Coming Clean.

I'm trying to get my family's gifts packed up and sent off before they all go abroad for Christmas... why does it feel like they all make that decision, one I've been quietly trying to encourage since, oh, LEE MOVED THERE, the one year A and I finally acknowledge that doing dual family celebrations will give us aneurysms?

We--A and I--have been getting some tough-to-take news on upcoming expenses and health/fertility issues that are hard to deal with. I've been keeping it inside a long time but have starting "coming out of the closet" so to speak about it with most people. My way of dealing with it has become rather gallows humor. I speak about hemoraging money, blasting sperm, and hormonal fun with a sort of cynical expectation that we will not have luck. My mom, lord love her, is almost too sympathetic. "Oh, honey," she'll say, her voice wavering. "It's not funny..." Actually, in some ways, it is--the lengths we'll go to, that the odds and the industry are stacked against us so exhorbitantly, that we live this sort of dual reality where something that is slowly taking over our lives and absorbing 99.9% of our reality isn't something that can and/or should be discussed with everyone, so we end up not being completely honest with almost anyone. I am coming up with more and more creative ways to excuse my crazy-making doctor's appointments. I am appearing more and more demented as I shoot myself up with hormones. Things are becoming crazier and crazier.

I have to laugh. If I don't, I'll cry and never stop.

Of course, there are days when I do that too. There are days when I'm so angry and that's an emotion I've never dealt with well. I tend to lash out at whoever's nearest when I stub my toe or bite my cheek or turn my ankle. Imagine what it's like to be around me when I'm not just dealing with this, but dealing with it on mega-horse-doses of hormones! Fun for the whole family! It's worse because there's no one to be angry with. God, I suppose, but given the capriciousness of infertility, I really can't blame God. I'm not really a God-blaming kind of person in general anyway. I also don't thank him for touchdowns, though, so it evens out.

The worst part is, it's an incredibly isolating experience. I don't wish it--fertility treatments--on anyone (and apparently, going by the spate of "Ooops, we got pregnant the first time we tried!" pregnancies around me--fuckers--literally--I don't really have to) but it would also be nice to have a friend who's a friend for friend reasons also be someone who's had experience with this. As opposed to making friends with someone just because their plumbing is fucked up too. Just so I could talk about how taking the Clomid on the Clomid days makes me feel, or dreading the trigger shot even though I know it doesn't hurt, or feeling claustrophobic about everything some days.

I have great friends and they are super supportive, but this is an experience I didn't understand until we first met with Dr. Doogie, our baby-making doctor. It'd be comforting to have a friend who'd gone through the same ice-water-in-the-faceness of it all, the same 100% obsession.

So, this is me coming clean about it, internet-wise. I've been afraid of doing so for a while, mostly because it feels like saying "I want a baby so much I'll shoot myself full of synthetic hormones and make everyone around me listen for hours as I talk about LH, HCG, IUI, BBT and DPO until their ears bleed and they stop inviting me places" and that is so not who I want to be. It also feels like jinxing everything. Wishing for something is the surest way to never have it.

But not speaking or writing about all of it also means I can't vent about what's making me crazy (the non-hormonal crazy, more like the "I hate the dry cleaners!" kind of crazy, or "the dumbest shit in the world was my waiter!" kind of crazy, although I'm sure the hormones affect my interpretation of that kind of crazy) WHICH, of course, is the whole point of having the damn blog in the first place. So what I was doing was just not writing at all and that sucked too.

So, yeah. Here's where I am. I just want a baby, our baby, to grow inside me in a way most women take for granted. And I just can't make a sarcastic joke about that.