The Date Is Set

The date is set.

My sister-in-law-- my husband's twin--is not only engaged as of April but getting married on August 31.

This means I have just over 2 months to get over myself enough to get through the whole thing with a smile and without any tears.

It means I have, like, three months until the phone call where we find out they're pregnant.

Because the Universe is both great and cruel like that. It just depends on what side you're on. Currently? I'm on both. I'm not flexible, so it makes my thighs hurt.

My 35-year-old sister-in-law is going to waste zero time in the baby making department.

And, mother fucker, that is going to be all kinds of a roller coaster.

So, I guess the self-indulgence stops now.

...or in a few minutes.

Days?

Ok. Minutes.

I promise.

I think.

As always, it's hip to be square, kids.

CONSIDER YOUR AUDIENCE

I had a little bit of a hissy last night.

Ok, a lot of a hissy.

Cause, just... WHAT THE FUCK?

I use an app, PinkPad, for tracking fertility. I downloaded it and starting charting more than a year ago. I didn't start using it until I got an inkling from The Universe that I needed some more information to figure out why the baby making wasn't working. If we had accidentally or quickly gotten pregnant, I wouldn't have needed the app. Furthermore, if we already were pregnant, I wouldn't be logging in to the dumb thing anymore.

Imagine my surprise when I touched the icon for the app to be faced with an invitation to buy their new baby naming app!

ARE YOU JOKING?! CONSIDER YOUR AUDIENCE.

There is a fairly good chance that people who are using your app aren't at the baby naming stage yet. There's also a very good chance that your notification that there is a baby naming app that your users DON'T NEED is pouring salt on a very open wound.

Yes, people who are charting fertility might eventually need baby names, but if they're actively using your app, they don't. BECAUSE SCIENCE.

I was fuming. I think I'm still fuming. I think I'm going to find another app.

Clearly, the minds behind Pink Pad have never actually dealt with infertility or the twisted way that every little thing affects people who are dealing with it. Instead, they go with the SEX MEANS BABIES MEANS PEOPLE WILL SPEND MONEY ON STUPID THINGS FOR BABIES AND NO ONE EVER SAD FACES.

Yeah, right.

As always, it's hip to be square, kids.

Does it get easier?

So this is for all the lovely ladies who have been through where we are right now. 

And men, I guess. I don't think there are a lot of Y chromosomes who hang out here.

Does this shit ever get easier? 

I have to say, when I was so busy that I didn't have a moment to think for myself and I was sleeping on borrowed time because there was just so much to do, it was easier. It really was, but you can't work on infertility if you're dead, so it doesn't sound like a good way to do things. I am the world's best sleeper, and I was getting 4 hours of sleep at most per night. It wasn't because I couldn't sleep but because there just weren't enough hours to get enough sleep. I was running on fumes and caffeine. Wonderful, wonderful caffeine.

And I just can't do that. 

I feel like a spool of thread. When you first get it, it's well put together and looks solid. It's wrapped up tight and self-contained. As you use it or unravel more than you need, it becomes less orderly and starts to look disheveled. You roll it back up again as neatly as possible the first time, but it doesn't look the same. As you use it, or as it falls out of the sewing basket and rolls across the floor, you take less and less time to wrap it up well because it's just freaking thread. You can just get more thread. It's still perfectly good thread that is useful for the same purposes as before, but it's not orderly. It's not self-contained. It's a cotton hot mess. Finally, you stop rolling it up at all because it's just so tangled in itself that it doesn't even matter anymore. You've cut the slack off of it so many times that there is much less of it, but not because the other pieces have been used. They've just been wasted.

Eventually, it can't even serve the one purpose for which it exists-- to hold stuff together. It goes at the bottom of the sewing basket to be replaced by less messy spools that still have their shit on lock. And it will remain there until you get tired of the strings being tangled in everything and having to rip your useful tools out of it's grasp. 

I'm a spool of thread who is full of knots and just as useful but so well disguised as something so very broken. I've gotten so used to feeling broken that it's almost like the status quo. It's just part of what this is. It's part of who I am. I can't even prove that I'm one piece anymore. But I am. I'm tangled and knotted and disorganized, but I'm one piece. 

I am.

So, back to the original question: does this ever get easier?

Today is Father's Day

Life has been crazy and hectic. As much as it has been overwhelming, it's also probably been a good thing on about eleventy thousand levels.

...Especially the level where we're too busy to think about how our hearts hurt.

For whatever reason, today was the day that neither of us could ignore the hurting heart anymore. Unfortunately, I get really consumed with my own sadness and forget that my husband has some of his own. Ok, a lot of his own.

We're struggling.

Mother's Day came and went and didn't really bother us. Maybe it's because we have two mothers to worry about and it's sandwiched between three birthdays, but it came and went with little to no emotional pomp and circumstance. I didn't spend a lot of time wondering when it would be my day, and it never came up with husband.

My husband barely talks to his father and certainly would not make an effort to see him on Father's Day, so it's just my dad. My parents just moved, and we have been helping them nonstop. We're already exhausted and edgy from the sheer amount of stuff to do professionally and personally. This weekend was already raw, but we were getting through it. Then a friend who planned her wedding the same time we planned ours announced her pregnancy and everything just unraveled.

I couldn't keep it together anymore for about a thousand selfish reasons. I went back to thinking about how unfair it is, and I let all of those thoughts into my head about what she has done in her life that makes her less deserving than me. You know, like any of that matters in the genetic lottery. Husband had already declared that he hated Father's Day, and we had argued because I felt he was punishing my dad because his dad can be a jerk. I didn't consider the fact that he was also struggling because it represented our continued failure. We were supposed to be celebrating our own reproductive success by now, but we're not. More frighteningly, I have genuinely resigned myself to the fact that we may never have anything to celebrate.

So on Father's Day 2014, it felt like everything came apart at the seams, and we couldn't get it back together despite the apologies to each other and celebrations with my family. Even though the emotional roller coaster had stopped for a while, we took another unexpected drop and we're still trying to catch our breath.

I'll be here gasping for air for a little while as we try to sort this out and smooth out these very raw edges. Send sandpaper.

As always, it's hip to be square (and a little jagged), kids.