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I’ve been struggling the past few days. I’ve voiced this partially on Twitter but then followed this up with tweets telling myself not to wallow. I’ve not actually voiced how much I am struggling. I just can’t seem to be able to gather my thoughts enough to tell anyone exactly what I’m struggling with. Until now, I’m making a conscious effort to write it all out. Think my body and mind are getting tired of “running just to stand still”.

I have been very lucky in that my seizure activity has settled down. I still have my daily absence seizures (these look like I’m day dreaming) but my Tonic Clonic seizures (stereotypical fall to the floor, convulse) haven’t reared their horrid head for a while. This is amazing. I’ve made it through two of the most stressful things in life, moving house and an IVF cycle without a big seizure! A year ago we wouldn’t have believed making it through one of these things was possible let alone both! I’ve been Tonic Clonic seizure free for about two/three months now. I am happy but this also raises a lot of questions. Is this because my medication is finally working? Have I got better at handling stress? Am I still unable to work? Should I be working? Could I handle going back to work? How can I justify not working when I seem to be ok? Will I get worse again if I start to work again? Am I a benefit scrounger people hate? I don’t seem to have or be able to find the answers to many of these questions. A part of me wants to find a job. Partly because that’s what you’re supposed to do, you’re supposed to work. I also find not working very hard. People think you live the life of luxury but it simply isn’t true. I don’t have much money after I’ve paid my share of the bills. If I go out I have to alert someone to where I’m going and give them regularly text updates. I get lonely as most days the only human contact (twitter aside) I have is when my husband gets home from work. Some days that’s the first time I’ll have actually spoken the whole day. I love having time on my own but sometimes you can drive yourself mad with only yourself for company. I wouldn’t know if I could even get a job now, with a two year gap in my CV in this economy it seems unlikely. The idea of being back in a busy office does send shivers up my spine but I think that’s more to do with fear of having a horrible boss like I had in the past. Another draw of me going back to work is the money. We’re pretty comfortable right now but if I was working we could afford to go on holiday. In our whole relationship we have never been on a proper holiday. We had a couple of weekends in London for a gaming convention and a gaming music concert during the first year of our relationship but since then nothing. Only trips to see family that we went to with my parents. I would love a holiday. I’ve been craving one for a while now. More so since we couldn’t go on honeymoon last year. Long story short we got travel agent vouchers as wedding presents but the company got taken over and wouldn’t honour them, also half the vouchers were for a different company. Me working would mean we could finally have a break. Funny that.

I’ve blogged before about my body issues and how I’ve struggled with my weight/self image for years. This hasn’t got any better. I’ve been on my IVF Diet 2.0 for 3 weeks. I hate it. I don’t want to have to diet. Battling against a body that does not want to lose weight is very hard! Especially when the doctors screw up your prescription and you’re left without medications that are supposed to help against this! I take Orlistat to counteract the weight gain sideeffects of my Epilepsy medication and the weight gain symptoms of PCOS. Without this despite being on a calorie controlled diet and doing at least 50mins of excercise a day, my body will not let go of it’s fat stores, in fact I can still gain weight! Who wants to battle their body that hard? I just wish I could get back down into the overweight BMI section and settle there. I don’t want to fight my body anymore. Alas to be down into that section I still have 1st 12lbs to lose. That’s a lot to lose when losing even 1lbs is a huge fight! I’ve got a DR’s appointment tomorrow so I’m going to ask what more help I can get. My body wants to be fat, I’m finally accepting that. I just want it to be fat in a healthy way. So that it doesn’t hinder my chances at more IVF. Fuck society and the doctors who think weight loss is a miracle cure to everything. You can be beautiful, healthy and fat!

It comes as no surprise but I want a baby. No, I want babies. I want to have children with my husband. I want them to have their father’s chubby cheeks and sparkly eyes. I want them to have my height. I want to cuddle them when they’re sad, take them on adventures to the beach to go rock pool fishing and I even want to have arguments over homework. I don’t understand why I can’t have that without a battle and medical intervention. I just want to be pregnant and have beautiful children. Why is that so hard? My papa told me the other day I just had to stay positive and that I hadn’t been doing so. This is probably the first time when I could have actually hit my dad. I felt as though he hadn’t seen me for the past few months. He saw me on the day we got out BFN, he saw how heartbroken I was, all because I’d tried to keep positive. He often hears me putting positive spins on things and the one time I show him I am struggling he says it’s because I’m not positive. I’ve stopped talking to him and my mum about things in detail now. Neither can understand my life and I’d rather protect myself then admit how I really feel to be told I’m doing things wrong. God damn our “keep buggering on” family motto.

I’m finally getting to the bit of this blog where the title links in! Recently I sent a few Twitter ladies some cards, books & positivity talismans. I like to send things to people. I often send cards to my friends just because. It’s nice to get post like this, it puts a smile on that person’s face and I live for those moments. Knowing I may have brightened someone’s day gives me a nice feeling, like I’m making a difference. Just as I had sent things out to people I have had a couple back. The first was an out of the blue card a few weeks ago now. In fact it’s still on my mantelpiece. The card had a beautiful it of prose on it talking about how much this person admired me. I couldn’t believe it. Me. They saw a card talking about admiration and sent it to me?! I didn’t feel worthy. Then I read the inside and I felt humbled by this lovely lady’s kind words. I felt that I owed it to her to keep being me. To keep being there for others because it was worth it. Today I received a similar card from another Twitter lady. Another beautiful card thanking me for a book along with some other lovely words about how much I give to other people and how much I deserve it back. This card couldn’t have arrived at a better time. As I’ve ranted about above I’ve been struggling lately but reading those heartfelt words from these ladies has really helped me pick myself up. So thankyou ladies I can’t express how much you’ve helped me.

Life is a bitch but I won’t let her stop me. All these battles are hard and yes they may get to me sometimes and that’s ok. I’m never alone though and whatever I decide to do about work (or not), weightloss etc are the right decisions for me and I have people there to support me.

The beautiful aforementioned cards.

Blog/Tweet Soon @HopeEpiMum x