Raw

The first three paragraphs of this post contain one of the better descriptions I've read of how infertility feels.  (The site is set up so you cannot copy and paste text, so please click on the link to read it.)

Today is hard.  The hardest it has been in a long time and I don’t want to start the New Year this way.  I don’t want the coming year to be filled with hard.  I know life is not full of easy, but I sure would appreciate a year of not hard.

Today I want to give up.  I’m still standing, but just barely.  I feel like a shark, hurting, wounded, but still swimming because if I stop I may never get up again.  Every fiber wants to get in bed and stay there.  I don’t want to work, I don’t want to play, I don’t want to talk to anyone or pretend everything’s going to be okay and that I have some special unwavering faith and that is why God has placed us on this journey.

The truth is that my faith wavers every day.  Every day I just want to stop trying.  To find refuge in the shallow.  Sleep.  Food.  Even alcohol is tempting.  Anything that promises to make this easier.  Because it sucks.  I feel like I could cry for days on end and there would still be tears.  Tears for dreams unfulfilled.  Tears for myself.  Tears for J.  Tears for my mom and for J and E who may never know the joy of cousins.  Tears for the jealousy in my heart and the envy I feel.  For no one else I know personally has this struggle.  NO ONE in my group of friends has had any trouble conceiving.  They are the opposite, the “Fertile Myrtles” of the world.  And I know that all of their journeys are different than ours and that we aren’t meant to be the same and they all have their own struggles and private heartaches.  But this is mine.  And I don’t know if my heart will ever be okay with it.  Some days it seems like it will.  But others it feels like it is going to explode.  And then I won’t have any heart left.  Already I hide it, this heart that is fickle and hurts so much, because I don’t want anyone to see this pain.  I don’t want people to see the part of me that gives up, that finds life to be too much.  I don’t want them to see me.  I don’t want people who have no idea what this feels like to offer advice and words and possible meanings.  I want to be left alone.  And I want to be paid attention to.  It’s a lose lose situation.  No one can win with me, the way I am right now, so I hide, so that no one can even really try.  Because I don’t want them to fail, to feel badly, to know that nothing can make it better. 

It doesn’t work, you know, hiding it.  I don’t hide it as well as I think I do, and when I do I am really just doing a disservice to everyone and not trusting anyone.  There’s a lot of pain in showing it, but a lot of joy, too, when I realize that someone loves me anyway.  Someone loves me in spite of the ugly.  

I am so tired.  My soul is weary.  I pray that the year to come is not like how I feel today.

 

A shark swims to move water across its gills

Which keeps oxygen in its lungs

And life in his body.

He doesn’t stop, and if he does

He is clever about it, finding

The vents in the tanks at Sea World

And stationing himself there,

A veteran of the aquarium who no one

Dares mess with.

I move to keep the blood flowing,

To keep my heart beating

And life in my body.

I don’t dare stop, for if I do

It will be the end of my cleverness,

Of hiding the failure of my body

And of my mind.

I am a veteran of infertility who no one

Dares mess with.

A Glass Half Empty Sort of Day

I'm not sure I'll get through this post, but I have fallen back into not talking about things, so I need to try to get this out.

It is possible that I miscarried last month.  At Easter, of all times.  I have no definitive proof of this.  My period started VERY early (almost a week,) and lasted longer than usual with some odd bleeding.  Something happened and while I'll never know exactly what it was, the thought that I was pregnant, even if only for about a minute, is terrifying.

At least, today it's terrifying.  Sometimes it's awe- and thanks-inspiring.  It depends on if it is a glass half empty or a glass half full sort of day.  Today I am tired and have been working nonstop and have had very little contact with loved ones, so it is a glass half empty day and it is terrifying.

Terrifying because it means that maybe we can get pregnant, and that maybe I can't carry a baby.  That maybe we're dealing with two big issues here instead of one.  I've said all along how thankful I am that we just weren't ever getting pregnant, because I didn't think I could handle getting pregnant and losing a baby.  Which, honestly, might be part of the reason I am so unwilling to even consider IVF.  (Along with a lot of other reasons, of course, but this is one very rooted in emotion.)  And it's not good, how I feel.  It could be worse.  It WOULD be worse if I knew for sure we'd miscarried; it doesn't feel good nonetheless.

Terrifying because maybe I didn't miscarry and my body is doing something else, like early menopause or something that will completely destroy our hopes to have a child.  I know this is unlikely, but hey, it's a glass half empty day, so bring on the unlikely!

Now, if this were a glass half full day, I would say that I am so thankful that maybe we CAN get pregnant, that the maybe-miscarriage was just a fluke and J's little guys are in perfect health!  That this month or next I'll get that positive pregnancy test we long for (which, incidentally, would also be terrifying, but in a completely different way.)  That it is awesome and amazing that we have been blessed with hope, with the opportunity to conceive.

Maybe this is just the way we're supposed to be, J and I.  It's just that it is so lonely here.  And I'm so tired.  In typing that, I realized that I feel lonely for many different reasons, and that I am tired because I have been working like a maniac.  So it's not all because we don't have kids - I'd be more tired then!  But it's a glass half empty sort of day.

Empty

Tonight I sat at my mom's house and noticed something I had never noticed before: the way the picture wall is arranged reflects the stages of her children's lives.  I had noticed the wedding picture of my brother and his wife, and the photo of me and my husband that was added after we were married.  My sister isn't on this particular wall (there are several photo walls in their home,) because she is not married yet.  What drew my attention tonight is that my mom has started adding pictures of her grandkids.  So, my brother and sister-in-law's wedding photo is surrounded by several pictures of their son, their daughter, and all of them as a family.  The other side of the wall contains one photo of Joe and I on our wedding day.  No other photos surround us.  We are alone on an empty side of the wall.  And that makes me really sad.  In this instance, the sadness isn't necessarily for us, though there is an element of that to everything, it seems; this sadness is for my mom, my dear, sweet mother who would love a house full of grandchildren and so far has only two.  What if we never add to that wall?  That makes me sad for her.  This infertility thing not only involves the hopes of the two people trying to have a baby.  It involves the hopes of grandparents-to-be, aunts and uncles in waiting, cousins who would love playmates, and friends who want to share this stage of life with us.  It is hard to look beyond my own pain and sadness at this situation to see this, but sometimes I can look beyond the edges of it, like looking to the edge of a field, and catch a glimpse of how it might affect others.  It's blurry, but it's there.  Sometimes it makes it easier, focusing on someone else's perspective of the situation, and sometimes it just knocks the wind out of me, the knowledge that I am, again, albeit through no control of my own, letting people down.  And that stinks.