Another one of many thoughts that came while reading Blue Ticket.

So we have roads-not-taken that we know about, and we mourn those lost dreams or imagined futures. But Blue Ticket brings up the idea of the unimagined future. On page 92, she writes:

Even though I had thought often about becoming a doctor, becoming an emissary had never crossed my mind. There were some futures I had never imagined for myself. But then not so long ago this would have been one of them, too.

Emissaries are the government officers who keep the system in place, and the doctors—in this case—are psychiatrists. So she imagined and rejected becoming a psychiatrist—something she could have done—though looks back wistfully on the thought as she realizes while looking at an emissary that she never considered becoming one. She can’t mourn or regret what she never considered in the first place until she considers it.

We can only mourn the imagined futures, not the unimagined ones, so they hold no power, no ability to bother us or get under our skin.

It’s a meditation on wants and how those wants feed our sadness; a musing on the Buddhist Four Noble Truths and the lack of suffering when our mind hasn’t latched onto wanting a particular future.

Except once our mind latches onto a particular want how do you release it if you don’t fulfill it when the mind mourns our unlived lives? Of course, yes, the answer could be the Eightfold Path, but I put that frame of Buddhism around it. The reality is so much harder; releasing our imagined lives and accepting that we have an equal amount of unmourned, unimagined lives diluting that larger sadness.

Another thought from Blue Ticket, this time about miscarriage. (So skip if you need to skip.)

A blue-ticket woman gets pregnant and frets when she sees blood in the toilet paper. After the blood dries up within the same paragraph, she talks about her fears with her doctor on page 81: “So it could end at any moment… How am I supposed to cope with that?”

The doctor responds: “Yet lots of white-ticket women manage all the time, he said. Interesting.”

The blue-ticket women, in some ways, feel more akin to infertile women. A pregnancy when you have a blue ticket is different; it’s unexpected. It’s hard to achieve. The stakes are the same, but they somehow feel higher.

Whereas white-ticket women expect to get pregnant, and they expect to get pregnant again in the event that they miscarry. The loss is the same, the devastation is the same, except…

Except I kept thinking about the stakes. If you have $1000 and you lose $800, you’re left with only $200 and limited options. How long can you feed and shelter yourself with only $200? But if you have $100,000 and you lose $800, you’ve lost the same amount, but you’ll see that loss through a different lens. It may be just as frustrating or sad in the moment, but it’s also what comes next. Do you assume you have options or do you assume (or actually have) no/limited options?

Of course, multiple miscarriages make all theoretical fertile women turn into infertile women, so fertility isn’t a constant (like having $100,000) but rather an assumption until proven otherwise.

But the book raises the question: Is miscarriage different depending on circumstances?

Not sure what #MicroblogMondays is? Read the inaugural post which explains the idea and how you can participate too.

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There have been a lot of articles recently about passport privilege, which is the power your passport holds to get you into other countries without needing to apply for a visa. The US is tied for 7th with Switzerland, the UK, Norway, and Belgium. We can get into 185 places without a prior visa, and there are 41 places where a prior visa is required.

In 2015, the US had the most powerful passport in the world, but we dropped 7 slots as relationships changed. And this ranking doesn’t include all of the borders currently closed to us due to COVID-19.

So it’s not that we can’t go to those 41 countries; it’s that we have to ask permission first. The country can choose to deny us access, just as the US does sometimes to visitors.

We talk a lot about citizenship privilege—about the ease in which a person can live because they’re residing in the country where they were born—but we don’t talk a lot about passport privilege—the ability to travel where you want to go.

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Are you also doing #MicroblogMondays? Add your link below. The list will be open until Tuesday morning. Link to the post itself, not your blog URL. (Don’t know what that means? Please read the three rules on this post to understand the difference between a permalink to a post and a blog’s main URL.) Only personal blogs can be added to the list. I will remove any posts that are connected to businesses or are sponsored post.

The Handmaid’s Tale is the first e-book I ever purchased. I read it constantly, and the idea of always having it with me felt like the best use of my iPod space. It holds a spot in my top five books of all time, so it’s no small thing to say that Sophie Mackintosh’s Blue Ticket is equally worthy of inner circle space. That is, if you get all the way to the end. Unlike The Handmaid’s Tale which answers all questions the moment you may have them, Blue Ticket waits to answer all of your questions until the last page. But once answered, it’s a perfect story.

