A Hawk Walks Into a Bar and Becomes Infertile.

I was never the type of girl who dreamt of babies, white picket fences or a prince riding in on a white horse. I dreamt more of reckless abandon, traveling the world and being financially independent. And so, that was somewhat the life that I created for myself. 

Children, for the past decade, have been an enormous part of my life. God babies, nephews, friends’ children. I love them all intensely. Slowly, through the years a quiet biological clock began to tick here and there. It was often easily quieted with the next great adventure or love affair. And so it went. The ebb and flow.

And then I met my Him. We got pregnant early on in our relationship. Very early. I wasn’t elated. I was scared shitless. However, just as I began to settle into the idea of actually following through with perhaps being a mother, I miscarried. I didn’t wallow in sadness. I believed what was meant to be was meant to be. I ate D’Angelo’s on the way home from the hospital after my D&C. It was about a year or so later that I sort of grieved. In many ways I still do. Maybe not so much for ‘it’—more so of the chance, or even greater, my insolence surrounding ‘it’.

I had just turned 40. My Him and I were now married. Ever since the miscarriage my body hadn’t felt quite my own. Something shifted, something changed. We were never able to get pregnant again and I just knew something was ‘off’. So began the months of being a lab rat at a fertility clinic.

I won’t bore you with the details but it turned out that I was in early onset menopause and the likelihood of me ever conceiving hovered around the 1% mark. Not too promising. I was able to carry a child, just not conceive so they encouraged me to try egg donation. I have a stepdaughter who’s been in my life since she was a one-year-old. So, in essence I felt that I already had the egg donation covered. I already loved a soul that came to me through someone else. I guess selfishly, I wanted my own person. Doesn’t everyone, in one way or another?

Finding out that you are, for all intents and purposes, infertile is something that I find difficult to process or digest. In the beginning I, for the most part, walked up to strangers on the street shaking their hand yelling, “Hi, I can’t have kids.” I felt the need to sort of get that out of the way. I wore it as my scarlet letter. In the beginning, I think I cried every other minute, mid-sentence. And in between that I bounced into, “I am woman, hear me roar, no big thing chicken wing, I am mother to all….” Maniacal.

We always want what we can’t have. And now I wanted it more than ever. I didn’t want to be different. Why me? Crack whores could have children. Those who could not emotionally, physically or mentally support a child—but not me. What had I done to the Universe to deserve such a slight? The intensity of loss, as a woman, a human, was at times a weight that dragged my core. The child that I had lost became a statue, a saint, a beloved being of regret that symbolized my last chance, and I had blown it because I didn’t love it immediately. Because I had been afraid of all that ‘it’ had meant. There are things that I experienced emotionally that pen to paper will never adequately be able to articulate. The chaotic darkness of process that is never truly definable.

It’s been a year and a half now—Christ, longer. Due to logical requests, I no longer announce my infertility upon walking into a room. I think I’m past the worst of it now. I am slowly settling into acceptance. I still do silly things like take random pregnancy tests just because, and I pull out an ovulation test strip every once in a while just hoping for a surprise…but alas, there is never a surprise. Life is filled with so few surprises.

Lately I’ve been plagued with the question “Why am I here?” If I can’t have that, then what is it that I will leave as my legacy? What will be my epitaph? What is my purpose? What is my unconditional love? My work? My thing to mold and shape and be a foundation for? I get that I have many things and beings worthy of love in my life, but there is so much in me to give and it feels stifled by there not being enough places to give it.

I have had a blessed life—that’s for sure. I don’t deny or negate that. I will always bounce back. I will always be OK and I will always see the brighter side of the moon. However, I can’t help but feel this emptiness that is like a quiet smoky ember that burns ever so slightly in my chest, and if I breathe deep enough, it rumbles itself down to my belly where it smokes and wallows in its ashes.

In these moments, like now, like tonight, when I feel so isolated from my own life and terrified of what my future might not hold, all of those things that I tell myself that make life right escape me. And my throat gets tight and music streams around me and I want to smash things to tiny insignificant bits. But I won’t. And I don’t. And I keep it tight and blow slowly on the ember to keep the tiny red coal alive because I’ve been so used to carrying it with me now that I don’t really want it to go out because it, it is better than the alternative of nothing.

It’s not self-pitying or at least not meant to be. It’s just questioning. Perhaps I just wager a question to the Universe. You took this, so could I have something to replace it? Maybe I already do and I’m just not sure of it. Checkmate. Fucker.

