IVF Comic #7: And I Have Had Enough of Trouble

And Some Musings on Making Cathartic Art

Note: This is #7 in my series, IVF Comics, where I’m making comics to process and share my experience with infertility + IVF.

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Here’s the song that inspired the title of this week’s comic, I Went Dancing With My Sister, by Sufjan Stevens.

If I had written this comic on the day of my appointment, the song choice would have been angrier. Specifically, I wanted to choose Lithonia by Childish Gambino as this week’s comic-song while I was driving the 1.5 hours home from Winston. It’s a very good and cathartic song, but if you have ears sensitive to cursing, have kiddos with you, or are not angry at something right now… maybe it’s not for you.

And while we’re on the topic of cathartic art…

Some Musings on Making Cathartic Art

That’s really what these comics are to me. These comics are a way of letting myself experience and express the entirety of this IVF process. Not just the glossed-over, sanitized bits you might say to a friend when you briefly chat with them in passing. The whole thing: the good, the bad, and the ugly. (Though I will say that I am quite lucky to have many people in my life who will and do listen to me talk about the bad and the ugly too.)

The idea behind my comics is similar to how listening to an angry song when you’re angry makes you feel better. During that song, you allow yourself to feel the anger, opening up space for it and allowing it to do its thing. You let it out. The angry song was created by someone who has seemingly been right where you are (no matter the specifics) and gets it—someone who understands your anger and therefore, at that moment, understands you.

Listening to music can do that. And it’s amazing. But making art as a form of catharsis takes it to a whole new level.

It took me an embarrassingly long time, but around age 30, I finally realized that I have to let myself feel emotions—all of them—as they come or they’ll never dissipate. Sounds so simple in hindsight, ya?

When I went through what I’ll call a Very-Intense-Emotional-Ride when I was 29—which I won’t be going into—I held it all in. I didn’t make comics about it or write about it, and I certainly didn’t talk to anyone about it, or even acknowledge to myself what was happening. I just stuffed it all further down, down, down.

And whatdoyaknow… that didn’t work.

The ignoring and hiding and repressing just made those thoughts and feelings grow bigger and stronger. They demanded to be seen. And so, my anger and sadness expanded and consumed me until they were all that was left. Until I was forced to choose: let go, accept reality, and do something about it… or keep withering away.

But it wasn’t until I finally connected the dots and showed my therapist my sketchbook and she gasped (literally gasped!) that I realized there was something I could do. To be clear: she didn’t gasp at my sketchbook pages because she thought they were brilliant or beautiful. She was shocked because the daily pages of my sketchbook were an undeniable physical record of my emotional state. It was like the diary I didn’t know I was writing. A diary written by my subconscious. She (and I) could turn back the pages and see—literally see!—how I was feeling, even when I was unable to communicate those thoughts and feelings into spoken words.

One of my sketchbook pages from that time.

And that revelation opened up a whole new world for me. I slowly learned how to handle intense emotions using the tools I was most comfortable with—a pen and sketchbook. Apparently, I had been doing so for years, I just wasn’t aware of it. Once I brought that process into my conscious awareness, I was able to explore and finetune the method and apply it when I needed it. Along the way, I discovered and developed writing as another tool in my toolbox, and now often combine both into making comics.

So anyways, this time around, with this newest and latest Very-Intense-Emotional-Ride called IVF, things are different. I have what I need to handle it (the artistic process and loving, caring people around me), and I have the belief in those things to work no matter what comes at me.

And I wonder if perhaps it’s that belief that matters more than anything. That belief lifts a huge, dark weight. It carries the unbearable weight of ruminative thoughts like “I can’t handle this,” “It will be this way forever,” and “I can’t live like this”. It gives me the strength to do something, say something, create something with these thoughts and feelings, rather than let them fester.

Ultimately, it’s the belief that in the end, no matter what happens, I’ll be ok.

I didn’t have that before. But I do now.

Thanks for reading!

<3,
Christine