Stuck.

I have been stuck before.

Plenty of times.

In the usual places. Elevators, or behind doors that won’t open. I was even that kid with their head stuck between the staircase bannister, forever immortalised on a Polaroid photo in the back of a photo draw.

I have been stuck in awkward conversations, going-nowhere-relationships, and at the end of a long line at the post office. I have also felt stuck in a hospital room watching someone I loved deeply, take their final breath.

Never before though, have I been so stuck and so desperate to not be.

The Corona Covid19 Virus, has got me too and it is has knocked me. A Suckerpunch.

I have no actual symptoms, and I am not testing positive. But it has me.

Stuck.

The virus should be causing a minor annoyance.. stopping me from getting a haircut, or meeting friends for drinks or heading into the office right now. But it is doing something so much crueler and so unfair. I don't know where to go or what to do.

You see, it is stopping me from getting on a plane right now.

A plane I desperately need to get on, one I should have been on a week ago.

I needed to be in Malaysia right now, to have 1 of 4 frozen embryos transferred to my endometrium lining. A lining that up until a week ago was perfectly pink, thick and ready to have an embryo transferred to it. For it to stick. For it to grow into a foetus, and then..

Our baby.

This is not a case of simply, ‘just wait it out and be patient’.

I have spent the past 10 years being patient, more than anyone could imagine.

I am done being patient, and brave and strong.

I am now at the end of my tether and desperation and fear are currently winning out.

I just want my embryos and I am quite terrified this is the end of the line for us.

Borders have shut down, as has my hope.

So here we are. Stuck.

I have known I have wanted to be a mum since I could hold a doll. If anyone in our family was going to be a mum it was me, without a doubt. I put it above all other daydreams as a kid.

A tribe of kids and the white picket fence. I knew I wanted that. My husband and I both do. We ache for it. But I am now 41 and time is almost up.

Cafes and shops have closed down, as has my hope.

So here we are. Stuck.

Amongst all the toilet paper fights, and memes and tik toks, I sit here and I cannot believe this is where we now are.

6893 kms away from my potential for a family.  Unable to leave our house let alone the country.

Stuck.

Only 2 weeks ago I was almost cocky with my assurances to my family. ‘Oh we are 100% going, we will be fine’.

Face masks and gloves. In and out. It all seemed so easy, everyone else was overreacting. They had to be, because my egg donated embryos were finally within my reach.

I felt so positive that this was ‘go time’, because we had actually attempted this all in January. It got cancelled though, 2 days before the procedure. I was up so high, and then it came crashing down. Again.

As I lay on my back with 5 different Malaysian Specialists and Nurses hovering over me in a bustling Island Hospital. I was informed my endometrium was not behaving as they wanted it to. Not sticky enough.

They could do nothing but hold me as I wept.

It felt like the end of the world then, but we grieved for a few days and then got back up. Again.

We got really good at doing this over the years. We died little deaths at every setback that we have had on our fertility ‘journey’, but we always got back up again, somehow still smiling.

I guess we had to. It was our new norm.

We were stuck.

We were OK with that though, because we were still so hopeful. 

After 10 years of assisted conception, including 5 cycles of IVF, 3 miscarriages, 1 ectopic pregnancy (resulting in a fallopian tube completely removed) and after the gut wrenching realisation, that IVF was not happening for us and time was running out at 40 years old; we researched Egg Donor programs and realised this was the next scary but exciting step for us.

So more drugs, more side effects but worth it to get our family. Finally.

It didn’t come without hard decisions and difficult conversation…sacrifices. I had to give up on my dream of my child being biologically mine.  No mini-me running around one day. They will be (only biologically) half my husbands and half a supermodel beauty from The Ukraine. That in itself is another mental block to become unstuck from.

And so a new chapter in our story of becoming parents unfolded and hope grew.

This would be it, I was actually going to get everything I ever wanted. My chances of a successful pregnancy jumped from 7% to 70% as soon as we signed away $30k, and so did my confidence.

I was up. Again.

And then Corona hit.

The day Malaysia closed their borders, I fell in a heap and I haven’t really gotten back up again.

When Prime Minister Scott Morrison placed a travel ban on us all, even though I knew it was the right thing to do, it still broke me completely.

I can only imagine what other couples are going through right now; the same torture as we are, taking this all day by day too frightened to think about how long this will go on for.

My age isn’t stopping while the world freezes, my worry lines on my face a constant reminder.

I have been stuck before, but this time the stakes are a lot higher.

There are so many stories like mine, where this new world that we find ourselves in, will impact us for the rest of our lives, changing the course for so many.

As much as I hated my cycle drugs, hormones pumping through my body causing chronic illness. I would give anything to be on them right now, steps away from having my embryos within reach.

All I can hope is every single person takes this lock down so seriously. The quicker everyone stops moving the quicker Covid19 stops moving.

The quicker I become,

Unstuck.

