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Thursday, October 25, 2012

What it feels like to be broken

I have been a bit quiet on here (or at least it seems to me that I have as I haven't been checking the stats everyday or drafting up new post ideas). There is a reason. I have been dealing with some news in my real life and its been taking over all my emotional energy and draining my desire to write about anything else. It has been all encompassing and yet I have been too scared to share it on here. I am starting to feel ok with it or at least accept it so I guess it is time I release the news into a public forum. More-so for myself so that I don't get buried under the weight my mind is putting on myself by going over and over and over it in my head. It seems appropriate and somewhat ironic that today is all about I heart my body and yet the whole reason for my emotional turmoil is because of my body, and the last thing I feel at the moment is love for it.

I was officially diagnosed with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS) recently. For those of you sitting at home wondering what the hell I'm talking about, you can read more about it here (so that I don't have to go through all the symptoms myself). It has been both a relief as such and a curse. It was not a shock, I have suspected it for years since I had fertility problems in the past. It is reassuring (in a strange, twisted way) to know that there is a reason why a lot of things have been and also haven't been happening for me. It is nice to know that I am not imagining or making up all of the symptoms I was experiencing. Everybody used to tell me to just relax when I was trying to get pregnant (FYI worst advice you can give someone who's ttc) and that it wasn't my fault. I started to think I was crazy. That there wasn't actually anything wrong and that I was just looking for excuses as to why nothing was happening. Then, when my marriage broke up everyone was consoling me with "it was all him it has nothing to do with you", "you will be able to have a baby it was just the stress of the relationship". As naive as it sounds I hoped that they were right, but on a subconscious level I knew it was me. I knew this pain would continue. And I was right, but not in a good way like where you want to go running back at people and throw "I told you so" in their faces.

I am having huge issues with my body right now. I have never really had a healthy positive relationship with my body thanks to years of low self esteem and then being told how crap I was by so many people. Then, when I had infertility issues my self loathing deepened. Now, its at a whole new level. I used to think that my body was against me by not letting me get pregnant. Like everybody else could just decide they wanted to get pregnant and their body would follow suit and do what it needed to do to reach the common goal. I have always felt like my body hated me and wanted to punish me, but deep down I knew that was crazy. Now I feel completely disconnected from my body. I feel like my brain and my soul are trapped inside this vessel that is doing everything in its power to work against me and against my dreams. I know that it could be a lot worse and that there are a lot worse diseases, conditions and injuries out there. I am thankful that I don't have anything worse but to me at this point in my life it is one of the worst things that could happen to me as a woman.

PCOS makes me feel really alone. Its not something people want to talk about and its not something that people can easily relate to. I think that I must have got it genetically (as I don't have the usual lifestyle factors) which makes it even harder as nobody else in my family, that I know of, has it. Nobody understands. It makes it even harder to sit here and wonder why me? Why did I have to be the one to get this? Why, when I always thought I was born to be a mother, was I essentially born with a syndrome that causes the exact opposite? It's not fair. But, it is what it is and I just have to deal with it. I have met some wonderful people online in support groups (and of course T is nothing short of amazingly supportive as usual) and without them I know I would be in a much darker place right now. I am so grateful for the relationships I have made with complete strangers and the fact that together we can help each other through this.


Thanks to Mel for this awesome banner

There is no cure. I will never be "normal" not that I ever feel like I have been. The good news is that I can fight it in order to hopefully have kids in the future. I fully intend on fighting it, and succeeding. That is the small light in a somewhat dark tunnel. I have hope that one day sometime in the future, however far away from now, that I will infact be a mother. I will have children. I will never beat this fully, but I will not let it beat me. It doesn't lessen the emotional pain that I am feeling now, but I know it will make me appreciate it much more when I do have children.

