It's funny really, how isolating infertility can be. In all my life, I don't think there were many more occasions to need people, need encouragement, or need to get out of my head than I've needed since January. But for some reason, no one wants to talk about it. Friends. Family. Me. Who would want to talk about it?
I've found mostly, that people don't really know what to say, so they just don't say anything. When questions or the subject is posed in the course of conversation, it's quickly dismissed as "I don't get all that stuff," or "it'll be fine." Jokes are made to the effect of "is your uterus ready?", or even being told that all of precise calculation, the hormone injections, the measurement and counting of your egg follicles that you endure over and over is just "weird." That's usually right before the subject is changed. Or, you're simply wished good luck, as if the mere mention of your reality is so uncomfortable that it's best just to stop talking. Most of the time now, I wish they would stop talking. It makes me uncomfortable, too.
People don't talk to you about how you're feeling or what it was like to lose your normalcy. They don't think to not take "I'm fine" for face value, or ask another question. In fact, it seems the silence just continues to grow evermore. At some point you become the pink elephant--that unrelateable freak in the corner who everyone pretends isn't there. Slowly, you begin to realize that your new reality has forged a wedge between a world that once existed, and a whole new time and place and person that no one wants to acknowledge. Its just as if you are disappearing. On most days, it feels more like you already have.
So the silence grows, because one can't understand that it's alright to ask and the other no longer cares to tell. It grows and grows to the place where the expectation is inflated, on both parts, and the hurt festers into monumental proportions. At times the grief and the despair, and the sadness, and the isolation are so overwhelming, that you're not sure if you're sad because you're facing your fourth time going through this, or because the people you always needed most in your life are no longer really in your life at all.
And you think, and you think...are you wrong for keeping to yourself, for fostering the silence? For building expectations and for wondering what kind of person you must really be if no one stops to ask, or listens to what you're not saying when they ask how you are? If you broke your own silence, who would want to be the recipient of someone who suddenly stops protecting their own heart? What would it mean if you unleashed the tears that come so easily behind your blue eyes, to let them flow, to cry out in a gutteral voice this pain and disappointment you are harboring down inside. Would they want to hear that?
Would they want to hear how desperately you love your husband, and how the only thing in the world you ever knew you wanted was his child, and how after you were told that his child was not possible, how the only thing you could think about for months was if he dies, not being able to see his eyes, or nose, his gentle hands in the resemblance of another human being? Would they want to know that kind of sadness?
If the silence was broken, could you tell them how painful it is to inject hormones into your skin. What the burning feels like as it melts into your abdomen, or what the bruises look like? Would you tell them how on the days after your Ovidrel shot, you feel like you can't get out of bed and really, don't want to. That it takes at least four days to feel human after you've been laden with FSH. Would they want to listen about that first time you went to inject sperm of some man you've never laid eyes on into your body, what not being able to turn back really felt like, what the parking lot of the medical office looked like as you cried and cried like the scared little girl that you really were. Would they want to know how scared you really are?
Maybe they'd want to know about that first, second, or third negative test result and knowing that you were going to go through it again. You know, the getting up at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday to get your blood drawn and your egg follicles counted, in a town 45-minutes away, only to do it the next day, and the day after that. Would they laugh when you tell them how you now know not to ever do an IUI after emptying your bladder because the pain you felt was excruciating...or how it sounds to have your donor's ID number stated, restated, and restated again just to remind you a final time of why you're here before lying back on a table wondering if this would be the time it worked? Maybe you'd tell them that what you have to look forward to if the fourth time doesn't work, is going to be twice as hard. I'm pretty sure they wouldn't understand when you tell them without the slightest shudder, how normal all this has started to feel.
Perhaps you'd tell them about the email you got, about the donor you first chose, and how an offspring had been born with a cleft pallette, and how you could continue to use that sperm, or you could find a new donor. Not over wine and laughter, but a Friday afternoon at your kitchen table and a Monday at your desk. Could they understand how it feels to pick your future out by nothing more than sifting through height requirements, the color of someones eyes, the sound of a voice, a childhood photo, a silouette, and a great answer to who do you want to be when you grow up?
Would it make sense then, if to that person you also told, that on some days you harbored a glimmer of hope and resilience. That there were a handful of days that you allow yourself to think that perhaps one day you would see two lines on a pregnancy test strip. That the level of disappointment you feel because there will never be the accidental surprise you'd always hoped for, would actually be a surprise of epic proportions. Would they want to know about the way you bury that down inside, so as not to let yourself think about it too long?
So you sit and you sit, and you think and you think, and you wonder and wonder about all the silence that surrounds you. And the result is that you make a choice and your choice is to continue to sit silently...all the while, waiting.
Waiting for the question of how are you to be asked again. Waiting for the arms of someone other than your husband to wrap around you and be willing to stand beside you on this journey. Waiting to not be the pink elephant. Waiting for two lines to appear on the very next test. Waiting for a life to grow inside you.
Waiting...
For normalcy.
