Outta here

We leave for Bolivia today – started spotting last night – here’s to the last gasp of the summer.

This past week has been all about touching base with SQ friends. Saw SQ friend yesterday who offered me her leftover injectables. She’s going to do one more IUI and then call it quits. They’re looking into local adoption agencies. She looked so small and forlorn when she told me all this.

I had this bizarre dream the other night where an older friend was coming towards me, and when I saw her bump (she’s not pg IRL, I think her husband recently had a vasectomy in fact) I threw myself into a pit of mud, then buried my head in it while I heard her talking with others about me (all very concerned and sympathetic). Then I went into another friend’s house to get all my stuff I had stored there, and she herded her small children away from me in fear that I was going to steal them. “Infertile women aren’t crazy!” I shouted, and ran away.

(Child mentioned)

This afternoon a friend called just to let me know how wonderful T. was last night playing hide and seek with her 6yo daughter during a potluck (where said daughter was the only child). I missed the potluck since I was off on another field trip and we got back late. My friend said, “if you ever had any doubts about how T. would do with a child, no matter how it [the child] came to you, you should lay them to rest.” It was so sweet to hear her endorsement.

Evidently someone at the potluck commented to T. that he and I need to “get working” on having children soon, if we hope to equal a relative of theirs who recently passed away with something like 400 great-grandchildren (they’re Mennonite) and she offered to say something to them for me if I wanted her to. She’s a fellow SQ of yore and I feel like she’s got my back. But I’ll probably bring it up myself one of these days.

I’m finding that as hope falters, longing intensifies and ambivalence fades.

Since I Last Posted

* I’ve been putting in a lot of hours with a summer research/service project
* I taught myself how to make mojitos and had a rip-roaring Friday night home alone with the phone
* The Bear came home!!!!
* Our favorite restaurant changed its name which we deplore

Yesterday while waiting to meet friends for dinner I saw a man and woman walking down the street, pushing a stroller and a generous bump. As they got closer the red haze in front of my eyes dissipated as I realized that I know them (well, I know who they are – it’s a small town); their little girl in the stroller has Downs. Which makes me feel like they’ve “earned” their current bump, so it’s “ok”. What a twisted way to think/feel.

Dreaming

This afternoon I helped chaperone a hike in the woods with a group of 8 local kids. One little guy and I brought up the rear; he was the youngest in the group at age 9 and his short little legs couldn’t keep up with the rest of the group. He kept up a non-stop chatter the whole time, and he was hilarious! My favorite exchange: “What if butterflies could talk?”
“What do you think they would say?”
“I think if somebody tried to catch one, it would say ‘I’m too drunk to die!'”
Where in the world did that come from?
A little later we caught up with two other stragglers, a guy about my age and my favorite girl in the group; she reminds me of myself at that age. For a second we felt like a little family – man, woman, two kids…
I just wanted to take those kids home with me.

*edited to add: I realize that this little daydream capitulates completely to the heteronormative patriarchy – but it still tugged at my heart.

Little Earthquakes (Here We Go Again)

I guess it was about this time last year I had my HSG. I think it was also about this time last year that I burst into tears during knitting group when someone asked me how I was.

Last night I went out for a bite to eat and browse at the bookstore with a good friend; we sat down, and when she asked me how I’m really doing, I totally shocked myself by tearing up. I talked about how frustrated I am about all our traveling and commitments this summer, because it means putting everything on hold. In fact, I believe that I am ovulating this weekend, and T isn’t even here. And it’s the first on-my-own CD14 O that I know of since I started keeping track. Does this mean we’ve just gone and missed our only chance at conceiving naturally? The more I talked, the more I cried, but it was good to talk face to face with someone. I adore blogland and spend at least an hour a day here (when I have internet access) but sometimes you need to see a human face and know that that person cares how you are doing.

