How do you describe something as indescribable as infertility? All I can say is that I am depressed, but even that somehow doesn't seem to explain how I feel.
I am lost in my life. I am so sad, angry, confused and sick. I feel like I have lost everything in my life. When I was a little girl, I used to dream about my life. I imagined what I would do when I grew up and began a career, fell in love, got married, bought a house, had children. I'm now 31 years old and I feel like all of those things I dreamed have been destroyed. Every dream I ever dreamed feels like it is no longer even really possible. My first failure was never really grasping onto a career. And without one, how can you ever realize the dream of buying a home? Okay, so I am married. My husband is a beautiful person with an unbelievably huge heart. He truly does love me unconditionally, and for that I must be grateful. We have a home, too, which we pay a mortgage on, and have for 4 years now. These are what I call phantom successes. Because neither seemed to be as successful as we had imagined before we achieved them. Our house is 675 square feet. We've lived in apartments bigger than that. We go crazy with such a small space to share between us, 2 cats and a big fluffy Alaskan Malamute. Our marriage suffers even though the love we have for each other has never been greater. Our lives are at a stand still, and there doesn't seem to be anything we can do to motivate ourselves to go on again. To achieve something, or reach for some kind of goal. Where is the motivation? The hope? Our dream of success? That word automatically converts it's self into "failure" in my mind.
It has come to a point in our infertility journey that people have stopped asking us questions about it and our endeavor to parenthood. It's like this has gone on so long now that no one knows what to say anymore. They've already given us all the great advise they can. I never thought I would miss the "just relax and it will happen" comments, but the silence is an even greater shock to me. Now people are treating us as though we have accepted and chosen a childless life like we don't even want kids! Somehow I am even more hurt by this than I was when I heard all the senseless advise on how to achieve our goal.
Some days I literally cannot get myself out of bed. I do not know why, but I feel sick. I'm tired, nauseous, and the scent of certain things throws me over the edge. I can't even feed my animals anymore--something I've never had an issue with in my life. The meat smell is completely repulsive I have to shut myself in my room for at least an hour while and after my husband feeds them. I spent so many hours on my computer playing monotonous games while I was feeling so ill that suddenly I can't even do that anymore. The mere thought of it makes me feel sick. So now I can't even occupy myself with things that keep my brain active and off my depression. Now I'm stuck facing it head on with no distractions. I've spent all day in my jammies, bundled up because there's like 5 inches of snow outside, I can't think of a single thing I want to eat besides my mom's amazing yogurt jello (which of course I don't have). Everything else is repulsive.
Thanksgiving is in two days. It's hard to believe this used to be my favorite holiday. My husband actually proposed to me on Thanksgiving 9 years ago yesterday. But now, I'm unsure what the hell I can even pretend to be thankful about in my life anymore. My parents and brother are coming over to our house for dinner and I'm sad I don't even have a dining room. All we have is a foldout table that we shove against the wall in the kitchen and hardly ever use. Our nightly dining room table is the coffee table in the living room. Originally I thought our house was sweet. It was cute and charming with 3 huge shade trees and a nice big back yard. I thought we would be fine with the size, but it turns out pretty much anything looks amazing when you're married and living in your grandparents' basement.
I don't like talking to people anymore. I mean I constantly find myself trying to explain to people why I haven't returned their calls or messages. Whenever I go over it in my head it just sounds so dumb: "I'm just depressed and I really don't feel like talking to anybody." But it's true. I've alienated every friend I've ever had. Even my family. And it's all because of the child factor. You know, they have children. They don't have to do anything or say anything else to cause an uproar or a falling apart. Just have children. I cannot, no matter how hard I try, pretend to like people who were blessed enough to have children. I know everyone thinks it's jealousy because they have something I don't, but that isn't why I can't stand them. It's that they will never understand me. There is no going back once you fall into the parenthood role, you are an entirely different person with different thoughts and beliefs and while you may or may not sympathize, you will never understand my pain. Whenever someone I loved or liked gets pregnant, I grieve inside because I know I have just lost that person forever. Unless I can become a parent myself, which is so highly unlikely at this point, I will be forever alone in more ways than one.
I know my sister is offended I don't share her love and thrill and joy of her son which may easily be the only source of happiness in her life, but I just can't. It isn't there. I'm torn apart whenever she sends me pictures of him doing random little kid things that she finds so fulfilling. To me they are just painful reminders that I'm childless and that she doesn't understand it. Even my husband has all but alienated his own sister for her lack of tact in sharing the great news with us that she gave birth to a son on the month anniversary date of our failed IVF cycle in which I lost the two embryos I still have nightmares about. She already put a huge damper on our Christmas visit 5 years ago when she announced the pregnancy of her first child just after our first failed IUI attempt. Her timing is amazing. I feel like fate is slapping us around. It's like the worst practical joke on the planet that one can play. What I hate even more about it is that it's destroying who I am--who I WAS. I'm bitter at the world. I hate people who are happy. What the hell are they all so happy about anyway? And how can they be when all around them people are suffering? The world is cruel, and the sad fact is probably that most little girls' dreams, like mine, never come true. That perfect life with the perfect house, husband, friends and family? Only a dream. I have discovered that people who actually achieve these things become the most selfish and stuffy people I've ever met and I am repelled by constantly having to look up their snobby nostrils. Maybe it's better that we don't achieve our dreams so easily, but then why is it that everyone elses dreams seems to be realized but your own? I feel like I've been thrown out of a car on a dark, dusty road in the middle of nowhere alone with no money, no coat and no shoes.