I’ll end this torturous pointless ramble with one thing. I remember that day. When I knew something was wrong and the hawks came down and flew in circles around my courtyard. And I knew that it was done. You were gone. And I’m sorry I didn’t get to know you. But thanks for thinking for a bit I was worthy enough to be inside of. I won’t waver next time I meet you. Promise.

Thanks for listening.

Russian Roulette

"Open your eyes, look within.  Are you satisfied with the life you're living?" - Bob Marley

I stood in line tonight at the grocery.  As I idly scanned my Facebook feed from my phone while my groceries were being bagged, the elderly bagger named Louie nudged me and said, “We’ve been having a discussion tonight and I wanted to get your opinion on something.”  I looked up at him intently.  “Shoot.” I stated.  “If someone offered you a billion dollars to play Russian Roulette would you take it?  You’d only have a one in 6 chance of dying. 1 out of 6 bullets.”  Without hesitation I responded, “Not a chance in Hell Louie.  Not a chance in Hell.”  He winked. “Me either kid.  Me either.” And so we went on about our ritual.

For some reason, driving home the conversation stuck with me.  More so because I’m not sure if a few years ago I would’ve answered the question so quickly and with such unabashed confidence in knowing my retort.  A few years ago I was lucky to get through my days without wishing that this life would somehow just vaporize into thin air.  

Every step for many years felt as if I was running in cement.  Going nowhere fast and if something didn’t change I was going to be frozen there, a statue of myself ‘The Girl Who Couldn’t Get Away From Herself’ they would’ve called me.  Repeating the same patterns of behavior over and over again expecting different results.  Yes, the definition of insanity.  I was the poster girl.  I had everything externally, an insane career, piles of friends, jaunting around the world just because but on the inside…I was vacant.  A shadow.  Some sort of lost semblance of something that I was supposed to be but couldn’t find my way to. There had to be more.  I had to be more.  

And then one day, after something insignificant, out of nowhere I decided that I no longer needed to carry these weights.  I could be something different.  Something better.  As long as it took, I would pull myself out of this drowning of the self.  I would find light.  And so I did.

It wasn’t easy.  It required a concentrated effort to unravel myself from myself.  Every time I went to react, I chose to act instead.  I chose to consciously and purposely move instead of chaotically flounder.  What did I want the outcome to be was the penetrating thought with my every word, with my every movement.  If I wanted love, I had to project love.  If I wanted peace, I had to seek it.  If I wanted understanding, I had to understand.  If I wanted something to be beautiful, I had to first believe that I was, in whatever form.  If I wanted forgiveness, I had to forgive myself first and foremost.  

I dusted off the hope chest of myself and went through each shred of paper, photograph, poem, travel, lover, lesson and embraced them all….one by one.  I incorporated the pieces of me into a wholeness of the being that I was now.  I took the 14 year girl in me who had been stopped in her tracks with anguish and held her hand and let her know that she was ok.  I had this now and we were gonna be just fine.  I stared my 30 year old self in the face, hugged her really fucking hard and said, “You will get through this and be far greater than you could ever comprehend.”  And I let her rest.  

I decided to be a little bit more gentle with myself.  To drink less wine.  Absorb more air.  I decided to envision, visualize, believe.  I would whisper as I drove for miles in my car, in the middle of the night, “Wherever you are, the rest of my life, I love you, I’m grateful for you and I’m ready when you are…”  I allowed myself the ability to wait patiently, to flow with the current instead of fighting the tide.  I would get where I needed to go if I could just float.  Just be.

And slowly but surely, it came.  Because slowly but surely I was ready to see it, to embrace it.  To recognize it.

There are a thousand cliches of self help.  But in the end, it’s two words.  Help yourself.  Stop waiting for some lightening to crack from the sky of your being to jolt a change forward.  Be your own electricity.  Stop grunting and start being.  There is no elixir.  There is no magic moment. It’s one foot in front of the other, doing the next right thing.  Being the next right thing.  It’s about being a boomerang.  What you project out will be what comes back.  It’s about releasing yourself of instant gratification and having patience with the process. It’s about having a process.  

I still falter. I am human.  But I would so much rather this, the strangely beautifully confusing moments to be my story than the last moment being that I was stupid enough to lose out on the next chapter because I might be willing to play a stupid game of staring down the barrel of something I might not be able to come back from. 

This is beautiful.  This is life and this is enough.  I am enough.

Thanks for listening.

I Love You Still

Super honored to have a piece of my writing published via Elephant Journal xo

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2014/10/i-love-you-still/

I took a break from writing...

For quite some time.  I'm not going to do that anymore.  It's not good for my spirit.

I no longer feel a compulsion to hide, regardless of who's staring.

Let the games begin.  

