IMPROV AND THE HORMONE-FUELLED ROLLERCOASTER OF POTENTIAL INFERTILITY
“Improv scenes taught me to focus on the immediate rather than over-thinking the long-term picture.”
Michaella Parkes is a writer and publishing professional living in London. She has held a number of positions in the publishing industry from curating editorial book lists, running author events and managing relationships with literary agents for Amazon UK. She is a writer meet-up host for Substack and recently quit her corporate job to chase her creative dreams. She is working on her first novel.
IMPROV AND THE HORMONE-FUELLED ROLLERCOASTER OF POTENTIAL INFERTILITY
It was a dark, dark April day when I decided to sign up to the Level 1 course at the Free Association. The weather was crap and seemed to embody just the precipitative part of April showers. That wasn’t the only thing raining on my parade. I’d been experiencing painful periods, consistent bloating and abdominal pain alongside crazy mood swings. I was undergoing multiple health scans to review my symptoms while everyone else around me seemed to be getting engaged, married or announcing they were pregnant. The only person getting anywhere near my private parts was my gynaecologist.
After multiple blood tests, ultrasounds and MRIs, I sat awaiting a reproductive diagnosis and a verdict on my biological propensity for producing offspring. From the initial consultations, I knew it wasn’t looking great. Suddenly this made everything in life seem even more stressful. I was uninspired romantically. I was unenthused about my career. I was restless, impatient and angry. I hated the way I looked, felt, thought. I think only women who’ve experienced a serious hormone-induced self-esteem crisis will know what I mean when I say — I wanted to do something drastic. I was ready to go Britney ‘07 on it. I even started googling celebrity skinheads to work out if I’d look good bald. (Conclusion: I wouldn’t. While I think I do have the facial bone structure to be hairless, I definitely do not have the photogenically stern-yet-sexy aura to make this bald move). I am extremely goofy and a massive nerd. So, I thought about what might be equivalently drastic but more complementary to my goofy, nerdy personality. I landed on an improv course with the FA.
I’ve been on stage many times with my job. At conferences , I interview authors in front of hundreds of people; I pitch to large audiences; confidence was not my problem. My problem is that I am a highly-strung, total-type-A-control-freak who likes to predict the outcome of things. Improv was out of my comfort zone. In a scene, I don’t get a script or talking points which have been vetted by a PR team. I haven’t had the opportunity to spend hours preparing. I don’t get someone briefing me nor am I briefing anyone else. It’s not planned. It’s live. At the start I found this utterly terrifying. It was, and is, the unknown that has always been my biggest fear.
Within the first two weeks of starting Level One, I had an endometriosis diagnosis and was told that my fertility chances would be lower than average. I was put on strong hormones to curtail my symptoms and slow-down my possible ovarian decline. They made me miserable. I was encouraged to go for further checks, prods, pokes, ‘sharp scratches’. At the end of weeks of consultations, a doctor plotted ‘the average female’ graph and made a point of adding ‘me’ as a tiny little circle WAY below the classic curve of distribution. According to the results, my ovaries were likely to stop egg production before thirty-five. Sure. That’s not anxiety inducing. Within five minutes of explaining my chronic condition , the conversation was closed with: ‘So, what are your thoughts on kids?’
Cue existential crisis.
HUGE question. Many hypotheticals. So many interdependent unknowns. Who will I meet? Will I meet anyone? Do I want children or do I just want the choice? Is this what I want or what society wants? Am I willing to make the sacrifices to afford it? Can I accept myself when I feel like my body is broken? Am I brave enough to go through an IVF cycle alone? I had a deep-seated medical phobia and serious hatred of needles; that one was very daunting. I sat with it: thirty, single and scared. At points, I dipped back into that existential crisis. However, this state is not permanent anymore. The start of self-acceptance came through improv. My time at the FA helped me get comfortable with the notion of letting go of control, stop predicting outcomes and it began my journey of feeling the fear and doing it anyway.
Where fertility treatment and hormones sucked the fun out of me; improv re-injected it. I was always abstaining or planning. I overhauled my diet, my lifestyle, my routine. I prepared my body for months and tried to manage my workload to fit in with the medical protocol , which was exhausting. I often felt a martyr to my maybe-possible-possibly future spawn. For three hours every week I was given the opportunity to hyper-focus on something else, to find magic and mindfulness in some silliness with others. I was reminded how to trust, to actually laugh-out-loud. The only decisions I had to make in class were things like: Why is this astronaut angry that he’s going to space without his sandwiches? Lowering the stakes is good for the soul. I always came away feeling relaxed yet energised. I felt alive again.
Improv scenes taught me to focus on the immediate rather than over-thinking the long-term picture. In a scene , you decipher, sentence by sentence, the world you are in, who you are and what your characters mean to each other. You do it through listening, thinking immediately and acting intuitively. I took this approach to my medical appointments. I found it easier to treat each test result, scan and medical prediction as an unknown like in a scene. I would use the facts and feelings that came up in the moment to decipher my next steps. I listened to all the advice from doctors, nurses, therapists, nutritionists, womb healers (yes, I went to one of those) but improv helped me negotiate all the overwhelming advice by focusing on the important details and making decisions intuitively based on the immediate.
What doctors don’t prepare you for when you undergo fertility treatment is that it almost never goes according to protocol. It requires a lot of mental gymnastics. In a treatment cycle, it can feel like your body is working against you while your mind is catching up: you wait an extra two weeks for a bleed; a cyst will pop up and delay the process; you might react faster to the hormones you’re injecting so you have to go into theatre early when you don’t feel mentally prepared to go under anaesthetic yet. You can’t have a predetermined plan of how it will all pan out because, if you do, you’ll become very frustrated very quickly. Much like improv, each appointment is an opportunity to ‘Yes, and’. You have to accept it might all go Pete Tong and you get nothing but if you relinquish control and trust the process, you’ll always be able to find the positive with every step.
Putting yourself out of your comfort zone is exhilarating. Addictive, actually. The terror of being in my first improv show is a thrill I wish I could experience again. Improv taught me I could overcome fear, so when it came to having to inject myself three times a day with a severe needle phobia, I knew I could do it. My time at the FA has taught me how to accept the unknown. Now, I see a daunting situation and rather than running from it, I get excited about it.
I still get restless and dissatisfied with life. I am human, after all. I screamed and hyperventilated when I had to inject myself for the first time. I cried constantly before going under for egg retrievals. Improv hasn’t solved all my life problems. I’m still single. I am still highly aware of my rapidly-ticking biological clock. I still have endometriosis and concerns about my future and fertility. I have no idea what my future life looks like but I am okay with it. I am better at sitting in this unknown. Improv has taught me to ride the hormone-fuelled rollercoaster and scream with joy. Improv is a microcosm of life. It has reminded me that there are always options and opportunity. Through learning at the FA, I have realised I can focus on the small things I can control and accept the things I can’t. It is utterly supportive. It helps you let go of fear. People are lovely and everyone has your back but also makes you realise that you always have yours too.
Plus, it definitely looks better on me than a shaved head.
If you have an interesting story on how improv has helped or is helping you in the real world, please complete the form at www.thefreeassociation.co.uk/improv-in-real-life
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