One of the coolest features about WordPress is the stats page, where it tells you how many view you’ve had, what the most popular postings are, etc., but the best one ever has recently been added: A map that shows you where in the world your readers are. And not in a creepy Google-Earth-caught-me-mowing-my-yard-on-street-view way. It’s a holy-hell-i’m-really-reaching-people way.
Some of the countries that have shown up on my map for the last seven days, besides the U.S.:
* United Kingdom
* Canada
* Puerto Rico
* Malta
* South Africa
* Japan
* Brazil
* Saudi Arabia
* Sweden
* Barbados
* Colombia
Are you kidding me? People in Malta and Barbados stumbled on my blog? How freaking great is that!
If you are here and want to rep your country (including you, my fellow Americans), by all means leave a comment and tell me how you got here. Even if you don’t follow this blog (and you should totally subscribe and follow me). Even if you got here on accident. I am so glad to have you here. Yes, YOU. Please visit again and let me know about you. Because I want MORE. I want lots of people reading in dozens of countries, and I want you to tell me how to get there.
Side note: This also lets me know who *isn’t* reading the blog, and since I have a considerable number of friends scattered around the world — Germany, India, New Zealand, Bermuda, the Bahamas, etc. — this means I know you’re not dropping by the blog. FOR SHAME. Technology being used for both information and punishment; you gotta love it!
I want to blame my boss splitting my days off for being so tired and out of synch, but I don’t know if that’s fair.
Eh, who said life was fair?
Got up exceptionally late after another fun night of getting to bed late and not sleeping well. I keep having vivid dreams, several involving former boyfriends. I guess it’s on my mind lately?
Despite big plans of working out, cleaning and fixing my dishwasher, I was lucky to get an hour at the gym and a shower in before going to dinner at 8:30 with my friend Jenn and her husband. After the gym I sat down on my bed and apparently fell asleep, missing an essential phone call from Jenn about the time of the dinner. Weird.
Today is basically the deadline for signing up for doula training this coming weekend and I have certainly taken my sweet time about registering. Part of the reticence is financial: We just received a company-wide pay cut and now, after 2.5 years with the same company, I’m making 46 cents more than when I first started here. Jenn, who is working on her master’s in public administration, compared it to grad school — there’s never really a great time for it. I explained my hesitance to go for it to Jenn as being largely emotional (due to potential TTC bitterness), and that is true to an extent … except that, when talking with my 8-months-pregnant coworker who also has endo, she let me feel the fundus and feel her daughter as she rolled in her stomach, beneath my hands. And I walked away so excited, knowing that this was a field for me.
I kept that feeling close to me as I paid for the classes online and will continue to remember why I’m enrolling: for women’s choice in healthcare, as well as to give myself a better future as I better other women’s experiences.
When dealing with a troubled relationship, women will tend to hang on and believe it can be fixed. It is something they are doing, or something they are not doing, and once they figure it out then their Loving Partner will really fall for them. The Loving Partner however is looking around at other potential Loving Partners while not wanting to lose the one they have, thereby dragging out this cycle of — well, let’s face it, emotional abuse. Heartache hurts for a reason. And this cycle can go on for years until something small yet glaring is discovered — he leaves, he finally admits there’s no love, he brags about conquests on his public blog.
At that point, the woman will have a sudden moment of clarity and her interior voice of sanity will ask clearly from the depths where she’s been hiding: “Have you had enough yet?”
That is a very important question.
I see no reason why that shouldn’t apply to any unhappy situation. Job on the rocks … how long are you going to wait it out? You’re giving a lot but not getting in return … how long can you pretend to be happy with that?
And I see no reason why it shouldn’t apply to endo and hysterectomy. It’s surprising how easily I could make this decision without a partner on my mind, and how easily I am swayed to hold off when a partner is in the picture.
But the real questions are, “What do you want?” and “Have you had enough yet?”
I’ve already said that endometriosis has cost me a relationship. In reality, it was one of the factors, though I don’t think the primary one (at least, I hope not).
Here’s the facts: I want to live pain-free, I am willing and able to have a hysterectomy, but I also have a stubborn streak the size of Guam and refuse to accept that being pregnant — something that comes so easily and unexpectedly for so many people I know, and to people who should never have the right to be parents — could not be for me. Someone says I can’t do something, I stick out my chin and say, “Watch me.” Already deemed a high-risk pregnancy candidate, it is this attitude that my mother fears will kill me if I fall into a worst-case gestation.
And above all else, I refuse to wait forever to be a parent. I always assumed I’d be a young mom — not 19 young, but not 35 young either. That’s my choice, to not wait ’til my mid-30s to be a parent. Part of it is fueled by how I feel about myself and my daily life. I am tired, always tired. I’m ready for this ridiculous uterine adventure to be through, even though I’m feeling better than I used to. And at the time of the aforementioned discussion, I was against having a surrogate, though I have changed my mind since then.
But for sure, the possibility — probability — of having a family sooner rather than later that helped to change his mind about me.
“You need kids sooner rather than later,” he said, “and if it were up to me, I’d have kids at 40.” (more…)
