Pity the Fool

Somehow after the humiliation of dropping off that first "sample," (See? I still can't even say it.) I dusted myself off and found the willpower to drop off the second. By the grace of God, my long lost high school friend was not at the lab the next day, the test results turned out to be normal a week later and my symptoms have largely subsided (save some heartburn which for me seems to turn up every now and again as a delightful companion to stressful life events). Still, with the luck I've had over the past several weeks I'm beginning to worry whether any other irksome medical issues want to demand some investigation. Perhaps a UTI is lurking, just waiting for the right opportunity to rear its frequent pee-making head.

Outside of my digestive tract, I've been trying to figure out what to say about how I'm feeling, which has been a challenge since I'm not sure how I'm feeling. Mostly my emotional existence has devolved into a state of pretty constant self-pity, and my friends, pity ain't pretty. Sometimes I start thinking of myself in the third person, as if I'm watching me on a movie or following my story in a novel. That's when I really lose the belief that I am capable of ever moving on and charging ahead. I feel so sorry for this poor girl who just can't seem to capture her commonplace dream, who instead sees her raw hope dashed time and time and time again. I cry for her and her poor beginnings of a baby that was never meant to be. It's so hard to accept the idea that her amazing marriage can't seem to evolve into a family, that they might never know what it's like to hear their own children run through the house.

There's no reason for me to think all of this. No one has told me it is not going to happen for me -- in fact, the people with actual qualifications to make such projections have told me there's every reason in the world to think it will. But these days, what I feel most acutely is the absence of my brief brush with motherhood, the gaping hole that it left behind and the fear that I am a fool for ever having hoped. And that I might never get there again.