A long period of silence

I will try and make up for a long period of silence.

One night last weekend, R and I lay in bed giggling about all the adjectives you can form from parts of the face. Cheeky, nosey, lippy, mouthy. You can’t have foreheady, or eyeish. ‘Eary’ works, though of course only phonetically, and not literally. I don’t know why we were finding such a daft conversation so funny, but we definitely did not end up in either the position nor frame of mind for making love. We chatted for a long while. We fell asleep hugging, and smiley. Like we should.

The night of the giggling was in spite of my LH surge. And I don’t care. (Except of course that we made up for lost time the following morning, and then for good measure the following evening too. I do care, of course and am worried now we might have missed the right moment).

But something in my nature makes me feel that I have to fight this whole ‘be good and do it by the book’ – I have a sort of back-to-front approach with a strong dash of superstition. Does it make any sense at all that, in the middle of a cycle during which I am desperate to get pregnant, I saw a little purse that would be so perfect for keeping tampons in, and felt completely compelled to buy it? It was truly as if the failure to buy it would have been the CAUSE of my next period. So I bought it. How could I do anything else? It was like taking back a bit of control.

I know I am probably sounding crazy, but I feel so angry. I am fed up with being out of control. It is depressing and frustrating. I caught up with www.thalia.typepad.com today, and I know exactly how she feels, on such a fine emotional knife-edge that she is moved to cry at a short film, regardless of the company.

Dammit, I can cry at those cancer adverts, I can cry when I break a glass. I can even induce real tears by imagining that my cat doesn’t really love me, but only sits on me because my lap is warm. I feel like crying some days when R leaves for work. But all these tears are just misplaced – all wrapped up in the frustration of not being able to take control. And a good old dollop of self-pity. (How do I know about the power of self-pity? I read it in Enid Blyton as a child, and recognised it as an indisputable truth, even then!) Self pity kicked in bigtime when I went to lunch with a colleague last Friday and caught her up on all the latest.

The latest is that I have been completely overlooked for a very minor line-manager role which has arisen as a result of another colleague’s maternity leave. (Naturally. There is always room for a little more irony in my life.) Not only was I overlooked, but I wasn’t even TOLD of the decision to give it to someone else, FB, who, as it happens, grumbles regularly about being overworked.

Incidentally, to do my current job I was taken out of another role where I had line management responsibility for 2 staff. I have also been with this company for 6 and a half years.

In contrast, FB joined the company a little over a year ago. She is also more than 10 years younger than me. This is not calculated to boost my self confidence.


When I confronted DM she said her credibility would have been compromised; "as we know", I went through a period when I was "struggling to cope". How could she have justified to the team an additional responsibility for me? I countered with the facts that since our ‘little talk’ I had made huge efforts to turn this all around, (which she acknowledges, and apparently I am again 'a pleasure to work with' ) and, after all, she knew what lay behind this temporary inability to cope. 5 miscarriages. 5 miscarriages. 5 FUCKING MISCARRIAGES. When you repeat those three little words, it definitely brings on a flood of self-pity.

But, apparently, if you need to maintain a commercial focus (which DM clearly does) they are not words that make much of an impression. Thanks for the flowers. No thanks for much else. Thanks also, I suppose to my self control – I hated myself for breaking and for walking out of the office, but really better that than to fight anymore. This is a woman who not only cannot cut me any slack in spite of all the years of damn good work I have put in and the efforts I have made and all in the full knowledge of what I have been through – but who was actually my 'friend' for years before she became my manager. It is ridiculous, but I can hardly bare to admit - this woman was a second bridesmaid at my wedding in 04. What???

Shovel on the self pity. What kind of friends do I have?**

Hmmm – interesting really that I find myself writing about this, which happened nearly 3 weeks ago now, but is still making me SO ANGRY.

And so here I am writing about work again. I honestly don’t know to what extent work really is unbearable, and to what extent I use it to refocus all this suppressed rage about the lost babies. My 5 lost babies. And in my radar are 3 new babies born since I last blogged: Sophie, Niall and Isla. I am not angry, not even exactly jealous, (I feel more jealous of women who are actually pregnant - is that odd?). I just want to be included too. How sad that I can’t just be happy like everyone else about a new baby.

I still read a few blogs, especially the ones of people who visit me here, but I bore myself when I rant like this, and I don't see that it achieves anything. My fragility makes it very hard to read the sad stuff, and I wish I could write something more positive.

I see Dr X on Monday, as I will be 7 days into my latest course of Prednisolone, and he wants to check me over. I don't know what it involves. 7 days after that . . .well let's hope for something more positive.




**Actually I wish to state here that I do have some very good and loyal friends indeed, and I would never put any of them in a category with DM. It hurts me that I have to admit that I have to have a category for not-good friends.