So Much for March

Friday, March 28, 2014

Beginning of the End?

Everything feels so incredibly dark. And no matter what anyone tells me, I'm wondering when to start planning for a life without kids. Maybe that's giving up. Maybe it's too soon. Or maybe it's right on time. Maybe it's exactly what I'm supposed to be doing.

"And either way I turn, I just don't have enough
Between what might be and what has been
Feels like the beginning, feels like the beginning of the end

There's a phone call on a dark night
A long heart-broken goodbye
An empty hand is wondering where to go."

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Smaller Place

My world has become an infinitely smaller place
since I started avoiding baby bellies.

Monday, February 17, 2014

Screw You, Money

The thing about fertility---or lack there of--- is that it robs you of your ability to plan. Anything.

Are we going to move back to our hometown? No, because we have to keep our jobs.
Are we going to sell the little house? No, because we can't sink money into a new one.
Are we going to update the little house? No. The things we have left to do must be hired out.
Are we ever going to make it to the forever house? We'll see...

Are you noticing a theme yet? Money. It's not just fertility. It's money. And I firmly believe that if you want to win in this game- and without insurance coverage it's a HUGE game- we will need all of the money we can pull together.

On the side of our fridge is a black outline picture of a baby bottle titled "Milk Money". After my first cyst this summer I printed the picture and drew hash marks across it to represent a savings goal for every month of this year. At the time I never imagined we'd fill the bottle. Secretly, I thought I was being paranoid. Because obviously I was being paranoid. Because DH said I was.

Woops. Should have started saving sooner, apparently.

We have a vacation coming up next month but all I can think is, "How much will this cost us? How far back are we going to set ourselves from reaching the goal for the month? How do we tell new parent SIL and BIL that no, we can't go to a $100 a meal restaurant? How do you explain a situation to someone who will, blissfully enough, never have any clue what you're worried about?"

But today I allowed myself 5 minutes to be impulsive. To say, "Screw you, Money." One Republic tickets. A simple, short-term happy fix because let's be honest- there are few things these days that make me genuinely happy in my core. But it's a plan and that, right now, is something worth giving a nod to. One Republic is the shit and I'm not looking back on this one.

"Hope when you take that jump
You don't fear the fall
Hope when the water rises
You build a wall

Hope when the crowd screams out
They're screaming your name
Hope if everybody runs
You choose to stay

Hope that you fall in love
And it hurts so bad
The only way you can know
Is give it all you have

And I hope that you don't suffer
But take the pain
Hope when the moment comes
You'll say

I, I did it all
I, I did it all
I owned every second
That this world could give
I saw so many places
The things that I did
Yeah, with every broken bone
I swear I lived

Hope that you spend your days
But they all add up
And when that sun goes down
Hope you raise your cup

I wish that I could witness
All your joy and all your pain
But until my moment comes
I'll say...

I, I did it all
I, I did it all
I owned every second
That this world could give
I saw so many places
The things that I did
Yeah, with every broken bone
I swear I lived"

-O.R.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

A Mash Up of Songs that Are the Moment

Sometimes you stumble across an album and go, "This. This is what's it like."

A mashup of Courrier lyrics that are this moment:

"Living in a hospital world
And I can't tell what's mine and what's yours
a friend from a sword
a lock from an open door

Florescent sun and sanitized earth
cigarette breathe and a novacaine curse
everything is covered in blood and rust
cold as a stone and dry as dust"

"But I'm afraid that I've been anesthetized
by a host of everyday pains"

"The angels sang eternally,
while the demons were encouraging
all that was inside of me
to give up hope.

This is how it feels,
this is how it feels."

"I don't want to waste my time
I don't want to waste my life"

11 Years

It felt like spring time on this February morning
In a courtyard birds were singing your praise
I'm still recalling things you said to make me feel alright
I carried them with me today
Now

As I lay me down to sleep
This I pray
That you will hold me dear
Though I'm far away
I'll whisper your name into the sky
And I will wake up happy

I wonder why I feel so high
Though I am not above the sorrow
Heavy hearted
Till you call my name
And it sounds like church bells
Or the whistle of a train
On a summer evening
I'll run to meet you
Barefoot, barely breathing

As I lay me down to sleep
This I pray
That you will hold me dear
Though I'm far away
I'll whisper your name into the sky
And I will wake up happy

It's not too near for me
Like a flower I need the rain
Though it's not clear to me
Every season has it's change
And I will see you
When the sun comes out again

Monday, February 10, 2014

In which I complain...

My students have to write words with affixes on their homework something like this:
graceful: means "full of" grace

We sometimes practice identifying affixes for imaginary words just for practice. Like:
bitterful: means "full of" bitter

(No. That is not an example I've used with my students. Sigh...)

I'm so angry. This year. This night. In general. And it doesn't matter how many self-help blogs and books I read. Or how much I tell myself that I'm grateful for what I do have. Or how I tell myself it could always be worse.

My boobs have been hurting like crazy for the last couple of days. A lot. And that should be something worth getting excited about except I wrote those symptoms down on the exact same CDs in September and December. (I even wrote a note to myself in December, "Don't get excited about this. It doesn't mean anything.") And I'm not out yet. Not until this weekend. But here's the problem- this cycle feels the same as January feels the same as December feels the same as November...

How will I ever get pregnant if I can't stop thinking all the time? How will I ever "de-stress" and better my chances at having a healthy body if I literally can't stop worrying?

Who am I going to be at the end of all of this? This experience has changed something about me as a person just as my dad dying when I was fifteen changed me and just as my mom getting diagnosed with cancer the same year changed me. I am changed. I don't like who these things have made me. I am bitter and cynical and negative. I complain. I don't like who I am.

I know I would be a great parent if I ever got the chance, but I don't know how much farther down the rabbit hole the process of trying to become a parent is going to take me.

I want to be naive and young and happy and not worry anymore. I am sad when I realize that there may never be any going back to who I was before we started trying to get pregnant. Maybe if I come out on the other side, with our kids to show for it, I'll be able to look back on the entire thing and grow from it. Then again, if you ask me, I'd tell you there is absolutely no reason to not have a dad---no amount of life lessons learned or compassion gained or wise owl BS to be had for the experience. I can tell you that there's nothing I've taken away from my mom's cancer that has improved my outlook on life. I can only say that those two experiences were incredibly painful to watch and absolutely terrifying to live through.

I wonder if that's how I'll describe this situation when I look back on it.