t go into too much detail here. She attempted two rounds of IVF, and after the second failed treatment she comes to me with tears in her eyes saying that she can’t do it again, that it’s all been too much for her, and she’s asking for my forgiveness. SHE’S ASKING FOR MY FORGIVENESS!? REALLY!? After all she put herself through she really is standing there with a tear stained face asking me to forgive her. I actually laughed. Yup…I laughed. Smiling at her with tears in my own eyes I tell her that she has ABSOLUTELY NOTHING to be sorry for. Did I want children? Of course I did, we both did but there’s no way in hell that I would ever accept an apology in this case because there wasn’t anything to apologize for. She put her body and mind through hell, for me. Again, her words. She knew how badly I wanted this and fought so hard to try and do this for me, for us. Were we sad and upset about it? Of course we were, but at that point there wasn’t anything else she could do. So that was that, the chapter was done, time to turn the page.
So back to our dog Lady. Lady was there with us through all of the above, she was our biggest source of comfort through the previous chapter. Not that we didn’t love her before, but now, it was intensified exponentially. She became the center of our universe and we were so happy. We had our family, maybe not how we envisioned, but we had it. So now we had accepted that children were not in the equation for us but we had accepted that. Fast forward to last September. Late in the month she just out of nowhere stopped eating, right then I knew something bad was coming. Roughly ten days from then she was gone and we were fucking devastated. I haven’t cried so much in I don’t know how long, we lost our baby, the center of our world. To this day neither of us can look at a picture of her without at least tearing up, most of the time we cry. I think that it was some time in November when she comes home from her weekend waitressing job to tell me that she’s pregnant!! You probably would think that I was fucking jumping for joy, I wasn’t. Thinking back to everything she had already been through I was terrified for her. Fucking here we go again, more heartache. 2020 arrives and she is still pregnant and it looks like this might actually be it. Along with the loss of Lady we had also lost a rescue we took in the summer before along with both of our cats after we lost Lady, needless to say we had a rough 4 or 5 years at that point. Now all of a sudden we have this new ray of hope, it’s gonna happen. Before anyone reading this gets too anxious, my wife is now 9 months pregnant and will probably go into labor any day, everything is good, that’s not where this is going.
2020 arrives and even though we’d been through so much, we looked ahead and thought, this is the year things are gonna turn around for us. Well…not so much. We lose an icon in Kobe Bryant and his daughter Gianna which greatly upset me, and coming from a Celtics fan that’s saying alot. Holy shit now a global pandemic, what else? Just a few more incidents where black Americans are being murdered by police followed by protests and rioting. We’re stuck at home, thankfully my wife was able to work from home. My workplace was shut down for 2 months, but thankfully I was still able to collect a paycheck. So we at least didn’t have that stress in our lives.
I think that I may have rambled on a bit, my apologies. Obviously, if you couldn’t tell from the title of my blog, I have some mental health issues. Needless to say, it has not been an easy time for me. Trying to navigate through this dumpster fire of a year is a struggle for the most mentally healthy person, imagine being one who struggles with their mental health during the best of times. I’m not trying to whine, like I said, this is therapeutic for me. Having a pregnant wife during a pandemic is kind of a unique situation. I was the one having to go to the grocery store run errands etc., which I did gladly because there’s no way in hell that I’m letting her put herself in jeopardy. But needless to say doing these things, even though I was always wearing my mask and being extremely cautious, that shit is nerve wracking. This has been tough on me, and my wife. She’s scared enough being pregnant through all of this. She of course is emotional, but, she’s still a fucking champion. I’ve had some serious up and down moments. At one point I was starting to drift back towards some suicidal thoughts. Along with that, I’m constantly questioning my ability to be a good father. Constantly telling myself that I can’t do this, I should just fucking run. At one point I went for a drive. I was maybe 10 minutes to the freaking Connecticut border in a random parking lot off of 95 thinking of just getting back on the highway and just driving as far away as possible. I didn’t. I had to try and shut down all the racing thoughts and focus on my wife, and our baby girl to ground myself back to reality. “This isn’t me” I told myself, “you aren’t that guy.”
Needless to say 2020 has been a massive struggle for my wife and I mentally and emotionally. So a few weeks back I start getting back to work, just staff, no public so I feel a little better about it because I’ll have less exposure. Fast forward to this past Friday. I had been feeling shitty all week, exhausted, weak, occasionally dizzy. Just all around I felt like hot garbage. I went to my boss, who actually contracted covid and recovered, and told her how I was feeling. Her eyes bugged out of her fucking head and told me that I should go get a test done and not to come back to work until my results come back assuming that they are negative. Well….this guy is now freaking the fuck out….again. Now I’m living in the basement self quarantining, until my results come back. So I have this hanging over my head, she’s gonna blow any day and if my test is positive I may not be able to see my daughter for months. I have been so damn careful and I’m fucking beside myself in fear and anxiety along with my wife who is terrified of the prospect of being in that room without me. It’s now 5:30 am on Tuesday, I’ve been up all night, and haven’t gotten any word from the doctor. This has already been one of the most stressful times of my life. Thank goodness for zoom, without which I wouldn’t have been able to talk to my therapist. No gym and no Krav maga during all this which were wonderful outlets for me both physically and mentally. I was trying to work out at home but allowed myself to succumb to this depressive state of mind.
Wow, I just vomited out alot of words and I’m glad I did. This has been helpful for me. If anyone actually reads this I hope it helps a little because I know with this anxiety and depression that I deal with you can feel isolated and alone, so if you’re reading this know that you are not alone. We’re in this together.
Thanks for listening, talk to you later.