Brace yourself if you continue reading, you've been warned. And please excuse the scattered mess that is my brain...
Well, I think it's official. I am depressed or I have depression or whatever. I don't like saying that about myself. I've never let myself get that way and I definitely don't want to throw drugs at it to see if it will make it better or totally take all my emotions away. I haven't caught up my blog since Christmas really and think everyday to myself, "okay, finish the Christmas posts tonight." I have birthdays in January and February and everything else we did to catch up on. I come home take care of my furbabies and then curl up on the couch and watch How I Met Your Mother (most nights) or some other show and sleep until Josh goes to work around 10. I may get on my computer for a minute to check up on Facebook, which I hate, and shut it down and sleep. This is totally not like me. I love to blog and to document our lives. My computer memory is full of pictures since I love to photograph our life but I don't do anything with them, they just sit there.
I've gotten to the point where I don't enjoy anything anymore. I'm so angry and bitter. I hate everyone who has joy in their lives, isn't that horrible? And the sad thing is, it's not anything to do with them, it's me. I just want to stay in the house with my husband and our animals and the rest of the world can pass us by. Maybe it's seasonal and I'll feel better when the sun begins to shine again and it gets warm. But I don't think that's fully it, it will help but not resolve the problem.
I know that only I can fix my attitude and fix my life but I don't have the energy.
Honestly, for real, I have been struggling for the past 6 months or so. I don't know how to articulate my feelings into words that will make sense to everyone else. I think the only person who understands is Josh since he goes through this with me. I don't know what I'd do if I didn't have that awesome man in my life. He is my rock in the middle of the ocean of life. I feel like I'm just bobbing out there in the middle of nowhere. Don't know where to go, don't know what to do.
I think I need to write for my own therapy all the feelings I am having, so bear with me if you continue to read my pity party.
There are so many people that I know that are pregnant and that's hard for me, selfish huh? The thing about infertility that I've found is that eventually you lose. Eventually all of your friends are gone. You don't have anything in common with them anymore as they all move on and have children then want to hang out with other parents so their children can play together which is totally natural. But who wants the childless couple tagging along and who wants to be that childless couple tagging along? Then it's just the two of you wishing for a different life. We don't want to hear "be glad you don't have to deal with this or that", that hurts.
I don't know where to go in our life. I know we want children. I don't know why it's so hard for us or if that is even something we will get in this life. And don't tell me it will happen. I hate hearing that even if it comes from the most sincere heart. No one knows if it will happen for us but God. I have put my faith in Him and pray every night that we will be able to become parents, and if not, that we will know why and be comforted. I think we would be good parents. I know we would love our little miracle so much and would take the sleepless nights for our best night's sleep any day.
I sometimes feel like I am being punished for something I did and if my grandma Pat read this she would lecture me on how that's not how it works. She would tell me He doesn't punish us. And I know she is right. I need to put my faith in Him and to continue to pray. But how long do I have to pray before He gets sick of hearing me ask for the same thing over and over again and I just become annoying to Him? Please excuse me, this is a total stream of consciousness.
I'll never understand how it happens so easily for, it seems, everyone else. It's such a small window of timing that the miracle of life is conceived in and it still is so easy for some people. Eight years we've been trying. Not that every month we've counted days and did ovulation tests and head stands in the corner but we've never prevented pregnancy either. I take my breaks when I'm about to emotionally crack but 8 years and 2 miscarriages later and nothing to show for it but a bitter heart.
This time of year is always a little difficult for me and it's something that I keep to myself. Feb 7, 2007 was the estimated due date of our first pregnancy. We would have a 5 year old.
I'm very blessed to work where I do and to have doctors who care about me and want us to have our family and want to help us achieve our dream. I keep thinking I'm ready to start really trying again but then I get scared of the let down that I know is coming. I don't know how to prepare myself for it. It gets to be some pretty dark days. I have that glimmer of hope back again though that we can do this. We've done it twice before. But I don't like that glimmer being there because it just opens the door for letdown and disappointment.
We also are working on getting sealed in the temple and will be able to set dates soon. Then we can get adoption stuff going through LDS family services. That's always been something we've both wanted to do. And to think that that might be the only way we will become parents scares me as well. I look at a lot of adoption blogs and see all the wonderful couples out there who are looking for their baby and wonder why would someone pick Josh and I when there are so many other couples better than us are on paper? It scares me to depend on someone else to pick us to be their baby's parents and to put that in someone else's control. It's not a guarantee either.