I knew we had a battle on our hands but never throughout it all, did I ever think it would be a global pandemic that stopped us in our tracks. Certainly not one that sounds like it would be a lot friendlier and more fun with a dash of lime.

Emma Kate xoxo

The Hill.

Hills and more hills as far as the eye can see.

On the outskirts of town, they ebb and they flow. Looking like a far off distant land you could easily explore and conquer like a Burke and Wills expedition.

Why is it you feel like screaming and crying and dying as you walk up a hill, wanting to stop every breath, every step, but as soon as you stretch your whole body and reach the top, you feel like a queen; an athlete; a champion! Adrenalin pumping through all of the pulsing, hilly veins inside. Wanting to feel this way forever. Hooked.

When my mum was my age, she had birthed and mothered four children. She was in the midst of a life running a household containing a 15-year-old, a 14-year-old, a 10-year-old and a 4-year-old.

She had at 37, already lived in a shack my parents had built with their own hands as newlyweds, on the side of a hill, in the middle of nowhere.

Their first year of marriage and they had no electricity, no indoor toilet a new baby and snakes and spiders to contend with. She was 21. On the side of a hill.

They then went on and raised the rest of their brood, on a huge, flat, dusty property with a long, long dirt driveway. She handled it all bravely. The kids, the cows, the dust, the wheat crops and dad..worrying about the rain, the drought and making ends meet. Despite the flatness there she could still look out across the plains and see hills on the horizon, warily keeping an eye on them – closer then she wanted them to be. She was focused on staying strong and keeping a household running, she had no time to enjoy ups or wallow in downs so she kept charging on and planted her life firmly where it was flat.

I have wondered lately how she coped with it all? She did not have cafe dates with girlfriends, cocktails or book clubs, hiking or wine tasting weekends…or the freedom to throw a tantrum and hurl herself under a mountain of doona to Netflix and chill.

So it is her that I think about now, on the edge of that hill of hers. Her and that incredible strong will, as I face plant my bed and give up.

As I dig my way through all of my hills and tell them to all go to hell.

I am sick of the climb, sick of hurting as I scrape my skin from my legs – only getting half way up before I slide down again in the rubble and rocks and muck, sore from straining my neck to look up and see where I long to be.

I have had enough, so today I quit. I give up, resigning myself to the fact it is too hard to reach the top.

I am sick of the injections, the nausea, the headaches, the cramps, the negatives, the scans, people mourning, dying, leaving my job and trying to stay positive; more scans, more injections, turning around and pregnant bellies and newborn babies everywhere swirling around me, not knowing who I am or where I should be; up the hill, down the hill, round the hill? I am sick of the waiting. Waiting until I am suddenly told I am over the hill and it is too late.

So today I am going to just quit and surround myself with soft hills of pillows and bedding filled with feathers. Diving into doonas, hugging hot water bottles and a call to my mum today because the hill is shitty and she will tell me what to do.

Maybe next week I will feel like I can strap my hiking boots back on ready to go forth again. Maybe I will be surprised by how light those heavy boots suddenly feel.

Maybe by then I will look out across the Autumn afternoon and feel OK when I see those hills on the horizon.

Thinking about how at least I am not on the side of one of them, doing a wee in the dark.

Emma Kate xoxo

The Beach Ball.

When I was 5, I owned a bright yellow bathing suit; which was just fine and dandy for mucking about in our back yard paddle pool that mum had set up against the back fence every summer, making sure it was not in splash range of her clothes line.

The yellow bathing suit was also a one piece, which meant less burn marks on my tummy as I skidded down the make shift slip-and-slide my older brother had attached to the pool. We actually ended up with a pretty fantastic obstacle course that summer.

We had the trampoline set up on it’s side, with a sprinkler splashing against it causing extra thrill seeking risk, as we hurled our bodies against it. Squealing as it was forced back on it’s legs bouncing across the puddles, hurling ourselves off it on to the slip and slide. It was delightful.

Care Free.

Imagine that feeling. Care free in a bright yellow bathing suit.

Nothing felt better than the droplets of water on my hot sun scorched skin, itchy wet grass speckled up my legs and my limbs aching from a day of play. The memory of those days include the memory of the grape vine that ran along our back fence. Full of the sweetest, blackest grapes that we grabbed by the hand full; plunking them into our buckets to gorge ourselves on, before mum could stop us.

I had no opinion on my body parts whatsoever.

I had arms and legs and a belly button that was an inny and not an outy – that’s as far as I went with my critique.

When I was 9 that all changed.

Walking across the playground during school recess with a smile on my face and not a worry in the world. A boy in my class decided I had a different shape and he did not like that – he decided it was his job to tell me, so that I was aware.

Aware from that day forward. For the rest of my life.

You are fat, he told me. A Beach ball.

And so it was.

My inner dialogue confirming it again and again every second of every day.

I was fat.

A beach ball.

The truth of it all, looking back on old school photos, was that I looked no different than any other girl beside me, maybe a slight layer of puppy fat more than the more wiry limbed girls of the bunch , but no, he was so wrong.

