Wednesday, July 3, 2013

My family of control freaks and why I love them

Most of the women in my family are control freaks. I mean that with love. We get shit done, as long as it's done our way. We mostly manage it well - a feature I credit to having to deal with so many other control freaks all the time. You learn to let go of some things but for the most part when we sense weakness we pounce and lock down everything.

I, largely through my over inflated sense of righteous indignation, get caught more often than the other women in battles I can't win. So I have a bit of a reputation in my family for not really being able to deal with life when shit doesn't go my way. 

Most of my family has some idea that I am having trouble getting pregnant. If they don't, well, maybe this post will come as a bit of a shock, but I don't know how they could miss it given that this is the current center of all my control freak tendencies. One of my awesome aunts (the one I see less often) is visiting this week and we had some time to chat. I mentioned this infertility problem and she immediately said I'm too stressed. I need to just relax.

I read the forums, I know this is like the most hated advice ever, but I also know my reputation is mostly deserved. I hear that phrase and suddenly I want to explode in a temper tantrum about how little people get my problems and how I'm tragically misunderstood and why can't anyone just believe me when I say I think I have a real medical problem. This would then rapidly degenerate into a generic rant on how unfair life is.

I didn't do that. It would've been rude. Besides if anyone is physically capable of maintaining a level of stress hostile to pregnancy for 16 months, it would be me.

At some point, you just have to decide to keep going. The world is full of family events that I want to be a part of even while I try to fit in doctor appointments over lunch breaks (2 next week!). Maybe I'm just a tiny bit less of a control freak than my younger self. Or I just deflected my efforts onto other things, like murdering the plants and bugs in my yard. Yeah, that's more like me.


1 comment:

  1. Good luck! I doubt that the control freakishness (or stress) has anything to do with it, really. If women didn't conceive under stress, the human race would be a lot smaller (and more relaxed).

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