One more time, with feeling.
I am comparing what my current experience is to how I felt in the last DE cycle. Like I said, I felt an unequivocal bout of nausea at 5dp3dt, and some queasiness on the days after. This time, I have not felt a full fledge bout of nausea and I'm at 6dp5dt. I should say that there are a few moments each day when I'm feeling a slightly queasy (maybe). Like after lunch yesterday, I had about 3 minutes when I felt quite unsettled with the food in my tummy, which isn't typical for me. Still, that's not much to go on, compared to my memory of what it was last year (and yes, I see a problem with comparing a memory of what happened 1 year ago and what is happening right now - memory is not that accurate).
I came home last night and felt like this cycle was a bust. I got myself convinced of that and felt very crappy.
So, I did what usually helps, if only a little: I went out for a walk.
On my walk, I ran into this woman I know. I wasn't wearing my glasses and had I been, I would have run the other way. She is fundamentally a good and kind person, but there are layers and layers of stuff on top of that. And she is also a very, VERY successful clinical psychologist, with a beautiful house and 2 beautiful kids. Cue the upward social comparrissons and the feelings of sheer inadequacy that come along with that. She called me out when she saw me, and of course, I kicked into my socially gracious mode and started walking and talking with her. What else was I going to do? Fake a bout of nausea?
Anyway, mid-conversation, when I'm trying to steer that talk to all of her successful endeavours and her beautiful children (and get the spotlight off of me), she cuts in and asks where we are at in our family building.
Fuck.
Who the hell asks that.
And then she felt that the question might not have been appropriate so she starts damage control and I just mutter that there have been challenges, already saying more than I ever intended to this person with whom I am not close. She chimes in that it was a challenge to conceive her second one. I didn't know what to say to that and I certainly wasn't going to take that as an invitation to talk.
Thus, the downward spiral I was already on got a whole lot steeper after I came back home. This was one time when going for a walk didn't help at all, and in fact made things worse. There are so many ways in which I am disappointed with my life. All the hope and promise I've been feeling in the last weeks was sucked away in a cerebral stormcloud of 'where did I go wrong', 'when is it going to be our turn', 'how could I end up so far from where I wanted', and 'where is it that i even want to go at this point?' There was intense sobbing that went along with that, and lots of staring into a bleak future.
It's interesting how going into this cycle, I was really working the mindset of this being just the first try of many, and really preparing to be back in DC later in the summer for a FET. Despair management, I suppose. But of course, once that blastocyst is in, one starts seeing things much differently. You want it to LIVE, damn it. You want it to be your child, at long last. Seriously women, I will be crushed if this try doesn't work. There is really no way around it. I was a fool to think that there was. Perhaps that's just what I needed to tell myself to take this big leap of faith once more.
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| From Katie Evans |
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