The "I" Word

I never thought it would be me.

I never thought I would be the one needing to be talked down from the ledge of self-blame. To have to fight the urge to apologize to my husband for something totally outside of my control.

I never thought I would hate my body, not because of how it looks, but because of how it's betrayed me.

I never thought "infertility" would be a word I'd need to get used to using in reference to myself.

But here I am.

To be honest, I don't want to be writing this. I was diagnosed with PCOS about 5 months ago, but it's just now sinking in that the "I" word applies to me. This topic isn't one that I discuss often with many people. As a general rule, "How's your reproductive system working?" isn't a question that comes up frequently in my circles.

And that's exactly why I feel compelled to drag this beast, kicking and screaming, out into the light. To publicly name my fears as my enemy instead of facing them alone. I know that I'm very much not alone. Scores of women and couples share this struggle and yet feel like they're the only ones.

So here we go.

I'm shining a light.

To put it quite plainly, it sucks.

It sucks to walk the path from "We're not ready for kids yet" to "We're ready to think about having kids" to "Okay, we actually really want to have kids now" to "There is a hole in our family where our child should be."

To vacillate between questioning every decision I've ever made while simultaneously realizing there was no way I could possibly know I'd be staring 30 in the face feeling left behind by the entire world around me. There was no family history. There were no warning signs.

To know that my spouse and I have so much love to give, and to be convinced that any kid would be beyond lucky to have him as a dad...while still having empty arms.

To feel guilty about so many things. About feeling sorry for myself when there are plenty of other people to show love to, or who have it worse than me. Or about how hard it is sometimes to be around families that I genuinely like, or about how I can't just be thrilled for every friend or acquaintance in the constant stream of people announcing that their family is growing.

To want to be pregnant so badly, while knowing that the day I get a positive test will be the day I start a totally new struggle with fear of loss, since I know first-hand how quickly unbridled joy can become the deepest sorrow.

To feel so hypersensitive to innocuous storylines on TV shows and movies that make it look so easy and accidental to get and stay pregnant, and to dread the part of small talk when questions like, "So do you have any kids?" come up. I still haven't thought of a good enough answer for that, because the answer is yes. And no.

To feel lIke I'm doing okay with it most of the time. Except for when I'm not.

To live in constant tension between hope for the future and fear that this is the only future I will ever have.

This is obviously a complicated issue, which means this is definitely not a comprehensive list of thoughts and feelings about it. But these are some of the big ones that I find myself facing regularly, and wouldn't be surprised if others do, too.

But I would be doing us all a disservice if I didn't also talk about the things that don't suck. 

About the ways God has remained present and constant and faithful. 

About the incredible gift of a partner my husband is and the fact that to him this is not my problem, it's our challenge. 

About the relief that having a diagnosis can bring to a world of uncertainty, and the tools for treatment that can provide hope. 

I'm tired, but I'm not throwing in the towel yet. While our options are limited, we haven't exhausted them all. I don't know if God will choose to work a miracle in the way we'd like - but I know that the One who can count the clouds is able. 

It's still messy. 

But it's not over.