Turning a Page

Most of the time when I write I just spew out whatever comes to mind, most often, the "news of the day." Despite just writing what comes to mind, I rarely feel like I'm really delving into my emotions. Now, having been off infertility drugs for 4 months (but going back on them very soon for our surrogate cycle) I feel better able to deal with and talk about those feelings in a constructive way.

To those of you who have listened to me and read this blog and will continue to do so, I thank you. I'm very haphazardly (I feel) in the world of infertility - never quite feeling like I can own my place in it. I don't get pregnant very often, but I have gotten pregnant. I can't seem to stay pregnant, but I've been able to have the experience of seeing those two pink lines, the ultrasounds (both internal and external), seeing the white flickering of my baby's heart, and of course the stillness when it stopped...the jumbled body of my baby as it broke down in my womb, weeks after he died.

When I think about it in detail, the tears still come, but there is no longer that horrible, debilitating depression, the feeling that I can never cry enough to get rid of the hole in my heart, that there is no way to get rid of that hole in my heart.

I've always known there was a way (but only one way) to get rid of that hole, by having a child (one way or another, biological or not), but it seemed like an impossible feat.

One year ago about this time I learned I was pregnant again, although I didn't know it was with twins yet. It was both the most exhilarating and subsequently terrible time of my life. I thought it would take years to be fully over it.

And I was right. It will take years. But now, one year later, it's not as painful as it was, and I find that amazing, impossible even. But I know it's because of all the hope I have, the things going on, that allow me to feel better, even a little bit.

I have no idea whether this IVF cycle and surrogacy will work for us. In the event it doesn't, I am sure I will be devastated yet again. But we are on our adoption journey now and I know it WILL happen. Someday I WILL be a mom. For all my crying about how old I am, it will still happen before I am 40 (I'm 33 right now).

I'm like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally through so much of my life, probably a product of my heart condition and the feeling that I need to get it all done because I think my life will end sooner than for a "normal" person. Keep in mind, I don't even know if that's true, but I have always had that feeling.

Sally: No. But why didn't he want to marry me? What's the matter with me?
Harry: Nothing.
Sally: I'm difficult.
Harry: You're challenging.
Sally: I'm too structured, I'm completely closed off.
Harry: But in a good way.
Sally: No, no, no, I drove him away. AND, I'm gonna be forty.
Harry: When?
Sally: Someday.
Harry: In eight years.

I've been that fatalistic since I was a teen :) Always ahead of life and always not really living in the present. Oh, I KNOW the cliches about it, the quotes like "If you spend your whole life waiting for the storm, you'll never enjoy the sunshine," but I've often felt like life was just one big storm, and I keep waiting for it to pass, yet it continues to rage on. I live for that day when it will be over and I will have everything.

But nobody ever has everything, right? And intellectually I know it. It's hard when you see so many people who have great jobs and great families, and fancy homes and they look like they have it all. And you wish you could have it too.

I may not have the thing I want most in this world, at least not yet. I do have the most fantastic husband with whom I have spent half my life with, a good job/profession, a family with the resources to help us on this journey, and the ability to write (I didn't say well :) my feelings down.

I don't think 6 months ago I could have managed to write down anything positive. Some people have naturally sunny outlooks on life, and some people are very introspective, musing and therefore see bad in a lot of things. That has definitely been me. But I was reading my diary/journal from 2000 today and saw that I used to be so much more introspective and not JUST complaining and I want to be more like that again. I think I've shut myself down a lot in the last few years (maybe more) so that I wouldn't feel as much pain. In the end I don't know if it did any good (maybe it did, but even so the pain was still unbearable so who cares?)...all I know is that I feel like I'm starting to come out of it.

When going through IVF meds, I didn't see how much they affected me at the time. When you're depressed on those meds you think it's just YOU and you suck for being so weak. Off those meds I see what they did to me and am so grateful it's not ME. I really look forward to the day I am done with them and we either have a baby through surrogacy or adoption and we just have unprotected sex again and whatever happens will happen but I won't have to worry about never having a child because I'll already have one.

I will continue to live for that day, but today is filled with possibility, and for once, I'm grasping it.