When The Going Gets Tough The Tough Get Crying

I’ve got some sh*t to process today. I didn’t realize how hard the last few days have been until today. A few days before my cycle starts I get alerted by some symptoms (you know, generally bitchiness, tender boobs etc). So I knew it was coming. On cycle day 1 I was actually pretty surprised that I felt ok. Normally I feel super down, I want to just cry in bed for a few hours, eat cheetos and just be sad that another month has gone by. I was pretty impressed with myself for being completely fine actually. I probably should have been alerted to a potential problem when on Monday night I literally couldn’t stop eating cookies, and then yesterday I ate an entire chocolate bar. To some people that might not seem like a big deal, but I don’t do either one of those, like ever. So here’s the timeline of events. Period starts Monday night (get to use new fun menstrual cup so that’s neat), Tuesday have a pretty rough training with our agents where I totally bombed and felt guilt, shame and anger (also eat an entire chocolate bar), Wednesday make a pretty embarrassing blunder in a very public format which hurts peoples feelings and caused me to send an apology email to the entire group of 30+ businesses, Wednesday afternoon find out I’ve spent the last 3 months on a client project I royally f*cked up and have to start over (THANK GOD THE CLIENT IS WONDERFUL!).

I’m working hard to avoid doing the comparison game because even while typing that all out I thought ‘that’s really not that bad, you’re a little emotional so what. No one died. Nothing is permanently damaged.’ But here’s the thing…I’m feeling permanently damaged from the last few days. All of that on top of a really unsettling dream I had last night. I dreamed that I was back on the Africa Mercy (a hospital ship I served on in Africa for 9 months), and I was pregnant. In the dream my water broke and I was going into labor to on the ship. I woke up very startled. As much as I’ve wanted kids for the past many years I don’t dream about being pregnant or giving birth (ok one time I did, but I gave dream birth to kittens). This dream really shook me. In the dream I remember my water breaking, going into labor, laying on a table with dr’s and nurses around and just bawling my eyes out. They asked me what was wrong and I was super ugly crying telling them about my infertility journey and how I’d given up on getting to the giving birth part. Then I woke up not being pregnant, with no baby in my arms. It feels like a cruel trick. I want to have someone or something to direct my anger at. I want to rage at them. I want to scream and cry and kick my feet. I want to make them feel the way they have made me feel. The only problem is there’s no one or thing to blame. No one did this to me. How do you process pain when you don’t know the source of it?

Someone reminded me recently that grief isn’t linear. Some days I’m completely fine and then the next day I pretty much can’t handle life and am not fit for human company (as seen by my blunders in the recent past). I suppose this is part of being human. I’ve always been a control freak thinking that if I could simply control the variables I would

When I feel shame about an action, I’m learning that I tend to shut down and crawl back into my comfort zone threatening to never come out. Often times, for me, shame comes when I’m pushing the boundaries of something and I go a little to far. My natural response is to say ‘oh that’s right I like my comfort zone, stay within the lines, don’t go out of the boundaries EVER AGAIN’. Typically that’s followed by thoughts of ‘what were you thinking? Of course that wasn’t an ok thing to do/say. You never think this stuff through, you just do/say it. I even start to get paranoid. The other night after our agent training, I was in my office recovering by scrolling pinterest, a little to scared to let my face be seen by my family when I heard my brother talking and laughing with my husband in the living room. Normally, I’d wonder what the joke was and go find out because I want to laugh too. After my dismaying experience, I was beating myself up so badly I couldn’t handle anyone else telling me how bad I’d done so I stayed in the office and convinced myself that they were laughing about how badly I had just led training. Neither my brother nor husband is cruel so I’m sure I was just being paranoid, but I still haven’t worked up the nerve to ask them.

There’s one other part of this story that I’ve left out. I get nervous to share too much about family stuff because it’s other peoples story too. Somewhere in the last few days my mom told me she’s going down to see my sister and niece (the only grandchild) for a week. She’ll be gone over my birthday. She’s already seen them multiple times this year but she’s going again…over my birthday. So I’m in the middle of a shame spiral, on my period (remember it’s not about moodiness with that statement, it’s about another failed month), having cruel dreams and my mom is going to see the sister who could actually give her what she wanted, a grandchild. Ugh. Now, I have to add in here so people don’t think my mother is a monster, I in no way said or implied that I wanted to do something special for my birthday. I actually don’t want to do a big family thing. I also don’t think it’s another person’s job to be in charge of my feelings. I’m the one that has a problem with it, I’m the one who needs to process and get over it. She couldn’t have done anything differently to make her visit easier on me and it’s not her job to do so.

Even though it’s been a rough few days, there are things that I was also grateful for. I got to go workout with my trainer. Doing something healthy with my feelings is a lot better then sitting on the couch with them letting them build up. I also went for a run with a friend (I almost bailed because I’d rather sit on the couch having a pity party) which released some endorphins and we talked about tough stuff while running. My husband made me a care basket of things he knew I’d appreciate (gluten free vodka, wine, mixers, chocolate and popcorn). We each get $50 of spending money each month and what was really sweet was he spent his money on my care basket and not family money. And (this is silly) but I negotiated a 28% discount at TjMaxx on a cute serving tray I found. Getting discounts at places that I’d previously thought prices were non-negotiable makes me oddly happy.

Once again I am reminded that gratefulness and grieving go hand in hand. I know that my cycle starting is a trigger for grieving, when I didn’t ‘feel’ it, I should have realized it was still there and I was ignoring it. I want to be more aware in the future so I can allow time for grieving and avoid the blunders of this month.

The thumbnail picture is from my run on Tuesday morning (cycle day 1), taken before I recognized any of the emotions happening deep inside.