Seismic Shift.

May 9, 2011 at 5:00 am | Posted in Heartbreak, Infertility | 18 Comments

It’s like my entire world cracked and fell apart on Friday.

I thought I had prepared myself for the outcome. I asked myself SO MANY TIMES.

Am I REALLY okay with being done?

So many times.

And always, the answer was YES.

Truth is, I was long done with treatments back in November.

But nothing prepared me for the ACTUALITY of realizing that we were done.

The dream of the family I wanted, ever since I was a KID, is gone.

I never expected this would be the outcome, even as I prepared for what I thought was the inevitable end.

On Friday, when J couldn’t answer the question Why SHOULDN’T I just sign up for this? I went ahead and did it. I signed up for the Marine Corps Marathon on October 30.

And on Saturday, I was consumed with excitement and nerves and planning. I ran 5 miles – 2 on my own and three with my running buddy. And we made plans for races during the season and chatted. And a good blogger friend decided to sign up for it, too. So now I have a partner.

Saturday night J and I went out to dinner and we talked about our new life, how we wanted to show O the world, and how this gave us more flexibility now, how we’d only take up ONE row on a plane, how we’d be able to really focus on living our life together, the three of us.

When I went to bed on Saturday night, I felt OKAY. Like I had so much good stuff in my life, that I would weather this storm pretty well.

And then I woke up on Sunday.

Mother’s Day.

I was cramping and bleeding.

I made the best of it. The day was actually a really good one, weather-wise. O and J and I went for a 2 mile hike in the morning, then headed out to the family gathering for Mother’s Day. I played with my niece and nephew and chatted with the family members and drank beer and ate bad chinese food.

And then I got my fortune.

When I opened the bag with the cookie in it, the cookie skittered from my hands under the table. I joked that maybe I should open another, that it was trying to get away from me. But I opened it anyway.

Old dreams never die, they just get filed away.

I nearly started crying at the table when I read it. I couldn’t talk, even when the others were swapping their fortunes and joking that they didn’t understand what it was trying to say.

Mine was meant for me.

It’s so odd to be ME right now. Outwardly nothing’s changed. Nothing about our day to day life is different. We still laugh, kiss, hug, tell O we love him, deal with tantrums, play, eat, run, sleep.

It’s just on the inside.

I’m full of shattered glass.

I didn’t really KNOW much when I was a kid. I knew my grandfather and I were kindreds. I knew I was going to get married someday. And I knew that two kids was the perfect number.

And I don’t want to sound selfish, or ungrateful. Because I KNOW, especially now, that we are so very lucky to have O in our lives in the first place.

It’s just that now there’s also a grief for the little one that will never be.

Old dreams never die.

They just get filed away.

And maybe, with time, I’ll forge the sharp edges of this pain into my identity, knitting me into a stronger woman.

That’s about all I can manage right now. Hope that someday it won’t hurt so much.