I had a little bit of a breakdown the other night.
Maybe it was the fact that I've been sick for a week...sick and pregnant is not fun.
Maybe it was the hormones.
But I find myself frustrated again. I love my husband soooo much. He is amazing. But we don't have sex. We're not there yet. We had a great summer in 2012...but 2013 was a rough year. We had some good success - some even pain free. And I love that the pain free times gave me my baby girl. But then it was the spotting. 1st trimester was basically sex free...and its hard to get back into it. We've had a sex maybe 3 times in the past 6 months...and I can't really say its been pain free. Sure, its better than it was a couple years ago when we couldn't even get him inside.
But this isn't the way its supposed to be. Maybe I shouldn't watch TV when I'm sick. All the sex...the biggest complaint being time, or stress or whatever. But I would love to have that be my biggest obstacle. I just want to make love to my husband. Really, truly, make love - with all the fireworks and passion of our first kiss. I don't want it to be clinically or technical - it takes so much focus just to relax "enough".
No one knows what my life is like. No one knows how hard it is to have the most beautiful husband in the world - my childhood sweetheart, my best friend - and yet not be able to fully make love. I know I'm not dying. I know there are so many worse things out there we could suffer through. I don't want sympathy but then I do...I don't want to be a victim, but then I wish I didn't have to pretend to be stronger than I feel. Maybe it would be easier, if people knew what we go through. Maybe the encouragement from others - the way they'd encourage someone recovering from an injury - would help.
You know when someone has surgery, people from the community get together and make the family dinner. Because they know that "recovering" is a job in and of itself. What if once a week, I didn't have to worry about life stuff - I had someone's help so that my husband and I could focus on recovering. What if it was OK to say..."I can't work, go to school and recover. I need help."
My husband can't be the one who helps me - he needs to recover with me. I need him to be my doctor, my physical therapist.
Why is this so different from every other medical condition?
Am I being weak? I want to ask for help....but then again, do I really want to share this?
I know exactly what you mean, girl. I've thought a lot about how this condition is so very different from anything anyone else goes through, and we can't say anything about it because its so private. But yet we still have to deal with it AND juggle our daily lives, all in silence. Its hard.. it really is. But the way I look at it is that its just making me stronger. If I can handle this, I can handle anything. I put the problem of Vaginismus on hold in my life for a big chunk of this year, and now I'm finding it incredibly hard to get back into it and I just want to keep ignoring it.. because I was actually able to focus fully on my music and my work without thinking "when am I going to dilate today.. I really can't today, but I really need to." And I don't know how to keep it up in my schedule. It would be so nice if we could tell people about this and get the help that other recovering people get, but that's all about your personal feeling about it. I've told just a few people that I really trusted, and they were nice and understanding and it helped for a minute... but it sure didn't help anything past that, and now I'm just like "why did I open up like that and even tell you anything. I've clearly made you feel uncomfortable and it will obviously never come up again." So... I'm probably just going to keep it to myself from now on, with the exception of the new boyfriend. I wish Vaginismus could be broadcast and accepted.. people don't see other recovering people as weird or broken. Just us. But hang in there.. you have your baby girl to look forward to, and that's AMAZING! You've made it so much further than many women with this condition, and you will continue to make progress. I know you will :)
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