Love Unraveled

Every single one of us has its own life battle. The “luckier” even several. From working in a toxic environment to losing someone you love our battles size and importance is defined in our heads and completely different experience for each person. These battles change you, morph you and the only sure thing is that in the end you will come out as a different person. You just must hope that this new person will be a better version of yourself.

At this stage of my life, I would say that my biggest battle is the one with infertility. Before you go ahead and decide that this is a story from a person that won this battle and now is here to tell you just to think positive and everything will be ok, it is not, in a way. I am still fighting this battle, but it’s been years now and the process of transformation has already begun.

Before this monster entered our lives, I was one of the most positive people among my friends and family, full of life and love for everything. Then we decided that we wanted to have a family and started waiting for that positive pregnancy test. Weeks turned to months; months turned to years. Somewhere along the way we asked for medical help. This meant procedures, scheduled lovemaking, hormones in my body that affected my emotions dramatically on daily level. Unknown reasons they said, everything is in order, it’s just a waiting game. Trying to get that positive test was all that mattered, I was so focused on that aim that was completely unaware of what was happening around me and most importantly inside me.

Six years into this journey I started to realize that my battle for the biggest love on earth, as per my opinion, the love of a mother was killing my love for life. At that point I was just a shell of the person that was before. I was jealous of all my friends who were becoming mothers, started to dislike my job which I previously really enjoyed, avoided going out and being with other people and the worst part was I started questioning the love for my husband. Every day, you carry the burden of making every person that loves you unhappy because you are somehow broken and cannot manage to give birth to a baby, something for which you should be biologically equipped by being a woman.

One day, I woke up in our condo by the sea, a dream come true for me and my husband with plenty of hard work invested in it, and felt nothing. Not a single positive emotion, but at this point not even a negative. It was like there was nothing within me, no point in existing and living, I finally lost the final emotion, my love for me. And this experience was my wake-up call. I knew deep down that a person that does not love itself cannot possibly have love for others, not even for their own children.

So, I started my self-help and spiritual journey. I started reading self-help books, listening to podcasts to see what helped others, meditating, writing a gratitude journal. Everything and anything just hoping that something will help me. One step at a time, it did. Very slowly I started laughing again, going to work with a positive attitude and even got back in contact with all my friends that are now mothers. Reading all these books reminded me that life is short, and we do not have the commodity to stop living and obsessing over a problem. Problems will always be there, but we need to accept this fact and live our lives while trying to solve them. And finally, we cannot solve anything or overcome any problem if we do not love ourselves. We should always try to aim for the best but at the same time to be gentle with ourselves and know that we are giving our best and that best is enough.