I also worry that maybe we’re not committed enough. Maybe if I put everything else on the back burner and just focused on getting with child, it would happen. But both my therapist and the gynecologist I was going to when I decided to go back to school thought going back to school was a good idea. I wonder if it’s just my fear of focusing solely on TTC and failing that keeps me from doing that, because then I’d be left with nothing. Well, nothing but the Bear.

Proof

When I saw this headline, I thought here at last is Proof That There Is No God. But then I thought, well, maybe there is a God, he’s just not in charge of pregnancies. Or maybe there is a God and he IS in charge of pregnancies, but he has some kind of higher purpose, like to make Nicole Richie a better person. I was talking this over with T, and he said, “maybe the higher purpose has nothing to do with Nicole Richie but is directed at the father, ever think of that?” Actually I hadn’t!

Anyway, that “higher purpose” crap just makes me really grumpy so I probably shouldn’t even go there.

Mental Armor

I find myself making a mental adjustment, not sure if it’s proactive or reactive (it might be both), but every time anything pregnancy- or motherhood-related comes across my consciousness, I think “well, that will never be me,” in a matter-of-fact kind of way. Like it’s a category of humanity (like maleness) that I will never belong to.

Ah, the ways and means our psyches find to protect our hearts from more hurting.

Body Envy

Yesterday I happened to be in our nation’s capital for Independence Day, alone in a crowd, in transit between NY and VA (it just worked out that way, on the 4th). It was fascinating to see all the people, so different, all mingling together. I heard many languages, saw all different shapes and sizes and colors, from the ladies in pink protesting the war to the people hawking cold water in Spanish. The folk life festival was going on as well on the Mall, which added even more richness to the scene. For lunch I had both a hot dog and Thai basil chicken!

But as I walked around, I found I had few or no inner defenses against the hordes of strollers and pg bellies also on parade.

Some hours previously I’d been at a friend’s apartment leafing through a fashion magazine and had begun to feel the rise of a bitter sensation, long dormant: body envy. Right this minute I’m feeling a little fat, although for the past ten years or so I’ve generally felt pretty good about my body. But looking at that fashion magazine resurrected emotions from a time when I most adamantly did not – basically all through adolescence and into my early 20s.

Those skinny girls! How I hated them!

When I look back, I realize that I largely left that envy behind when I started working out regularly after college. It was partly that my body took on new qualities (more lean muscle, less fat, stronger cardiovascular, better endurance) but I think it was even more that I felt in control. When I was in school, I felt like there was nothing I could do; no matter what, I would always be/feel fat, lumpy, and unattractive. It seemed to be part of who I was at an intrinsic level. But not anymore; feeling fat (I say feeling rather than being because I think that a lot of the years I spent feeling fat, I really wasn’t) doesn’t feel like who I am, it’s no longer intrinsic.

But now it’s the pregnant bodies that inspire this envy. I see them and think “I will never be able to look like that.” I find myself hating them, but even more, hating my own body for what it isn’t able to do.

And again, I feel like part of it relates to feeling a lack of control. Infertility is starting to feel like an intrinsic part of who I am, and I really don’t like that. It makes me feel helpless. And makes it harder to deal with the envy.

Thin bodies, pregnant bodies. They’re everywhere, man! I don’t want to go around in a cloud of envy all the time, which means that what has to change is me. And if I’m not ever able to conceive, then something else has to change. I’m just not sure exactly how to do that. Is it all about serenity? Or what?

Things People Say

Last night I had dinner with a friend from my cohort who is facing imminent divorce. I gave her my IF update, and she said what I knew she was going to say – “you always have the option to adopt, then you’ll get a baby for sure!” And it didn’t bother me, in large part because she herself was adopted. She told me the whole story one time, and that she is still in contact with her biological family (who live in west Africa). At the same time, I certainly didn’t say to her, “you’ll meet someone else” or “there are other fish in the sea.” She’s very young.

Even though I’m still largely in the closet, it’s still nice to have friends IRL to talk with about it.