Message from Martha

Hi ho! Hi ho! It's off to Zoloft we go!

I am trying not to go on about things, you know. But it would be true to say that I am not really getting any better. Feeling very tearful and missingy of children not to be had. I try not to go on about it because in the infertility crowd you always had to be careful of the "it's worse for us" types. No matter what happened to you — no follicles, no embryos, no pregnancy — it would always, for some reason that didn't really matter in the scheme of things, be worse for them. I guess they're they types who, if they have children, think that is harder for them than it is for other parents too. These people exist.

Still, it's good to share. It does me good. Here are three things I'd like to share with you.

1. My friends actually are the best friends in the world.
Recently, my friends have:

• offered their eggs to me
• bought all the favourite snacks I mentioned in an earlier post (crisps and mixed lollies and etc) and left them on my doorstep
• come over to my house and cooked me an amazing dinner and didn't let me do anything except sit in the kitchen and drink wine
• left a complete meal, including wine and chocolate, on our doorstep
• offered to borrow me their dogs
• booked us in for a massage
  
• rung me up and not got offended when I haven't rung back
• listened to me cry a lot
• made me laugh and laugh and laugh.

YIPPIE-AYE-AY FOR THE LADIES!!

2. My medicine cabinet has changed.
It used to be full of IVF drugs and pregnancy vitamins and hope.


(Actually there aren't any IVF drugs there cause I already threw them all out.)

Now it is full of Valium and anti-depressants and sad-nods.

Yeah, I've plunged the anti-deppresso plunge. It's better, I think, than too much wine and Valium, which was how I have been self-medicating. Oh, it worries me. It worries me that it'll dull my UNBELIEVABLY INSPIRING AND GENIUS LEVEL creativity that — I know, I know — smooths the cotton bedclothes of your nights and spring-in-your-steps your days. I heard an interview with Edna O'Brien the other day in which she said, "Only unhappy people write." (I also heard an interview with Umberto Eco in which he said he wrote The Name of the Rose because, "at 48, you either run off with a chorus girl or write a novel, and my wife expressed a preference for the latter".)

Wilcox actually wrote an article about this once. Anti-depressos and creativity I mean. He came to the conclusion that while it may be true that unhappy people write, they don't usually write when they are very unhappy. They know despair, but they do not write when they are in despair.

I take comfort from this.

3. I found some more cool street art near my place.











Yes, I know. There's one missing.


Now what would you would like to share with me?

More street art

Recently, we've had a guest from Canberra staying with us.

I don't know what it is, but there's something about Melbourne that brings out the inner artist. Our friend, Geordie, has discovered a talent for street art, man. Here he is posing in front of some of his creations*.





* I made up the bit about him doing the actual painting.