panic - please avoid reading if you want to stay in a good mood

Panicking again. It kicks in every.single.night. after DH goes to bed. I am so effing unhappy. I am so sick of crying. And I won't fall asleep, so I've got a long night ahead.

I am so worried about money, trying to have a baby, my health, finishing my thesis. I'm embarrassed to be writing all this - I must sound like a freak for being so anxious, but I can't help it. I can't do anything to alleviate the anxiety except to take Ativan once in a while to fall asleep. But I don't have an unlimited supply, and it doesn't work if I use it regularly.That's probably a good thing, because I'd love to be on it every day. It calms me down and helps me doze off.

Money. I haven't been able to do R.A. work on a steady basis because of this TTC mess, so our income has dropped significantly again in the last year. Now, I have to pay extra tuition this term - just found out today - because I didn't get my thesis committee meeting in before the end of December, even though I'm done the proposal itself. So there's another $700. I'm really bitter about that, especially since I did not know that I was supposed to schedule a meeting; it's not listed as a requirement in our M.Ed. handbook. And I don't have the strength right now to argue about it.

DH is worried about his job because of the crashing economy. I've been putting out feelers about teaching jobs for the fall, and have heard nothing, which alarms me. If I land something back home, we'd have to move this summer, and it's unlikely that DH would find a job before the following spring. If we don't move, I won't have work here, either. (Not good for our finances or for my resume. And I don't need all that time on my hands.) And I am nervous about returning to teaching.

This is all funnelling into my fear that we will not be able to afford any more treatments; we are just getting by as it is. I already do not know how we are going to pay for an IVF in spring. We'd planned to take it out of retirement savings, but I don't think we're allowed to withdraw it from the kind of account we've put that money in.

And in the meantime, we've saved nothing for our retirement during the last 2 years, and we're not the proverbial spring chickens anymore. (I mean, DH is approaching middle age already. Where is the time going?) Everything extra has gone for either cycling or for travelling back home, and that's where it'll keep going, at least for another year.

We have money coming from income tax this spring, but much of that will have to pay off cycle and travel debt on my credit card. I'll have a final cheque from grad studies coming in June, so that will be nice; the one good thing in all this. Too bad it'll be wasted on paying for 1/3 of a possible IVF that probably won't work anyway. It would have been so great to put it into savings.

Thank goodness we only have to pay $200 for all these new diagnostic tests. I shudder to think what it would all cost if we lived elsewhere. But then again, if we'd lived elsewhere, it would never have taken so many years to get to the root of the problem, and I wouldn't have to panic about all of this!!!!!! Seriously, I love my country - it's a great place - but the healthcare in some provinces seriously sucks!

Baby crap. Yeah. Of course I will never ever have a child. Why would I ever be so lucky? Why would God, after all these years of silence, suddenly decide that now we're good enough to be parents? Is He
a) punishing us for some unknown sin?
b) testing us for some unknown reason?
c) thinking we'd be lousy parents?
d) planning on sending a kid when we least expect it?
e) just plain ignoring us?

WE DON'T KNOW! Nobody does!!! I am so effing tired of being patient!!! I have been very, very patient and understanding, and now I'm tired of it. I'm angry, and I think I have a right to be. What part of God's PLAN is so special that it includes screwing up every aspect of my life? And now DH and I have been those stereotypical 'backslidden' Christians, so we'll probably end up in hell, and I won't see my babies there, either. So there's another thing to be scared of. Although I can't imagine how hell could be much worse than what I'm going through now.

I'm terrified now, too, that if I ever do get pregnant, I'll have a miscarriage again, or a stillbirth. Hey, why not worry about it - it happens to other women. I know plenty of them. So why wouldn't God rain that travesty down on me, too? I don't know if I could endure that. Really and truly think I'd have a nervous breakdown. But I'll never get to that point, so why think about it. I'll live too far away from an IF clinic, and won't have the funds to pay for it, anyway.

So what to do for the rest of my life? A dark dense hole of meaningless nothingness.