Think of it as The Handmaid’s Tale 2.0: What if instead of being told you must try to have a child, you were told that you were not allowed to try to have a child?

So the basic premise: When you get your period, you go to a centralized office where you either get a white ticket (which means you are allowed to have a child) or a blue ticket (which means you are not allowed to have a child). We don’t know a lot about what happens to the white ticket girls next, but the blue ticket girls are outfitted with an IUD and sent on their way to start their adult life. They can do anything they want to do except have a child. That’s their only restriction. And in society, there is no benefit to having a child except experiencing that relationship. Yet some white ticket women don’t want parenthood. And some blue ticket women suddenly find themselves coveting a child.

You don’t need to read the book to have feelings on some of the thoughts I had reading the book. And I promise that my questions will not ruin any part of the book.

The first thought is unpacking who/what generates the desire to become a mother. Is it something biological (perpetuate the species), something emotional (love), or something societal? Are we led into family building because of pressure from family or being raised to see that as the norm or promised that it will be an exciting stage of life or feeling like you can’t achieve certain things without having a partner and child?

On page 22, she unpacks the meaning of a blue ticket. It’s relief that the decision is made for you. It’s an unbiased system that finds you unmotherly. It’s a belief that you are enough as you are and do not need a child to make you better/different. It is an understanding that your life is important and shouldn’t be risked by something as dangerous as birth. She feels differently about her judgment every time she thinks about it.

On page 23 she writes,

Sometimes I became aware that there was somewhere I could not go. And I wanted to go there. Who wouldn’t, when told it was impossible? Motherhood was the last perversion; otherwise known as loving and being loved. It was the only one closed off to me. I want. There was a purity to that feeling that other sensations lacked, a simplicity, even as it remained the most complicated thing in the world.

In other words, the decision is made for you, but your brain still makes a decision anyway; to accept the decision bestowed on you or to want something different.

I’ve tried to mentally unpack this over the years: did the impulse to build a family come internally or externally or a combination of both? I still haven’t found a good answer.

Your thoughts?

I am the proud owner of a sore arm and flu immunity. I had to go to the doctor this week, and while I was there, her nurse offered to give me a flu shot. I learned from past mistakes to take anything offered when it is offered.

I know what you’re thinking—Melissa, isn’t it too early in the season to get your flu shot? Well, reader, I’m glad you asked. Apparently it is not too early to get your flu shot—they already have the 2020 version in most offices—and they want people who are young and healthy getting their flu shot now to save appointment space in mid-September for people who need more coverage during flu season.

So I can check my flu shot off my list, which is nice because I felt like crap afterward, and now I’ve gotten the sore arm and crappy feeling mostly out of the way so I don’t have it hanging over my head.

Win-win!

P.S. Go get your flu shot and be a public health helper.

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Stop procrastinating. Go make your backups. Don’t have regrets.

Seriously. Stop what you’re doing for a moment. It will take you fifteen minutes, tops. But you will have peace of mind for days and days. It’s the gift to yourself that keeps on giving.

As always, add any new thoughts to the Friday Backup post and peruse new comments in order to find out about methods, plug-ins, and devices that help you quickly back up your data and accounts.

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And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week. In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Women Like Me” (Mrs. Spit… Still Spouting Off)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Lavender Luz has a new podcast about the long view of adoption. The purpose? “To bring a variety of perspectives around topics I wish I’d known more about back in my pre-adoptive days and early-parenting years.” Lori has always provided amazing insights on raising kids in written form. I’m sure she’ll do the same in spoken form.

My Path to Mommyhood conveys a freeing thought. “Lose what was, it doesn’t exist anymore. I think for clarity it needs to be adjusted to lose the expectations of what was, but I did like it.” Which isn’t to say that losing those expectations isn’t sad, and they certainly need to be grieved. But it IS also freeing to let go of that past vision and see what you can do with the current situation.

Lastly, Infertile Phoenix highlights why it’s not always a bad thing to ask THAT question. Sometimes doing so reminds two people that they’re not alone. It’s a great story—click over to read it.

The roundup to the Roundup: All the cool kids are getting flu shots. Your weekly backup nudge. And lots of great posts to read. So what did you find this week? Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between August 21 – 28) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week? Read the original open thread post here.