(no subject)

[emmagrant01]

Since today is apparently the day that everyone is talking about how important fandom is in their lives, I'll throw my hat in too.

(Possibly triggery stuff about infertility here)

I found fandom not long after finishing grad school, moving to a new city, and starting a new job. It was an exciting time, but also a weirdly lonely one. My husband and I have never been the most social people ever, but with the two of us working long hours and being new in town, it seemed hard to find people even to just hang out with. Add to that the fact that my husband traveled a lot and fandom quickly became a substitute for the social life I'd left behind.

We had decided that this was the time when we'd try to start a family. So I went off birth control and started thinking of baby names, and got starry-eyed walking through the baby aisles at department stores. Months went by and I wasn't pregnant, but hey, I was only 30 and we were in no big rush. And he traveled a lot, so it seemed natural that it wouldn't happen instantly.

And then a year had gone by. And then two, and I really started to worry. In retrospect, we shouldn't have waited as long as we did to go to the doctor. And also in retrospect, we should've gone to a specialist right away, but instead I decided to talk to my OB-GYN about it, and he started us on the testing path. We both had multiple invasive tests and I even had an exploratory surgery done, but in the end they could find no reason for our infertility issues.

So we started the beginning of three years of procedures, beginning with IUI (artificial insemination, where the doctor would insert a catheter through my cervix and inject a "cleaned" semen sample directly into my uterus) with a variety of different drugs to induce ovulation. These failed over and over, for two years.

If you've struggled with infertility yourself, then you understand how devastating this can be. Every month for two fucking years, I was hopeful for two weeks, then anxious for another two weeks until I could test, and then devastated and depressed for days. Repeat, every month. My life was always looking nine months ahead. I couldn't plan anything a year out, because maybe I'd be pregnant then, or have a newborn.

I was far more depressed than anyone other than my husband knew, and honestly I should have sought treatment for it, but I was worried that any treatment I'd get would interfere with my chances of getting pregnant, or worse, that I would be told to take a break from trying to conceive for a while, and I knew there was no way in hell I could do that.

My career began to suffer. I could only focus enough to get through my day-to-day responsibilities, and long-term projects I was supposed to be organizing began to fail. I stopped submitting papers to journals and conferences because (a) I couldn't focus enough to get them done, and (b) planning to go to a conference in a year seemed to be admitting that I knew I wouldn't be pregnant or have a baby then. It felt like I was admitting defeat just by submitting.

It was also taking a toll on my marriage, which probably goes without saying. I'd always been a happy, optimistic sort of person, and now I was pretty much the opposite. I was a shell of my former self, and my husband felt helpless to do anything to help me. And God, infertility fucks up your sex life big time. When every sexual encounter has to end the same way (otherwise you might be wasting an opportunity), it puts a damper on things. But once we started the IUIs, it was just a reminder that I wasn't going to get to get pregnant the "fun" way. Sex was a reminder of what was wrong. It didn't help that the IUIs were physically uncomfortable, and that my husband didn't have to endure any of this.

At the same time, I had this whole other life going on in fandom. I had an alter ego called "Emma Grant" who was writing fic and having fun, and who wasn't struggling with any of this. Only a few close fandom friends knew about the infertility, but otherwise I kept the two completely separate. The real me was struggling and depressed and feeling like a failure at work. But Emma was writing fanfic that got tons of wonderful comments! She was working on a podcast and had lots of friends! She wasn't trying to get pregnant, and she wasn't struggling with the rest of her life. In fact, Emma's life was going pretty damn well. Emma went to cons and had a blast with friends there and had fans who wrote to her from around the world, and on and on.

Slowly I stopped wanting to be me and began wanting to be Emma instead. It sounds weird to say it this way, because now she is me and I am her and there's no line. But back then, the line was very clear and it did not get crossed. And hell, it probably sounds incredibly fucked up and unhealthy, but it really, truly helped me. I needed to dissociate from the infertility stuff, and fandom gave me a way to do that. It gave me a way to feel successful when I was otherwise failing miserably. It gave me friends who were fantastic and supportive when I was otherwise home alone because my husband was in Asia and I still didn't have a baby.

It had to come to a breaking point eventually, and it did. I had one disastrous IUI where I ended up feeling violated by my doctor. He invited in medical students to watch the IUI (without my consent), and then, with my feet in stirrups and a speculum propping my vagina open, began detailing the procedure to them as if I wasn't even there. It was my 8th IUI, and this was about me trying to have a baby, not about me being a visual aid for med students who looked like they could be teenagers. He wasn't gentle about inserting the catheter and it fucking hurt, and I started to cry. When he didn't listen, I started yelling at him to stop and get it out. He looked stunned and a nurse ushered out the pale-faced med students, and I lay there on the table and sobbed. Fifteen minutes later I reluctantly agreed to let him try again, this time with no audience. I was done, just so done with it all, but it seemed ridiculous to waste an opportunity.

And of course, I didn't get pregnant that time either. I had a pretty big breakdown and realized I'd fucked up my career beyond hope and that I was 35 and might never get to be a mom despite everything I'd been through. And what would I have left after that? It felt like the only good thing in my life was fandom.

So I decided to break down the wall between me and my fandom persona. I was so miserable that I needed that support and love, and I needed to know that I wasn't alone. So I made a locked post about it on my LJ, and the comments of love and support flooded in. It turned out that many of my fandom friends had been through the same thing, and it made all the difference in the world to know I wasn't alone in this. My fandom friends pointed me to other online resources, and my outlook turned around completely.

Within a year we had moved on to IVF, which did work, and now I have a 5-year-old son I adore and my husband has his wife back. It didn't happen in time for my career to be saved, but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise. I quit my job and decided to teach part-time while my son was young, and that turned out to be a fantastic decision. Not only did I get to spend a great deal of time being a mom, but I also learned that I am a fucking good teacher when my head is in the game. For me, working part-time is pretty much perfect, and I know I'm lucky that we could swing it financially.

I stepped away from fandom for a bit after my son was born (he was a micropreemie, which is a whole other story, and I was pretty swamped for a while there), but when I was ready to return, fandom was still there, still going strong. And this time, I felt like I was able to be a whole person and be in fandom. I was delighted that people still wanted to read what I wrote, and were still interested in the shit I have to say on podcasts. And then Sherlock came along, and it got even better.

Now I'm giving serious thought to professional writing, something I never thought I'd do. But again, fandom proved to be a fantastic place to hone that craft, and I've learned so, so much. I'm outlining my first book now and will hopefully have a chance to start writing it this summer.

Like so many people, fandom came into my life at a time when I really needed it, and it got me through a really difficult period. But I love the fact that now that my life is in a good place, fandom is still a part of it. I think it always will be. :-)

Also on Tumblr here.