I like to party. And by party, I mean take naps.

I'm tired of negativity.  I'm tired of being covered in someone else's bad feelings about life and not feeling like I can share thoughts or ideas.  I feel smothered in crappy responses to normal day-to-day.  Giving everything and getting nothing buy open hands grasping, wanting more moremoremoremore.  Being blamed for shortcomings.  Always being at fault. Criticized. Flying by the seat of my pants all the time. 

I just want to stay at home today and cry this all away. Wash it away from me so I can wipe it out of my mind and just move forward.

Taking a breath

The wind along the front range is what I might consider gale force; but I'm not a meteorologist, so my opinion isn't official.   It was, however, strong enough wind to take the tops off the trash, move gardening stuff, and freak the hell out of the dogs and the kid (and me, but I stayed quiet). 

The last 2 months have been a challenge for me, and frankly, I'm not used to a challenge.  I figure this sounds lame, and I ought to do some 'splainin' on it. 

I'm used to getting what I want, and having the capacity to make that happen.  When I want a pair of boots; I budget for them or pick up more work.  Bam.   If I want to learn a skill; I gather my information and read/watch/absorb and plunge right in.  Bam.  If I want to pick up a hobby; I learn costs/lessons/efforts/time and BAM.  If I have a goal I want to crush, I set it in my cross hairs, list out hurdles to overcome and what I need to do to see it through, and BAM. 

You see how that goes?  Easy peasy.   But usually, when I put my mind to something, I don't fuck around about it.  I also happen to obsess about it, which makes it easier to accomplish.  I'll usually push everything else that isn't essential out to my peripheral world, and focus myself on accomplishing this one thing.  I'm not going to list all of the things this list encompasses because it's  years worth of activities that I've been up to, and it'll just end up making some weird pat-myself-on-the-back-list.  I can do that on paper and give myself an "atta girl" while I'm looking it over, or something.  Yeah.

So this whole pregnancy shtick is really hard to nail down. I didn't think it would though, and that makes me seem like kind of a whiny baby.  And yeah; maybe I am.   I know there are other people who have been doing this a lot longer than I have, and have had to endure many times over what I have only BEGUN to experience.  My heart goes out to those couples (or singles). Very seriously. 

This shit is ridiculous. 

The holidays approach upon us, and I reflect more and more about what I am blessed to have, and what I normally feel a great deal of fortune and appreciation for, which is my family.  As pathetic and campy as it sounds, they have become what I was always in need of.   The thing that I was looking for, was also looking for me as well.   These things in my life that I have surrounded myself, they bring me great joy.  I have very little to despair for, aside from not being able to have a baby together. In some ways this could be considered a fairly nominal thing.  Sometimes I myself make it into a nominal thing, however.   It would have the potential to become a very large part of our family (making us a 4, and not a 3 anymore).  But what cannot be helped, simply cannot be helped.

I still write in my journal to the baby that, I'm frankly not sure I will see soon, in hopes that someday he or she will be able to read it and know that even before they were made, they were loved and thought about with great anticipation.  Just like their older brother was.   It's a way to keep my hopes up, and to keep going through this.  Poor C is just floating along with me; unable to help much more than by just being near me (since a man isn't going through the physical part, like the exams, the calls, the visits, picking up the specimen, etc).  He's with me, and that is something I am thankful for. 

So this holiday season I will hold my family close, and remember that we are still whole and filled with love for each other.  Hopefully our whole will include a fourth before too long, but until then I will keep waiting with blithe anticipation that it won't be a very long wait.

There is no way but forward

In the face of losing something we love and care about we find ourselves desperate to make amends and plead for more chances to make the wrongs right again, and smoothe over everything that's become broken. 

We hold within ourselves an immense capacity to love and radiate warmth and joyousness.  I feel that every time I think about where my life will go from here, and how beautiful it will be again.   

Yet I digress that I am so very fearful right now, knowing that this joy and love is waiting for me again.  The crossing into the unknown abyss to where I've never ventured scares me in a way I cannot explain.  A great deal of hurt is going to come, for all of us, and I question how I will withstand it, and protect the ones I love in any way I can.   Yet knowing that this certainty looms before me, I cannot bear to stay where I am.  I am lost in uncertainty about whom I have chosen to spend my life, and I cannot answer the questions of whether or not I want to stay with him. 

Sensing this, he's changed the game and announced that he wants a vasectomy reversal, so we can have a child together. No more donors and doctors and ovulation schedules.  In the corners of my mind where there is the tiniest cleft of love remaining, the shreds I tucked away that will stay with me and haven't been mired in the years of unhappiness and neverending fights and harms, it feels the ache of joy I so badly wanted those few years ago.  Every time he postponed and reasoned how we should wait another 6 months, another year, another few months again, just this little bit longer.  Always pushing it farther away from me and never wanting to talk about what would happen, how we would get through it.  Never making it a reality for me, only a desire just out of reach. 

It's been so long since I've dared to hope that this would be a REAL decision, or a real conversation, I've had to quiet my heart and keep from bubbling up with tears and sobs.  I've had to force myself to keep from feeling attachment to this, almost to the point where, when I think about a baby,  I don't feel happy anymore.  I feel a cavernous sadness inside me where the dark is waiting for me to venture to it, so it can take me and never let me go. 

The sharp pain of longing no longer exists, I just have to accept that in this moment, in this life, this is what I will have, and the yearning must be quelled in order for me to survive.  It pulled at me so hard and for so long, that it feels like I've lost something so important that I can barely take time to really mourn its loss. 

My journey will continue, and I will have to mourn when I'm ready.  Life must continue and I must find happiness within it.  Life is suffering and yet there's no other way to overcome what's needed.

Letting Go

There are many things I need to catch up here about our ongoing journey, but instead I'd like to write a little something contextual.  It's something we need in everyday life, and to be near us on our journeys, and it's been a topic which, as fertility-challeneged/differently abled will know, can cause more hurdles to overcome than just that of the fertility. 

You hear this phrase “letting go” a lot in meditation circles. It’s easy to say, and pretty easy to explain as well: don’t cling to the past, don’t get absorbed in plans for the future, don’t let fear, worry or anger get a hold of you in the present.

But try telling someone who is fearful or angry – in this present moment – to “let go” and you may get your ears boxed. And it won’t do anything to help them to let go either.

Actually letting go doesn’t come about by doing anything. Letting go isn’t something you do – it’s more like something that happens, almost by itself.

The conditions have to be right, of course. You must be able to let go – often you must have the courage and openness to accept whatever life has to offer – to not resist what might be unpleasant. And meditative exercises help too, of course: focusing your attention on the here and now creates the discipline of mind to not be carried away by anticipations of the future or memories of the past.
But being fully at ease with whatever is present in your experience is hard. It requires an attitude of welcoming to whatever this moment has to offer – an act of faith in the unknown of the future. But such an attitude cannot be brought about by doing anything. It’s more in the act of non-doing and just witnessing.

This is what meditation is about, really. Stopping. Not doing and just being and being aware. Dwelling in awareness is how this total relaxation can happen. And when you are totally relaxed – at ease with everything – there is no clinging and no grasping. ”Letting go” has happened.

Something different

There are a few new tags that I'm adding in light of the sudden fervor that I've observed in my own writing concerning our path to conception.  I would like to take today to have a meditative but momentary pause in something that brings me peace.

“If you love a flower, don’t pick it up.
Because if you pick it up it dies and it ceases to be what you love.
So if you love a flower, let it be.
Love is not about possession.
Love is about appreciation.”

― Osho