Time After Time

It's been so long since I last posted on my blog - sadly, there's still no new or positive development in my quest for motherhood. What remains in the pain and emptiness I feel.

Lately, I've started feeling more and more like my life is somehow without meaning because of this whole issue. I feel like I'm waiting, all the time, for this one thing to happen - knowing all the while that it may never happen. Sometimes I think - why write about it? I still feel like I can't talk to anyone about it, and writing the same thing about the same issue seems almost ridiculous. Sometimes I feel like I'm just repeating myself over and over again.

I want to have the patience and the courage to go find other women like me - to strike up a "conversation" with an unknown person on the internet and commiserate. I want to read and write emails that carry the hopes and dreams of two women sharing their thoughts. But where and how? Maybe it's just asking too much, like with everything else. Maybe you can't have it all - or at least some of us can't. Sometimes, when I look at the world around me, it seems that the expression "haves" and "have-nots" applies to so much more than material wealth. It seems that people who are blessed with parenthood are usually multiply blessed so, whereas the poor saps who are still begging for just one chance are forever denied even one.

So I wander around aimlessly, filling my life and my days with things that, when it comes right down to it, are completely unimportant and irrelevant. Because I don't know how else to cope with the hand that fate has dealt me. I want to be one of those go-getters who will stop at nothing until the desired result is accomplished, I so want to be the person who'll spend hours upon hours culling mountains of research, testimony and other information, condensing it until you have the most potent facts in nutshell. Armed thusly, Mrs. Gogetter will march herself into the appropriate place of business and demand that the situation be addressed, the wrong redressed, her helter skelter off balance world put back into "normal" mode.

But I'm not that person. I'm just a sad women lost in self-pity. I feel like I'm floating in this murky pool of emotions, surrounded by darkness and hopelessness. I want to swim ashore, to the warmth of understanding, compassion and answers, but I'm disoriented and don't know how to get there.

Time after time, I feel heartbroken...

Same old, same old...

I got my period today.

That just about says it all, doesn't it. Happy period?? I THINK NOT!

I'm just tired of being in this boat. I'm tired of dealing with this. I'm tired of feeling rejected and denied - feeling incomplete. Like showing up late for a job interview and finding out they gave the job to someone else, someone less competent, because they showed up at the appointed time.

Kenton finally called the doctor's office today, so I'm waiting to find out if/when he's going to be seen. What happens from there on out, who knows? Just having my periods makes me feel so bleak and sad, again.

I keep wondering how this happened to me. How did I end up in this situation? How did I end up married and comfortable enough, smart enough, old enough, to be able to face any and all challenges of motherhood head-on - and be denied? I feel like I got kicked out of some fancy country club without even being considered in the first place. It's ridiculous - all of it. This whole failed "experiment" is making me angry and it's making me unhappy.

Some days I just feel like smashing things around me. I am overcome by this blind rage - really just a feeling of impotence (ironic how this word has such different meanings depending on the context) as I am faced with this...sentence. Yes, that's what it feels like: I feel like I've been sentenced. Sentenced to a life without children. Sentenced to a life without ever becoming pregnant - and yet, how ironic, since as with so many other things, I didn't know how much I wanted it until I found out that I most likely will never even have the damn friggin CHOICE in the first place!!! Cue: rage.

Yet...at this same time, there are other aspects of my life - which for personal reasons I won't go into here, as they involve other people's lives and only vaguely my own - that give me pause to reflect. It's easy to get caught up in your own little world - with its ups and downs, its joys and pains. It's easy to forget that, no matter how lousy you feel, there's always someone else who has a worse lot in life. Strangely, I feel horrible these days when I even CONTEMPLATE sinking into my own private, morose abyss of unhappiness. I feel like I am so ungrateful - ungrateful for what I DO have. There are so many maxims, sayings, quotes out there that resonate with me on so many levels - yet actually LIVING according to the principles they espouse seems to be beyond me.

I sit back and think, life could be so much worse. I could live in a war-torn country. I could be pregnant as a result of rape. I could have a horribly crippling disease. Someone I love could die suddenly. And in the absence of all these far more horrific considerations, shouldn't I be able to put my own misery into perspective and think to myself: you know what, I got it good!!

But musings and ponderings don't quell the heart that wants what it wants. The other day, Kenton and I went to a nearby Starbucks - and there was this couple, probably about our age, all decked out for a weekend outing with a tiny, bundled up baby boy. I smiled at the father who glanced my way, pride beaming all across his face. And then I looked at Kenton, studiously avoiding the general direction of the couple - and I thought, why not us? WHY???

People often try to comfort those in pain or sadness with platitudes like "it wasn't meant to be" or, more theologically, "it's all part of God's plan". I have to grit my teeth when I just THINK about things like that because my reaction would probably be something like WHO THE FUCK ASKED YOU FOR YOUR TEN CENTS??? Comfort? I think NOT! What ever possesses people to think that these things are supposed to make you feel better is something I'll probably never understand.

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Meanwhile, life continues unabated. I'm reading, working, occasionally doing some menial tasks that allow my thoughts to roam freely. Sometimes, though, I find myself driving - and completely getting lost in these internal debates or monologues. I hate to admit it, but it's not uncommon for me to get to someplace and suddenly realize that I've been driving for half an hour but have little or no recollection of any part of the journey. Other times, I get so distracted that I either slow down or speed up without realizing it. Thankfully, it's never to the extent where I'd cause or be involved in an accident - but, still, even as far as it's been going on with me, it's not without its dangers.

