Belly Blues

Well, we finally did it.
On Friday afternoon, Frank and I had our initial consultation at the fertility clinic. Yep, I admit to putting it off repeatedly, because I just wanted babies to magically happen without all the medical poking & prodding. But after five years of trying, it was time to accept assistance.

It went as expected, and of course they were all really very nice. We brought all the paperwork (family history, personal habits, results of previous tests etc) and they were patient and thorough in going over all of it with us. But I knew what was coming. All the non-invasive tests were normal, which only leaves invasive tests.

Oddly enough, they don't consider a laparoscopy to be invasive. I'd say jamming a camera through my NAVEL sounds pretty fucking invasive to me. I won't even tell you what-all else is involved in that, but it suffices to say that I did the heebie-jeebie dance when they showed me the diagram.

This has been the big blocker for me. How to get the babies without getting the scalpel. This has been the impetus for all the emotional-awareness, mind-body reconciliation work I was doing with my therapist. My belly anxiety was irrational and intense, and my intention was to open a line of communication to the body and get rid of the anxiety, so that I could get the surgery without feeling like I was betraying my body.
But in truth, it wasn't the anxiety that needed to be purged before proceeding, but the belief that it should be. It's a-ok to be afraid! Acknowledging it, accepting it, and giving myself permission to feel however I feel was the key to being able to say yes to this.

Lucky for me, they're very sympathetic to anxiety - more so than I expected. So I agreed to have the laparoscopy on the condition that they give me some fantastic tranquilizers that will send me to lala-land before I even arrive at the appointment.

The appointment (for both a laparoscopy and a hysteroscopy) will be booked for sometime in the next four or five weeks. They claim that I'll be in & out in the same day and able to go back to work the next day, but I don't really believe them. I was told the same thing when I had cryosurgery in '06, but in actuality I felt physically awful for days, and emotionally wrecked for weeks. I'm thinking ahead this time though, and will book a few days off work whether they say I'm supposed to need it or not.

So yeah. Wish me luck.

Trauma, trauma, everywhere.

So get this:
I walk out of my shrink appointment, feeling like I'd done some good work, but also feeling like I needed to go home to a good meal, a bath, and a bit of decompression.
I head to the Skytrain, and return a phone call to a friend (that won't mind if I'm also a bit wiggy from my appointment). The call is warm & fuzzy, so I sit down at the Skytrain to finish my call before heading underground.
While on the phone, I see a young fellow on the approach. I assume he'll panhandle me, and I don't actually have any change, so I "look elsewhere" to discourage him. He keeps on and stops right in front of me, so I look at him.

I see immediately the blood on his face and the fact that he's holding his side, and he asks:
"Excuse me miss, would you call 911 for me please? I've been stabbed."
Um... yeah... I'll call you back.
Being a good crisis-handler, I kick my friend off the phone, call 911 immediately, walk him upstairs to the street, and wait with him until help arrives and I am dismissed by the medics.

The story was that a group of guys had chased and attacked him at another station, that one had a knife, and that he had escaped by running onto a train. He had been beaten enough that his nose was likely broken and had been bleeding heavily, although it had stopped. He was having difficulty breathing and his coughs were wet-sounding. When he raised his shirt to show his wounds to the medics, I could see that his ribs/abdomen were bruised and abraded. I question the severity of his band-aid-covered "stab wound", but he clearly needed medical attention regardless. The emergency staff seemed to be finding some holes in his story, but I had done my good Samaritan job, and I left them to do their job.

After being dismissed, I called my friend back to explain my sudden departure. Then I called Frank to get a bit of an aural hug. I got on the skytrain, and put in my earphones, and watched my own reflection as I listened to klezmer-hiphop music that sang heavily of nostalgia and heritage. I remembered accompanying my grandmother in ambulances to the hospital on many occasions. I thought about how good I am at responding to crisis, that I do all the right things. I thought about the likelihood that the Skytrain victim probably could have walked himself to St. Paul's and that if it had been me in his place, I would have. I thought about how sad that image was, and what it said about my ability to ask for help. I thought about the fact that I do not have the right to judge his trauma, and that even a flesh wound deserves to be taken care of.
I thought about my own flesh wounds, and my own trauma.

