A Broken Filter ...

This weekend I said some things to some "special" people that I'm not very proud of.  Out of total frustration I unloaded - my "filter" was broken.  I'm not going to go into details just sort of explain how I got to that point of being what appeared to be insensitive ....

I've been married for 7 years and have known my husband for 9.  When we decided to get married we knew life would come with speed bumps and we already had a significant challenge ahead of us being we both were of two different religious backgrounds.  We didn't realize that some of these speed bumps were going to be more like hurdles, rather than speed bumps.  With hurdles you really have to concentrate and put effort into jumping over them successfully, with the speed pumps - sometimes you can just ride "normally" or  even "fast "over them without any incident.

Our first year of marriage was rough and we are frankly lucky we made it through the first year without throwing in the towel.  We had a parent that was dealing with prescription medication abuse and I had suffered a miscarriage.  The miscarriage all but totally leveled me emotionally - its one "death" that for some reason people don't allow you to "mourn".  Comments such as "well you know its for the best since there was probably something wrong with the baby anyway" doesn't help.  When you are 37 years old and this is your first pregnancy, you seriously wonder if this was your one and only chance!  Then working at a place where several of your co-workers are expecting and announce their "good fortune" right after you have lost your baby was like a "spit in the face".  Listening to one pregnant woman complain daily about mourning sickness was enough to drive me insane; but the guy who walks in and tells you that his wife is pregnant and they aren't excited because they didn't want children was enough to send me "quietly and desperately sobbing in my cubical".  It took me 7 months to come to grips with losing a baby - I was unknowingly in a clinically depressed state for those 7 months and totally broke down while hiking with my husband one Sunday afternoon.  The flood gates opened and I just sobbed and sobbed until the tears stopped coming.  I ended up getting a new job in a new environment which was the best therapy for me at the time.

By year two, we were faced with fertility treatments.  Nothing is more humbling to a couple's relationship than having to resort to total defacement of romance by way of fertility treatments.  The poking and prodding and other unmentionable activities a couple goes through in order to attempt to have a child.  Its an emotional roller-coaster at best!  But if that isn't bad enough,  how about the scenario where you agree to embark upon the big daddy of fertility treatments - in-vitro fertilization (IVF) - only to find out the next day you lost your job?  Boy that was a fun day.  Here not only did I not have income coming in, but I now felt I was losing the chance to have a baby - because the price of IVF is at least $12k without insurance coverage.  We decided to take the risk despite being unemployed and no guarantee of a successful IVF.  Luckily I did get pregnant and found a job within days of each other.  Neither happened without a lot of prayers and begging of God.

Then when you think life is going along swell, your just about to give birth to your so wanted little girl only to have one of the worst deliveries imaginable.  Incompetent doctor.  One that leaves you in labor to the point of nearly dying because of HELLP syndrome and Pre-eclampsia.  Where you beg the doctor to do a c-section, only for him to tell you it will be considered "elective".  What doctor in his right mind would make a woman go through a horrible labor situation and tell her that a c-section would be considered elective and consequently not covered by insurance?  Not to mention a serious other post delivery family situation.  Lets just say, if we, my husband and I, could make it through this really rough patch then we were destined for great things to happen - because we hit the pits and we were only married 3 years by then.

We picked ourselves up and dusted ourselves off and life seemed to be coasting just fine for about 6 months and then I come to find out I'm pregnant unexpectedly but very excited - only to again lose this baby at 8 weeks.  Again, society really never allows a pregnant woman to mourn the loss of a baby when its a miscarriage - so again, the heavy heart - and the feeling that I was a broken machine.  I couldn't sustain a naturally conceived baby.  Then, 9 months later I was surprisingly pregnant again - at 9 weeks I started having some unexplained complications and was on semi-bed rest through the first trimester and limited activities throughout the rest of the pregnancy.  When I was 7 months pregnant, my daughter who was almost two had the fibril seizure that nearly did me in.

A couple of weeks after my son was born, I knew something wasn't right with him.  He looked fine, but I just knew something wasn't right.  The mommy radar was in high gear.  Turns out I was right.  By 4 months of age, we found out he had not only a congenital heart defect, but a genetic disorder that we wouldn't fully understand until just recently.  And I'm not sure we will ever fully understand Noonan Syndrome.

Since birth, my son has been hospitalized four times.  The first time for pneumonia, the second for RSV, the third because of dehydration from the stomach virus and the fourth was because of a complication from an endoscopy biopsy.  Not to mention a child who has failed to thrive over the last 9 months and visits a feeding clinic weekly.  The "terrible two's" are enough for any mom but complicate it with a feeding issue and its that much more stressful.

With all this going on, I had a father diagnosed with bladder cancer and my mother was very very ill with miscellaneous issues.  I also was dealing with a dog that had torn an ACL and was very fragile and eventually had to be put to rest.  So life for me over the last 7 years has not been a piece of cake by any stretch.  I've had days where, honestly, sitting in the car with the engine on in a closed garage seemed like a nice way to go.  Rainbows and Roses weren't falling from my sky!

I had to suck it up because as a Mom, Wife, Daughter and Sister I owed everyone the gift of keeping my chin up, attitude as positive as possible and remaining alive!  I wasn't allowed to wallow in self-pity or lay around all day and do nothing - I had and have responsibilities to people and people count on me!

This is all that happened in my life over the last 7 years - but I guess the foundation of my "toughness" comes from when I was 19 and I was raped.  I made a calculated mistake of letting a guy walk me home to my dorm from an evening out with friends because I wanted to go home, I was tired.  Nothing is worse than being treated like you were wearing a scarlet letter!  As if I wished this type of crime on myself.  There were girls I thought were friends kick me when I was down.  They kicked so hard that I left my dorm room one evening in the pouring rain with all thoughts of jumping off of a bridge.  What saved me that night was I needed to say goodbye to my brother.  So I walked over to his house on campus and fortunately his housemates knew something was wrong and kept me with them until they could locate my brother.

I've seen the dark day and I almost gave up ... but by the grace of God somehow I had the strength to get through it.  I didn't let it get me.  I didn't have the luxury of a psychiatrist or anti-depression meds.  I had to forge through all of this on my own.

So when I see a person wallowing in self-pity and acting like life is a waste of time I get frustrated and angry; because I've been there and I didn't let it consume me.  I made a choice to get better.  I'm not perfect but I chose to be "mentally well".

I apologize for my broken filter and for hurting feelings - but this post is an attempt to explain why I react the way I do.