I try to stay busy, as before. I try not to think about it. But then I look in the mirror and I think, I'm too old for all this. I shouldn't have to worry about this, it should already have been over and done with. I should have my statistically correct 2-point-something kids and be able to enjoy the things most parents probably take for granted.

So many people make judgments about things they don't understand - especially about things like parenthood. Without knowing my circumstances, several people I know have made comments to me about other people, intimating that if nature doesn't give you kids without trouble, then you're just not meant to have any. Easy to say when you're not affected by that proposition. And then I've heard, more than once now, that in-vitro children are considered "sub-standard" by many - being as they do not hail from the most "potent" combination of their parents' characteristics and genetic material. So where does that leave me? I really don't know. I don't know how to feel about any of this anymore. I feel like I'm just going in circles, going through the motions, trying to pretend everything is ok. Trying to pretend I don't think about it all the time, don't peruse baby websites in some sick, sadistic way of punishing myself, maybe.

I just don't know what to do with all these thoughts and feelings anymore.

Why not me, why not us?

I've struggled long and hard with my decision to chronicle this journey I'm about to embark on. Part of me shies away from openly committing to these issues; part of me hopes to find solace in trying to find others who, like me, are confused, angry and sad.

Last Friday it became official: Kenton is unlikely to be able to father a child. Staring at this sentence, I feel a wave of surreal pain wash over me. How could this happen to US? We did everything "right", the way I thought you were supposed to do things. We got educated, traveled the world, didn't rush into marriage and didn't try to conceive the minute he'd carried me over the threshold. We thought we had time. We thought we were being smart - planned parenthood and all that.

As we sat in the doctor's office, listening to him explain the lab results, I found myself nodding to indicate that I understood what he was saying. It was like having an out-of-body experience: I was there, sitting in the hard plastic chair, looking at this man who was calmly explaining to us that we may not be able to have children by conventional means. As if it was the most normal thing to say. As if he'd just told one of us to take an asprin for a mild headache.

We left, neither one of us really saying anything; the piece of paper burning a hole into the pocket of Kenton's cargo pants. I felt numb, almost as if I had been given sad news about someone else - vaguely concerned, a little sad.

I went home by myself - Kenton had to go back to work. It was, after all, the middle of the day. I sat in the driveway for what seemed like forever: tears slowly running down as my vision became increasingly blurred. Once inside the house, a sound escaped from my mouth that was like the howling of a wounded animal - because, in all truthfulness, that's how I felt: wounded. As if, somehow, someone had deliberately injured me, delivering a potentially fatal blow to our plans and hopes for the future.

The worst part was the aftermath of that day. Kenton acted as if nothing had happened - jolly-go-lucky, goofing around like there wasn't that proverbial elephant in the room, constantly begging for attention. Alone, I cried like I haven't cried in years: anguished, broken. I listlessly stumbled around search engines in hopes of finding a support network, but nothing seemed to fit the bill. I couldn't join a group of women trying to conceive - knowing that, any day, someone might post that they'd finally gotten pregnant. I started reading about infertility, options for treatment - all the while thinking: why did this happen to us?

For a while I'd had an inkling that something might be wrong with one of us - like some sort of premonition or 6th sense, I've had this nagging feeling for years that we wouldn't be able to conceive, wouldn't be able to have what most people take for granted. In a sea of people, it seemed I was surrounded by women proudly displaying variously advanced pregnant bellies: beautiful women, plain women, skinny women, large women, young women, older women. I felt like I had been snubbed; like being turned down by a maternal sorority of sorts.

I am completely unprepared and unarmed to deal with this situation - to handle the cascade of unexpected emotions. I was angry at Kenton - I still am. Not because of his condition but because he doesn't seem to care. I know that he's just in denial - when I finally cornered him the other day, amid tears, and asked him whether he wasn't even the least bit upset, he grudgingly admitted that he was, that he just couldn't dwell on it like I did. But what else is there to do? How can I possibly just brush this under the carpet, pretend everything is alright - when it so clearly ISN'T?

I try not to think about it. I try to ignore all the pregnant women around me, the little girls with long hair and April Cornell dresses...so much that I had hoped for myself. But more than anything, I feel so completely ALONE. That, more than anything else, is probably what I was least prepared for. I feel like there's no one I can talk to: not mom, who didn't even know we had talked about wanting to try; not either one of our sisters (one of whom would put-put some platitudes of no help, while the other would launch a diatribe of finger-pointing).

I can't even bring myself to call Kathleen, my best friend, the one person who's as close to me as any blood relative - who, when we talked about this subject a couple of years ago, said that if we couldn't conceive she would be a surrogate for us. I tried to write her a letter, to tell her all I was feeling and the overwhelming pain that I couldn't even begin to lend credence to in words...and I failed, miserably, because I couldn't see out of my eyes once I started to unleash the pain and anger, the sense of injustice...

So here I am. I feel empty, cold, like something is missing. I look at a magazine and an ad for The Children's Place makes me cry. I watch a woman cradle an infant in a cheap blanket and think, my baby would have something much warmer and softer. I cuddle and talk to the children of my friends and acquaintances, trying to ignore the lump in my throat. And then, sometimes, I just sit there: staring into space, shivering, not knowing where to turn.