My body has a weird way of processing hunger; sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night because I didn't eat enough during the day, and my stomach is screaming for the brain to feed it with something; and I give into those hunger pains which are caused by a hormone in the stomach called ghrelin. Ghrelin is everywhere in the middle of the night. But then, the next day after I wake up, the ghrelin levels (they sound a lot like gremlins, maybe they're only active at night!) seem to be always on a steady level, so that even if I eat something, my stomach still feels upset and a faint feeling of hunger pains lingers. It's like an unsatiable beast, no matter how much I eat it will not be tamed! And in the middle of the night I wake up really hungry again with hungry pains, and I have to eat to go back to normal and the cycle continues. All except LAST NIGHT, when I tamed the ghrelin/gremlins and decide to just go back to sleep hungry on the advice of my medical professional (MJ) and it worked! I deceived the gremlins and actually fell asleep without having to further distort my stomach, and sleep won the day! If it was like a Magic School Bus episode of exploring the human body, the melatonin army overpowered the rogue ghremlins and let my body shut off on an empty stomach. Probably the best case scenario; now I just need to for my whole life, which MJ has been doing (trained since birth, raised by wolves, apparently, is how MJ put it).
Unfortunately other than hunger pains, I dealt with more serious pains on 12/11/2024, a pretty bad day in the history of Robert Yan. On the even of 12-12-2024, no less! Sometimes all the training, practice, hard work, and good vibes come together to create a magical day where it all pays off, but some days it's like a House of Cards where everything goes wrong and everything comes tumbling down (House of Cards, good first season, I just couldn't finish it knowing what eventually would happen to Peter Rousseau and Zoe Barnes and what Frank Underwood would do to them. Sad stuff, even for a fictional show). Yesterday was a House of Cards day. I got stuck out in the rain, my sock got wet, I woke up early to catch the train but missed it because I forgot where I put my cell phone and spent a crucial 3 minutes frantically scrambling around looking for it, by which time the train had left and I was resigned to take the next train. This after having a ghrelin-induced bad sleep the night before. But all minor compared to learning that MJ and I will not be having a baby as a result of our latest attempt. Doesn't mean we have stopped trying, but this was our to-date best shot at it with the best odds of success, and it still didn't happen for us. This time I had maybe the worst thing, the thing with feathers (Emily Dickinson), hope. The tough thing with trying to get pregnant is that you get weeks of lead-up, of thinking maybe this is the time (I've been secretly hoping to replace my grandpa's life force with a new life force after he passed away 3 years ago in some sort of weird circle-of-life scenario) we finally succeed, and it only takes about 5 seconds to get the bad news that it's not happening. I guess all bad news is sudden, there's no leadup, no one wants to prolong the bad news or have any build-up, unless it's something chronic like cancer that increasingly gets worse. No, the bad news comes pretty quick and just totally tears down everything that I'd been privately hoping for (buying a new house, picking out name) but rationally guarding our hearts, as they call it. It's also tough because I realize that MJ is going through her 5 stages of grief, going through bargaining stage ("I wish you had done something about this"), anger, depression, etc., whereas I have to put on a brave face because she deserves her time to grieve as she's putting her body on the line and in some sense going through it for me, but I also have no time to grieve, to let the 5 stages of grief play out, I just have to be strong and take it each time (and we've done this more than a few times now) and each time a little bit of me is heartbroken, like that Joni Mitchell song "Both Sides Now" from "Love Actually..." I've looked at pregnancy from both sides now, and I don't know how much disappointment and thinking I might be a father soon to not becoming one to maybe never becoming one I can take. Maybe it's melodramatic, but I am losing hope and losing confidence, and maybe some cosmic force is telling me parenthood is not right for us. In the middle of my jog today I just yelled out in the middle of the street (hopefully nearby people didn't hear me!) some curse words for the situation, a real breakdown. I don't think I've failed, I definitely don't think MJ has failed because she's had to put her body on the line for us this whole time and has bravely done things I might not have been able to do, it's just this feeling of being left behind, of being exactly where we were 3 years ago, coupled with a lot of wallowing in self-pity. It's not as physically painful as hunger pains, the pregnancy pains have zero physical pain (for me, MJ might feel some) but a lot of psychological pain. I don't wish it on anybody.
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