I did not stand out with rainbow stripes and an inflating nozzle on my hip.

He made me think I did though.

9.

My body was suddenly a viewed as commodity, the most valuable asset I owned to purchase people’s approval ..and the shape I lived in, was apparently not a high end model.

That same year my 9-year-old body was abused and traumatised by a ‘trusted’ male neighbour.

Again my body was not mine to value, but a mans to use.

My nozzle undone, as I deflated.

I was wearing my yellow bathing suit that day too.

At 16 I was reminded again that my body was an object to be dissected and put to the highest bidder, when my high school crush whispered in my ear so romantically, that he thought I was good looking and that he would date me… if I just lost a few pounds.

16.

My body has been in a discount bin, in my eyes.. pretty much ever since.

Sometimes over the years I have tried shutting out the views of men - their white noise from their gold plated patriarchal thrones, and actually feel good about the way I look.

I remember a summer in particular, 2001.

I was 22 and loved every part of my body from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.

It was a time in my life when I was my healthiest. My body was it’s strongest.

I was glowing.

A moment in time when I wore a bright yellow bikini over sun kissed skin and I spent a whole summer riding my bike, exploring the new suburb by the sea I found myself living in.

My friends and I walked to the beach more days than not. Swimming and tanning ourselves until the sun dipped below the hazy horizon and we waded through the cool high tide to make it home again.

Frangipani trees and jasmine filled the air and somehow so did the comments and cat calls.

My positive sunny outlook and view of myself soon got caught up in the attention my body now received from men. Changing the commentary from the highschool taunts of fat ..to ‘hot’ and ‘curvy’ and very much wanted in their beds to pleasure them.

Now when I walked past a man he noticed me, it felt powerful and freeing and I stupidly got drunk on the high it falsely gave me.

Until I was 23 and I was pinned to my bed and forced to say yes with the final relax of my arms, after 14 no’s.

How foolish I was to think I owned this power. This body. This good feeling inside.

It was never about my own self worth, my own sexual pleasures and desires, as I foolishly convinced myself at the time it was.

It was all man made.

A slip-and-slide my body is forced to shoot down as opinions and hands grab at me, while I close my eyes and squeal.

My name is German in origin, and means Universal, and strength. Of the earth.

If only I had of lived up to my name and demanded the respect I deserved. Making my own identity with no influence from men.

If only they hadn’t trained me so subtly; without even they realizing it most of the time, let alone me; like a performing seal, to apologise whenever I spoke up, to always come along with a joke to compensate for my discount-bin body, or to slump my shoulders and hide in the shadows when intimidated. Making myself as small as I could, to not dare cause anyone to notice my flaws.

And then I went and did the worst thing possible.

I dared to actually get fat.

So now the mirror taunts me every day too. Because I was taught at 9 that being fat was wrong, and bad and not OK.

I know now, looking back, food was a way I dealt with any kind of pain and trauma in my life, which was exacerbated by an underlining chronic condition making it harder for me to lose weight once I gained it.

So now here I am.

40.

Now my body shape gets completely ignored. Wishing for it for so long.. and now it has happened, it is awful.

I am that dark smudge that passes men by - I’m in their blind spot as they scan the room for thinner, younger girls.

Beauty fading fast. So now what?

Men still telling me by the way I am ignored, that my body is not OK.

Men still showing women what they should be, in the constant stream of images flung in front of our faces like some kind of obstacle course you try to navigate and make your way out of, self worth in tact.

Because you cannot be anything but thin and youthful in this world.

Women buy into this now too, reinforcing it all and making it casual.

According to instagram I must have a tiny waist, a decent set of tits, slim toned legs, and a peach shaped butt.

When you are that you get fire emojis.

Fire emojis is the payment now for young girls.

That’s the correct way for a woman to exist in the world.

I get that memo every second of every day.

And so do 9-year-olds, and 16-year-olds and 23-year-olds.

It’s exhausting.

Exhausting to have my looks be the rent I pay to exist in the world.

Exhausting to have to have anxiety to put on a pair of black (slimming of course) swimmers, to head into the water now and enjoy just a moment.

Too scared to get out and walk to my towel if there are too many people around to judge my lumps and bumps…or even worse perhaps, not notice I am even there.

Exhausting to continually listen to the opinions of men when it comes to my body, and not my own.

Not wanting to ever be noticed, while silently wanting to, so much.

I need more. It all has to mean more.

I am done apologising for what I look like and the space I take up.

I am done putting men before my own self.  

I bought a new pair of swimmers last week. They aren’t yellow, but they are bright and draw attention, their bright stripes kind of remind me of a beach ball.

And I have decided that is OK.

If anyone dares to make the mistake of thinking my body is anything but mine and mine alone to judge, I always have a big dose of double birds to flip their way as I hit the water.

40, 23, 16 or 9.

That’s how it should be.

Em xoxo