I tried to pay attention to how I was feeling. I was a bit shaken, now that it was over, but felt secure that I had done the correct things. I had some chest pain (which I am aware is an anxiety reaction), and deliberately took slow, even breaths. I thought about getting myself home to have a that good meal, and that bath, and try to ease myself out of crisis-mode. While I was walking from the Skytrain to my house, I was questioning my ability to bring myself down. I considered calling my therapist when I got home, as she had suggested that I do so if I should find myself having difficulty. I told myself she would probably walk me through some grounding visualization, and that I already knew how to do that, and that I wouldn't bother bothering her with it. I reminded myself that this is the same image as walking myself to the hospital.

So I'm home now, and am writing this after having cleaned dried blood off my cell phone. I have gotten this far, and I still have a bit of chest pain, but I know it will eventually pass. I am aware that I have intellectualized my way through this experience... even as I was trying to pay attention to how I was feeling. I am aware that the act of writing this has helped to reduce my activation. I'm aware that I'm only feeling as "extra-wiggy" about it as I am because I had just come from a therapy session that dealt heavily with body trauma, and crisis response. I give myself permission to feel extra wiggy, and I also give myself permission to let it dissipate at it's own pace.

The fact that I drew my awareness to my body, and considered my feelings I think is very good work. I deserve a gold star. I'm going to go eat now, and try not to think in words... and if I manage that, I'll give myself another gold star.

Cleaning Up The Basement

I work pretty hard, psychologically. I want to understand and improve myself, my life, my relationships, and not be held back by old, irrelevant news. It’s an ongoing project, but I can see how far I’ve come already, and I’m proud of my progress. One of the things that I still have trouble with is mind-body integration. I’m a bit dissociative when it comes to mind-body. I know a lot of people think dissociation is about denial, or the mind disconnecting from reality, but for me it’s a separation at the neck.

I have lived in my head most of my life. It’s been the thing that forces my body into action when I’m scared or hurt. It’s the thing that makes sense of the bad stuff, and lights the way forward. It’s the thing that has forced me (metaphorically) to get up and walk when both my legs are broken. I admit that I’m heavy handed in this. I cannot control my environment, but I can control myself. Feelings belong to the body, and if they didn’t fit with what the mind wanted, they got shoved down past the neck and invalidated. Mind over matter. Mind over emotions.

But I know that my mind and my body are a single thing, and that separating them has served as a defense mechanism, but is damaging in the long term. I’ve been focused on mind-health, and have become skilled at self-analysis, seeing the roots of things quickly, washing away the garbage, and moving on, despite my fears.

Getting involved in the Baby-Making-Project requires me to focus on body-health. I have to be aware of it and take care of it. My pet project has been to try to close the gap between my mind and body, and prepare it for this mythical baby. Become a balanced thing and create a healthy vessel.

But now that so much of the mind is tidied up, and I’ve been trying to reintegrate, I’m discovering that my body is totally freaked out, and has been all these years that I’ve been bullying it into action, and using it as a warehouse for inconvenient emotions. It’s all a mess down there. I feel like my mind is a sunny, organized attic, and my body is a dark, messy basement. I feel that I am really, honestly “ok” psychologically with most of the bad crap in my life. My body however, missed the memo. The wall between my mind and my body is so thick, that all my good “brain work” isn’t being relayed.

It’s like my body has been hiding in a bomb shelter, and doesn’t know the war is over.

Right when I’m learning how to be aware of and respect my body, my feelings, my fears… I discover that I must submit to precisely the things my body does not want. Before, I would have just trash talked myself into it: "WTF, Claire, since when are you a coward? Get your shit together and stop whining." Part of this is an exercise in listening to my body, and respecting it. Part of it is a lesson in how to be gentle with myself, and not control what I am or am not allowed to feel. I need to find a way to talk my body into what needs to happen without feeling bullied.

