Acceptance speech

Recently, I've been waking up at 1 or 2 in the morning, wide, wide awake. My brain, to the chagrin of my exhausted body, is rarin' to go, and due to a lack of stimulation in our dark bedroom, begins to latch on to whatever the anxiety du jour is. Recently, it's been my cervix, my gyn's stupid office staff, and IF in general, as you'd likely guess. Last night was no exception.

At first, I tried taking some valerian extract, which usually works like a charm. I lay in bed, relaxed and cozy, but my brain reasserted itself so insistently that I had to get up and pen a letter to the clinic manager at aforementioned obgyn practice. I tried to keep it very factual, as the facts alone clearly point to disorganization and a complete inability to communicate in a timely and appropriate matter with patients. If this shit continues, I'm changing doctors, I decided.

The more I thought about the quasi-scare tactics that riddled all the information I got from my gyn's office (as opposed to PubMed or the CDC), the more pissed off I became. Why not explain to me that my abnormality has a good chance of going away without any treatment? Why make it sound like I most likely have some dreadful near-cancerous lesion lurking in my hooha? I may, but the likelihood is I don't and never will. I'm happy to get it checked out; that's a very good idea. I'm also happy to follow up on the problem for years if need be. Yet the assumption seems to be that unless we're scared shitless, we won't follow up and get adequate care. How ridiculous. Some of us are here are adults, people.

More interestingly, I had a bit of a minor revelation, after I returned to bed from the computer in the other room. I realized that I can let myself go nuts about this, or I can accept it. I think we often associate acceptance with apathy, but that's not really what it's about. It's really about looking reality square in the face and saying, "oh, this is what's here." I can't change the gross outline of my situation. I am the age I am, with the past I have, and dwelling on what I might have done way back when to make my body go out of whack is, actually, insane and unhealthy. Barring the invention of the time machine, I can't change that I drank that vodka, that I traveled to that likely toxic and radioactive corner of the globe, that I slept with that dude, that I never bothered to get knocked up in my late teens.

And would it have made any difference? There's no way of knowing. So many factors can influence the delicate transformations of our female bodies; even folks that dedicate their adult lives to it still have only a vague understanding. So I feel I must accept what is, and move on. Eventually, this, too, will pass. I want to stop trying so hard, and simply do what truly feels good: hiking, raising food, writing books, making music. I want to accept whatever my body gives me, and then take careful, thoughtful action.

Why am I bathed in this fog of fear and anxiety? Why do I feel that I have erred, that that error resulted in some sort of punishment, when in fact it's quite random and not related to being a good person, a potentially excellent parent, or even an overall healthy individual? I hate this aspect of our culture, that we can't accept the random nature of suffering and pain. Instead, we want to blame someone, to find the perp. When there is no perp, we blame ourselves.

So--excuse the rambles--basically acceptance means demystifying this whole process of dealing with IF. It's the endocrine system, stupid. This doesn't discount the ups and downs that go with medical treatment of any serious disorder. But acceptance might allow the heart and soul to speak more freely, without the twisted interference of our delusional, fear-ridden culture.