Not With The Ham
“If you’re not laughing, you’re crying…”
For the past few years, this has become my mantra (or trauma response, depending on if you’re talking to my therapist or not). But I believe it is our very nature as humans to process and get through hard times with the help of humor. Bringing it back to the discussion of experiencing conflicting feelings simultaneously, I would argue you HAVE to laugh when things feel so heavy…to lift you out of the darkness even if it’s just for a few moments. For me, it’s usually due to the seemingly never-ending Murphy’s Law type of situation that causes me to pause, contemplate every life choice I’ve ever made, and wonder if I’m on some new, twisted version of Punk’d.
So we laugh. Because what’s the alternative? I don’t mean that to say, “There’s no crying in infertility,” because believe me, countless tears have been shed. What I mean is sometimes you have to just laugh at the absurdity of it all—like the time I was actively experiencing an ectopic pregnancy and in the midst of that chaos, I lost my job. Probably not a great pitch for Netflix’s next original rom-com storyline, but the sheer audacity of this comedy of errors was LAUGHABLE. I also feel that laughing at a traumatic situation is almost like an act of rebellion against the pain intended to be inflicted. It feels like I’m taking the power back in a way that diffuses and deflates its effect on me. And who doesn’t love an opportunity to tell the universe to “suck it”?
So when we started this first round of IVF, I was very meticulous about researching and organizing our medications. It was a lot of inventory, and it all had to be stored in the refrigerator. I was describing this endeavor to my high school bestie Marco Polo group when I uttered a phrase I never thought I would ever say in my whole life: “We decided to make this giant ham for the two of us, and now it’s taking up half of our damn fridge. Ugh. So anyway, I’ve got all the meds organized and put away…BUT NOT WITH THE HAM!” It’s so dumb and ridiculous and to be honest, it’s really one of those “you had to be there” types of funny moments, but for me this was HYSTERICAL. Here I am dealing with this very big, very scary, very overwhelming thing, and I’m worried about giving my meds their own VIP fridge space for fear of cross-contamination with a spiral-cut ham. Again, the absurdity of it all. L.O.L.
But in the hard moments of this process, it’s nice to have bits of levity…like the time my husband had to give me my first injection and (for some reason) decided to do it while on one knee like a marriage proposal or as if there were an injury on the field and almost fell over (and gave me a gnarly bruise) in the process…or the time I had to give myself an injection and had to FaceTime my best friend to hype me up while she was driving and I was redfaced-crying and dancing around my bathroom wielding a syringe…or the time I got two injections in one night and later called my husband when I noticed I somehow had acquired three injection marks, to which he casually replied, “Oh yeah, I think I accidentally poked you before I did the first one. My bad.”
Sometimes we laugh in the moment. Sometimes we laugh in hindsight. Sometimes we laugh to keep from crying. Tough times will continue to find ways into our lives at one point or another, so we must continue to find ways to laugh—to put that trauma on the shelf if only for a few moments…just not with the ham. ;)