Luckily, I just happen to have an awesome shrink that specializes in trauma and SRT (self-regulation therapy). SRT is focused on the nervous system, and our responses to activation. Which is precisely what I need. Even before I started seeing a psychologist, I was able to trace things, and often devise solutions. But that’s not quite enough anymore, as my old coping mechanisms are failing in this scenario. Having a skilled, focused, objective sounding board is incredibly valuable. It speeds up the process, keeps it clean, and can provide me with even more resources and tools than I could have dreamed up on my own. I'm booking myself appointments with her on a weekly basis until I feel like I can cope with myself, and everything I'm supposed to be doing. Yay for good therapists, and yay to my friend who recommended her.

Now I’m going to talk about my belly. That’s where everything is warehoused.

I don’t believe I was born broken, so that’s a good start.
But when I was a baby, my bellybutton got infected when the umbilicus came off. It had to be cared for daily with alcohol and Q-tips. I have been told that I wailed.

I had a greasy, childish, dimwitted and uninteresting step father. He had a very painful abdominal tickling technique that would reduce me to convulsions and prevent me from speaking or even breathing. This also served as a cover-up for inappropriate touching.
For most of my life, I've had recurring dreams where people I love and trust walk up to me, jam their fingers into my ribs, and I can’t breathe. In these dreams, I try to step back, but I can’t, I get sweaty, and my head gets full and tight from not being able to breathe, and I always think: “If I could just say ‘stop’, they’d stop.” But I can’t breathe, and I can’t speak, so they don’t stop. I wake up gasping, my stomach in knots.

When my belly button is touched, it feels like the sensation echoes into the core of my torso, like an organ has just been touched.
Writing that sentence makes me stop to cover it with my hand to protect it.

When I was a kid, my family told me (jokingly) that the umbilicus, which is attached to the outside of her fetus’ bellybutton, connects to the inside of her own bellybutton. Of course, this is not true, the umbilicus is attached to the uterus. But I believed it, because I was small and knew nothing about the inside of my body, and, it totally creeped me out.
They also told me that if my bellybutton was like a cork, and if it ever came out, all the air would escape, and I’d fly around the room like a balloon. They thought it was funny, and of course it’s not true. But the idea terrified me.

I don’t like it when people touch my belly without asking. Sometimes, depending on the day, even when they ask, I can’t let them. Sometimes, even Frank can’t touch my belly. Sometimes, if we’re sitting together, and his elbow innocently brushes my ribs, I twitch, and shrink away. Sometimes, my body can’t relax enough to go back to the way I was sitting. This is old news, not just since the reintegration efforts… I’ve been that way for years, and years, and years.
When I am out at public events, I often unconsciously put my hand on my belly, usually covering my bellybutton. I know it’s a protective gesture, so that it doesn’t get accidentally touched. But on top of being overweight, a gesture like that makes people ask me if I’m pregnant. Which I’m not, and that’s an entirely other emotionally charged issue. Sometimes wonder if I have been denied pregnancy because my body is so inhospitable.

I used to be very thin. Now I’m overweight. But I don’t hate my belly.
I have food sensitivities. The foods that gave me comfort as a child are now foods that make me sick.
I get debilitating cramps. I’ve had cryosurgery for pre-cancerous cervical cell removal. I might have endometriosis, or fibroids. Testing is imminent.

If I were to look at this from a chakra point of view… all of these issues are in or around the bottom few wheels. All of them have to do with instinct, survival, safety, reproduction and creativity. A friend of mine did a series of chakra paintings… I may do something similar as part of my “whole-body” awareness exercise.

And yes, I’m a belly dancer. But no, I do not believe that I chose to be a belly dancer because subconsciously I was trying to work out my belly issues. Or because despite my over-protectiveness of my belly, I feel compelled to “put it out there” or to seek reenactment of my trauma. I was awed by a belly dancer on TV when I was about seven years old, and prior to most of my belly’s “trauma” experiences. Though my interest started when I was little, I was only able to start dancing when I was eighteen, after I moved out on my own.

I know that dancing is therapy for me. It's been the only harmonious relationship that my mind & body have had. I use dancing to express, discharge, and re-balance.
When I am dancing, I don’t feel self conscious, or protective of my belly. I feel whole, real, free, connected and undamaged. I need to find a way to dance more, but not in a looming, committed way. But it's so hard to find the time and energy to do it, especially with all the other crap that's going on.

Ugh, I know I kinda trickled out there, but I'm tired of writing.