The part that scares me the most is the fact that my cysts could turn into cancer. I feel like there are these little time-bombs ticking away inside me and I never know when I'm going to piss one off and it will turn into cancer to get back at me. Before I just imagined I might have cysts, but now that I have seen them on a screen in front of me (and there are many) its hard to forget that they are there. It bothers me more-so because the same year my father died the lady two doors down (my friends mum) also died from cancer (from similar causes to PCOS). She was only young and she got very sick. I can reconcile the fact that my father died young because it was of his choosing, but the fact that she died so young, from cancer and she didn't have any choice in it never really sat well with me. Now it really scares me.

I am trying not to let myself go there though, because the thought is too scary. I am trying to imagine the future with me and T and everything that we ever wanted. I mean seriously I think by now I deserve a break. If ever there is a reason for me to live in the moment and not worry about the future this is it, so that is what I am going to try really hard to do.



Toni x
Thursday, September 13, 2012

R. U. OK?


National R U OK? Day - A conversation could change a life.


If you're in Australia then you've probably already heard about this as its been taking over Facebook all day. Today is national R.U.OK day. Quite simply its about getting people to communicate more and ask their friends, family, colleagues etc are you ok? The theory goes if more people talk about their problems then it will take the stigma away from depression and will lead to more people asking for help and receiving the help they need. Which ultimately reduces the stigma around suicide and hopefully in turn (by people getting the help they need) will lead to suicide prevention.

This is particularly close to my heart. You are all aware by now that my father died when I was 10. What you don't know yet is that he committed suicide.

It was incredibly hard to come to terms with as a child. To have a dad one day and then nothing the next. Its not like when someone is sick and you have time to prepare, knowing that one day they are going to die. In that situation (not that its really any better) you have time to say your goodbyes. Time to do everything and say everything you want to say before the day comes. I never knew it was coming. I didn't get to say goodbye, no last I love you. Nothing.

On top of this, apart from coming to terms with my dad being gone at the age of 10, I had to deal with the fact that he actually chose to die and he did it himself. What on earth could be so bad that he actually wanted to die? Why would he want to leave me and my brother? Were we not good enough to make him stay? Could I have stopped him from doing it if I was there? Was it my fault? Didn't he love me anymore? So many questions went running through my head. For a 10 year old that's a lot of emotional baggage to deal with and make sense of. When I went back to school I was also teased by the other kids - I remember one girl pointed and laughed at me while saying "haha your dad killed himself".

I never really knew he was depressed. I knew him and mum were separated and going through the process of getting divorced. I'm not really sure that I ever thought they would actually get divorced. I could never really imagine life without him or life going between mum and dad's houses and having to split everything between the two. I never really had time to give the idea much thought as three months after they separated he was gone. Those three months were shit though. Going from one house to the other and having both of them asking about the other to find out whats happening. Endless fighting over the house and the bribes to get information. Actually the bribes I liked a bit to be honest, because it was pretty awesome to get ice blocks just for answering a question when we never would have got that before. I feel guilty about it now. But still, overall it was a shit time.

I didn't even know they were fighting until the day we were pulled out of school because we were moving in with grandma and pa. We didn't spend much time around mum and dad together because they were always working and when we were on holidays we would go stay with grandma and pa. So, it was quite a shock to me when we were moving out of the house. The only thing I remember was that there were holes inside the wardrobe doors in their bedroom. I never heard them fight though so I assumed someone must have fallen over and landed into the wardrobe door or something..? I do remember that one day when we were driving down to the gold coast they had a big fight over the radio and how loud it was and dad drove the car off the highway into a ditch because he was pissed with mum. That was kinda scary. Other than that nothing really ever tweaked me to the idea that things were going wrong.

As someone who has been left behind from suicide and dealt with the after affects I can not stress the importance of R U OK day. I wish somebody could have helped my dad. I wish he got the help he needed and I wish he was still here. No matter how shit life might have been growing up as a child of divorce it still would've been much better than growing up as a child of suicide.
Have you ever wondered which hurts the most: saying something and wishing you hadn't or saying nothing and wishing you had?
So I urge you all to ask your loved ones are you ok? 

You never know how much you might help them just by showing that you care.


Toni x


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