Science Baby Part X

 

 

I feel like I haven’t processed anything in forever.

I take turns doing shit I need to do and then ignoring the fuck out of everything.

When I have free time I don’t want to look at my life.  I want to look at someone else’s.  I want to turn the dial of my brain down to not zero exactly but maybe a 1.5 out of 10, an energy reading so low that it can support only the following activities:  Television and Reading.  Input only.  No output.  No talking to other people, no data analysis, no nothing.

—

A week and a half ago J and I went to CNY fertility in Albany for a good ‘ol egg harvesting session.  I feel like writing about the details — the early morning drive, the fatigue, J’s cute-and-irritating insistence on keeping up a steady stream of chatter during the trip even though I wasn’t in the mood and everything she said she’s already told me twenty times before — but I won’t.

I’ll just say:  they collected 4 eggs and a bunch of my man-goo, and out of this, we got one fertilized egg, and that fertilized egg made it to day 3 blast stage, 7 cells divided, and it’s now frozen and awaiting transfer.

We’ve done 9 IVF cycles now, and this is only our second ready-to-transfer embryo.  The first we got in August of 2023 and resulted in a miscarriage four weeks after transfer.  A terrible experience for everyone.  J says she thinks about it every day:  The kid we lost.

I don’t.  I don’t think about anything.  I am a husk of a person.  I do <technical thing for work> over and over again.  Fix this fix that learn this join this dumb meeting offer input on this stupid fucking project and so on, pretend to care, pretend to be motivated, offer 360 feedback on Shithead coworker X, pretend to be nice to Idiot coworker Z, don’t let anyone know what a negative piece of shit you are, make it through your days, stay on top of your duties, collect your paycheck, keep the Good Ship ConstantObligations afloat.

I feel so overwhelmingly negative about everything that I hardly know what to do.  It is like I am the bucket with a hole in it.  No matter how much energy you put in it, it spills out the bottom.  Why don’t you fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry?

I can’t fix it, dear Liza, dear Liza.

I feel certain this cycle will fail too, and I don’t know where that is going to land us — me and J — in the future.  Hell, I don’t know what will happen if it succeeds.  I doubt it will make me or J any happier.

Maybe it’s just the February doldrums.

My therapist Scarecrow commented last Friday that I seemed a little… more tired than usual

I said that’s just good ol Seasonal Affective Disorder, doancha know, it’s February here in Massachusetts and this is month 4 of The Great Darkness.  This is when it really settles in, the malaise, the feeling of blah, nothing matters, nothing gives me pleasure, everything is gray.  Anyone with any money and sense goes to Florida in Feb.  The warm weather and sun doesn’t just stop at bringing light back into your life literally.  It covers the figurative as well.

My parents are in Florida, he says with a laugh.  Scarecrow is just a couple of years younger than me.  I estimate his parents are in their 70s and, if not loaded, at least well off enough to manage the trip.

Not for the first time, I wonder why I am seeing a therapist younger than I am.  Then I remember I needed a new therapist during covid and there were nearly none available and this is who I found.

He’s not bad but I do wish I could find someone a good decade older than me.  Someone who has already blazed the trails I’m trying to navigate myself.  Scarecrow means well and we have a fair amount in common but when it comes to certain things I feel like I am the mentor and he is the student.

Scarecrow asked me what I would do right now if I didn’t have to work and I could do anything.

I don’t know I said.   I feel like before doing anything at all for pleasure I first have to sit on the floor and concentrate very hard and write down all of the things in my life that are important to get done and then do them.

What are those things?

Well there’s all the practical stuff first

like what

you know the house stuff.  stuff like write a proper will, which I’ve still never done.  stuff like create my end of life wishes, like don’t revive me if I’m a vegetable, and cremate me instead of burying me.

you can’t have fun until you’ve figured out the absolute end of your life?

when you put it like that I realize how ridiculous it sounds but what I’m really trying to say is that there is no pleasure compelling enough for me to forgo mundane tasks that feel important

Really? a hot fudge sundae?  sex?  your favorite movie?

look it’s not like I work all the time.  I don’t.  I watch shit content on my phone like the rest of the planet — cute dog videos and video game reviews and whatever.  I had sex with J over the weekend and it was .. well you know the phrase about sex.  There’s no bad sex.  We had some good meals and laughed about this and that.  

I see what you’re doing and I just don’t know what to say.  I don’t really pursue pleasure.  There isn’t enough in it for me.  I do things that J wants because I want to make J happy and so there’s something in it for me but it mostly just feels like another task.

Sometimes I feel like the great challenge of my life here in middle age is to find something that actually makes me happy instead of shit that feels like another obligation.

you aren’t happy about the blastocyst?  having a kid maybe?

I’m numb to the idea.  I’m waiting for disappointment, news that it isn’t going to work out.

what if it does?  Will you feel happy do you think?

No, I say.

what do you think you’ll feel

Momentary relief from the constant sense of impending disaster.