Health. I am getting nervous that I have some kind of onset arthritis. I'm sore every day, even my arms and legs. I wonder if whiplash (I have a bad case of it) can lead to arthritis, or at least hasten its progress? It's weird that I'm sore everywhere. I've heard that depression can do that, but I resist that idea. I don't want to think of myself as depressed.

Thesis. I'm working hard again, but feel as though I'll never be done. Am I working enough hours every day? I have no idea how long it should be, when I've read enough stuff, when I've revised enough, etc. I have no clue when I will be finished. I'm hoping for July, at this point, but I don't know if that's realistic. I really do not know. Also don't know if my writing is 'original' enough.

And I have to take more than 2 weeks off this month to fly home (for DH's bff's wedding), so I lose all that work time, plus we have to ante up for all the travel costs. I think I'm going to put a moratorium on trips home. Too bad if someone gets married or gets sick. Unless it's our parents, I'm staying put until my work here is done. It just makes me too worried otherwise. I can't concentrate on anything if I'm behind in my work.

Maybe I should go to the doctor, as I've said before. Try some kind of anti-anxiety med. But I don't want to be on that leading up to a possible IVF. Plus, if we ever tried to adopt, I think that would make it difficult. My cousin's wife said to me at one point that she couldn't adopt because she has always been on anti-depressants, so she wasn't allowed. (Yeah, and people bitch and moan about how infertile people should 'just adopt' - little do they know how hard it is, even impossible for some people.)

I was on antidepressants when I was in my early twenties (could not get out of bed in the mornings and cared about nothing - it was horrible), and have stayed off since then. Maybe I should stop resisting, though. I mean, I have a strong family history of depression and anxiety, so it shouldn't be surprising that I'd feel this way after seven years of unwanted childlessness, thousands and thousands spent on failed cycles, and a miscarriage of dearly loved and wanted babies. I miss them; I think about them every single minute of every day. It shouldn't be surprising that I feel terrible.

So yeah. I don't know what to do about any of this. I should pray, I guess, but that doesn't give me any peace anymore, and reading the Bible just makes me friggin upset.

I am so weak. Less than adequate because I am paralyzed by anxiety, especially in the evenings. Does it make me a weak person? Less of a person? Worthless? That's how I feel. I am so scared.

I want to wake DH, to talk to him, but he needs his sleep - he gets up at 5:30 a.m. I don't know if I should talk to him about all this, anyway. Why make him all panicked, too? I've been putting on a happy face for the last month, since I've been so sad, it was scaring him. He said to me that he was afraid that he'd come home one day and I wouldn't be there anymore. So I've got my happy mask on, the goofy girl he used to know. Should I tell him it's not real?

I'm so lost, and hugely embarrassed to be posting this. If you've made it through the end of this depressing and repetitive post, my hat's off to you.

What can I do to make myself feel better? I've tried to be giving to others. I try to help other TTC'ing women on the web sites I'm on, I'm involved in community events, I help other teachers with professional development, I donate to charity, I try to be kind to the people around me, etc. Giving to other people often makes me feel better, since it moves the focus, you know? But it's not helping this time. Nothing is.

All of my normal pleasures are tainted. Can't sleep to escape it. Books and movies and TV- can't escape pregnancies, babies, happy families. If I write, it just turns out to be about this infertility crap and how miserable I feel, and though that does help, I'm peeved that my writing energy and ability always go out to that and not to anything new. I am a really good writer, and probably should be published more often than I am, but this infertility nonsense sucks it all away. I don't have energy to phone family or friends, and most of them don't know about any of this anyway. And they've all got kids. I'm so sore and tired - exercise doesn't rejuvenate me like it usually does. Can't go on SoulCysters, for reasons I've described ad nauseum. Can't post this on ivfconnections.com because it mentions cycling, and most of the vets are understandably very sensitive about that subject. Should e-mail my online TTC friends for help - seriously, you ladies are some of the best and truest friends I've got - but I am scared of dragging them down when they may in fact be having a good day for a change. And I can't drink - it'll just make me feel bad. I don't think we have any booze in the house, anyway. Can't even talk to other people about books and things - if women are involved, the talk always turns to "and then I had kids, so who has time to read then? Haha."

What is the point to all of this? I should've hit the half way in my pregnancy by now. This is so hard.