Guest Post - The Understudy

Check It.....

http://samanthamcgarry.com/2014/05/07/the-understudy/

Don't Mind the Noise

"You must take personal responsibility. You cannot change the circumstances, the seasons, or the wind, but you can change yourself. That is something you have charge of." - Jim Rohn

A year ago....London calls, and home beckons...

-->

"And in the end, we were all just humans drunk, drunk on the idea that love, only love, could heal our brokenness." - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The dishwasher hums.  The washing machine churns.  It’s a Saturday night and I listen to him lull her to sleep.  A year ago this weekend I was in London.  I was leaving Noely, Tree and Simon at a train station as I took the journey to Hackney to end the last night, in the wee hours of the morn, in Johanna’s kitchen with her and Amanda.  Things have changed.  A lot.

A year ago at this time I was on an incredible spiritual journey.  I was deeply in therapy; I was working with a Shaman.  I had made a difficult conscious choice to change my life.  At whatever cost that came.  I had decided that I would be alone, for the rest of my life if that is what it all would mean, to find the only true love that I could ever really hold on to.  Myself.  A year ago today, I decided that although I was broken, I was not unfixable.  A year ago today, I decided to rewrite my story.

And so, surprisingly even to me, I did just that.  I took all of my broken bits, beautiful moments, tragedy and confusion and pieced myself together again, one stitch at a time.  Had I met him any sooner, I would’ve blindly walked passed him.  I wasn’t ready.  Not for him. Most certainly not for her.  I was only beginning to grasp the concept of letting go of all that which I could not control.  I was only beginning to grasp that this, all of this, was about so much more if I could only allow myself to see it.

To seek peace – at whatever cost seems like a strange concept really.  Shouldn’t it just be a natural state?  For many perhaps.  Not for me.  It had never been my way.  I always thought too much, felt too much, saw too much.  The majority of my life had been spent trying to save other people all of the while feeling completely selfish in doing what I wanted.  To clarify, some may have felt shorted by me, however I could never find a way to express that it was just that others needed me more.  Until I guess the moment arose that I realized perhaps I needed me more.

I dreamt of London last night and it wasn’t until I sat down to write tonight that I realized the timing.  A year ago today I was in the flurry of a soulful hurricane.  Myself, everyone around me igniting.  Everything I touched kept leading others and myself on a path.  In no grammatical eloquence I can only say it this way – it was the trippiest time of my fucking life.  The Universe was this orb following me.  Pushing me.  Putting me on airplanes, and in circumstances that tested everything about myself that I was supposed to learn and show others.  It was a release and absorption all at once.  The noise of it all was deafening.  

It would be a lie to say that I haven’t been distracted a bit over the past many months.  Of all of that.  The intensity.  The spirituality.  I have him now.  And her now, and my focus has shifted.  But it’s brought about challenge.  Another journey.  Another path. 

Tonight however I am consumed with that time.  The urge to remember that it is about so much more. I hold things within myself again, like I used to.  My back aches for no reason because I don’t know how to release.  I don’t know how to express love and confusion.  I don’t know how to show gratitude with all that I have but to acknowledge and embrace how far I have come.  I don’t know.  How do you hold on to who you have become and release the only thing you have ever known about yourself?  If that even makes sense.

Each night, when I go to sleep, and each morning when I wake, I feel peace.  For both I do with a boy who has decided to hop on my crazy train and embrace the fact that I talk to the Universe, drink too much wine, have more plans than we could ever have time for, buy way too much shit for his daughter than necessary, have long philosophical talks with most of my ex’s and dance randomly in my kitchen.  For that, I would trade nothing. 

However tonight, I wish he knew me a year ago.  Although he was to meet me only a couple short months later, I wish he knew me, as lights burnt out as I walked passed them, as I sought comfort in the stories of strangers, as all of this was unfolding, the finding of me so that I could finally know him. And maybe tonight, I miss me a bit, because she hides sometimes in the shadows of the now…but she is there, fire in her belly, passport in hand….ready…and perhaps the her of then is my clarity of now.  I don’t know.  I’m still learning.

A year ago tomorrow Amanda and I rode in a cab to Heathrow.  She said to me, “You’re a really beautiful person you know, I wish you believed it….” I cried and said, “I wish I did too.” Perhaps now, I believe it a bit more.  All of these things that I’ve done.  All of these things that I have seen.  They are a story within a story.  Perhaps even tonight is too and a decade from now it will be told in a different way, in a different version, with different people around.  But tonight, embodied by a year ago, I am wrapped in the blanked of my now and it is worthy of acknowledgment.

Thanks for listening.