To Have and Have Not

I am currently reading An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination, a memoir by Elizabeth McCracken, who is a heartbreakingly talented writer with this heartbreakingly tragic story (the stillbirth of her first child) to tell. Among other observations (she is the kind of writer who finds precisely the right words for the most indescribable of emotional experience) McCracken describes this sense that when her baby died, the time that followed occurred in two tracks: "on one, he lived and we took him home...on the other track, the one I accidentally took, he died...."

What woman who has experienced any event on the spectrum of loss -- from miscarriage to the loss of a child -- could not relate to this? All I need to do is look at a calendar and I see, like a photo that stopped developing midway through, all of the experiences that I am not having these days and months. I am not starting to show and buying maternity clothes. I am not telling people about a baby that will be born this summer. I am not feeling excited about a late spring baby shower, or starting to worry about that looming due date and the labor and delivery it will require of me. But I could have been. I was so close.

There's this other duality that I've started to sense in this infertility journey. I live my life utterly consumed by my desire for motherhood -- by the piercing awareness that I lack the thing that I want and need most. It is often the first thing I think of as I force myself out of bed each morning, and the last as I get back in at night. I am constantly aware of this fight I have on my hands, the next battle a deep shadow over every thought, every action. Constantly aware of the life I feel I should be living.

And yet, there is this need to keep going, to sustain myself for the sake of myself. I have this fundamental sense that no matter how much I want motherhood, I have to keep something of myself intact or I will lose everything in my quest for it. I have to remind myself that what I have is inherently valuable and meaningful, not just a reflection of what I don't have. This requires keeping a healthy dose of denial at my disposal. It means waking up this past Wednesday and deciding that, no, I just cannot have another day of desperate sadness -- I've got to pretend it doesn't matter. It means going out to dinner with my husband on a Saturday night and rather than going through the motions, wishing we didn't have such freedom, really trying to relish that experience for what it is (which is pretty good). It means trying to live my life -- the one I have -- not biding my time until I get the life I want, the life I hope is out there somewhere.

My operative hysteroscopy is scheduled for March 26. Before then, there are movies to be seen, food and wine to be enjoyed, magazines to be read, pedicures to be had, friends to be laughed with. I'm going to try to stay focused on the life I have. The one that's real.