A friend of mine called me in late August/ early September asking if we were still interested in adoption. I told her yes and she told me a story of a 19 year old girl who works for her and just found out she is pregnant. She knew she wanted to place it for adoption being 19 and not being able to support and take care of a baby. My friend told her about us and my friend thought this would work out perfectly. There was never a definite decision as to whether or not she wanted us to be the parents but it was a possibility and she wanted to go through LDSFS for her cost. We were so excited at the possibility that it could finally be happening. I never got my hopes up though. It was in the back of my mind for a while and then we just quit talking about it. My friend told me a while ago that the girl decided to keep her baby, which is wonderful and fine for us. I'm glad I didn't get my hopes us and think this was it just for me. But it's just the example of what adoption situations are out there. I've read many stories of failed adoptions and even adoptions where the adoptive couple have paid a lot of the money for the adoption and don't see a dime of it back and don't get to come home with a baby. Or stories of being in the hospital, holding their brand new baby and not getting to walk out the hospital door with the baby because a parent had changed their mind. It scares me. It puts me in a vulnerable, almost desperate place and I don't like it.
I sometimes wish the want would go away. I sometimes wish I wouldn't want children so much and that the hole in my heart would heal and the ache in my arms would go away. They never do. On Christmas day we were driving up to my parents' house and I told Josh I was going to stop grieving a life I've never had and start being thankful and enjoying the life I do have. He asked me if that was from a movie or if I read it somewhere, rude! No, I said, that was all me. I haven't done too well with that. I'm still mourning that life and don't know how to hang that dream up.
For Christmas, Josh got me a frame that has a quote from Jeffrey R. Holland that says "Some blessings come soon, some come late and some don't come until Heaven; but for those who embrace the gospel of Jesus Christ, they come." I love it. And if we don't have children in this world, we will in the eternities. But I still don't understand how that works either, Josh and I had this discussion tonight on the way home from my parents' house celebrating my dad's 55 birthday. It does give me some comfort though. And I don't want to call it this but it's almost like our last hope.
We always talk about if we don't have kids then we are going to play and travel. I need to get through school to do that and that is one of those things that scares me as well. I have a fear of not getting into nursing school and then getting in and not being able to pass. That's one of the things that has kept me away from it for the past 12 years. But I'll never know if I don't try. It's just one more failure I don't want to face. And then I don't know what I would do with the rest of my life.
I am so grateful for the children that are in my life that I get to love as if they were my own. Noah, Elizabeth and DJ. Their little hands are woven around my heart. I love those three as if they were my own and I'm so thankful for Shannon who doesn't care that her kids love me the way they do. When DJ was younger she didn't care that people thought he was mine, he was attached to my hip.
Our nephews Branson and Gavin. The situation is a little different but I love those little guys so much and I'm so glad I get to be a part of their little lives and they love Josh and I.
And our other nephews and niece, Tycen, Lucy, Raedyn and Landyn. We don't get to see them as often as we would like. But we love them so much and wish we could see them more.
Josh and I love being back in church and the rejuvenation those 3 hours give us every week but it's also hard. Relief Society and Priesthood talk a lot about being mothers and fathers which is great but hard for those who aren't. It's hard in a church that is so family driven and we are expected to have children soon after getting married. Then people start to wonder why you don't have children yet and it must be because we don't want them. Only our bishop and home teacher know a piece of our real story. It's not something I like getting into. When our home teacher came over for his visit in January and the lesson was on Living The Abundant Life, he asked me why our prophet would have written that message. I told him because it was written for me and then told him a little bit of our background. He is seriously one of the sweetest and most sincere members of our ward we've met so far and his response and prayer at the end of our visit were very nice.
I have a very supportive family and friends who try to do what they can and what they feel to make me feel better, to give me hope and I'm very blessed to have that.
I'm so thankful to have Josh to walk through this trial with. He is wonderful. I tell him from time to time that I would totally understand and wouldn't blame him if he wanted to leave and find someone else who can give him the family he wants. He tells me I've lost my mind and to shut up. I love him.
Anyway, I'm rambling a lot but just needed to get this out to help myself and not hold it in any longer.
