Chewing the cud

I really shouldn't be loitering over my breakfast, posting, but here I am.  I have been ruminating on bitterness, anxiety and similar things.  I had a very disturbed night last night because I was dreaming anxiety dreams about work.  Well, technically it wasn't about work per se - I was on a spaceship and there were alarms going off and we'd crash landed, but we had to evacuate to safety.  But after a few go-arounds of forcing myself to wake up, going back to sleep and dreaming the same damn dream, it hit me that it was really about work.  I won't go into it here, but there's all sorts of crazy going on at work.  Mostly I just try to keep my head down but you can't help being sucked into the maelstrom of intrigue and speculation every now and then. 

Where was I?  Oh yes, in the moments when I was awake last night, trying not to dream the same dream again, I was ruminating over the FET/IVF anxiety and bitterness.  Specifically with the anxiety of trying to force Local Clinic to do the beta a day earlier than usual.  They do betas 12 days after transfer, which is utterly and ridiculously late.  I mean, it's not so bad with a 3 day transfer but it's just inhumane with a 5 day transfer.  And now with the transfer delay it is putting me in a squicky situation with regards to signing up for a fresh cycle at LV Clinic because the day I need to sign up on is now the day before my beta.  I mean, it doesn't really matter, as by 16DPO an HPT should damn well better be right, but I'd like to know for definite.  And I guess I could just postpone a month, but I get so worried about my declining egg quality that another month going by just seems like such a huge event that I don't want to even contemplate it.  Oh well, it's probably all academic, as the embryo probably won't survive the thaw and then I'll know the cycle outcome 12 days earlier.

Bitterness is something else I was ruminating on.  When I first went through this infertility nonsense, with the failed IVF and everything, I got bitter.  It was a white hot, sharp bitterness that seared my very soul every time I saw a baby or a pregnant woman, or heard of someone getting pregnant.  I hated it.  I am not naturally a bitter person or a pessimist (not that I'm naturally an optimist either, but that's probably a separate post).  I worked diligently at facing these bitter thoughts, of examining what was underneath them, at "getting over it".  And you know what?  I did.  I did "get over it".  I reached that mythical place of acceptance - not acceptance that it was never going to happen, you understand, but acceptance that this was my lot in life and that I would be strong enough to power through until I got what I wanted.  I was not a little smug in my secret heart of hearts.  I was evolved, I was healthy, I was the perfect Oprah vision of an infertile.

And then.  There were more IVF failures, the hepatitis C scare, more failures and chemical pregnancies.  And the growing realization that it probably never will happen.  That I'll probably never get what I want, even though I worked really hard at it.  And the bitterness slowly seeped back in.  But this time it is a smoldering, deep bitterness.  A bitterness at the very core of my soul.  A bitterness that pervades every moment of my life, every cell of my body.  A bitterness that is what's left from the burning embers of my hopes and dreams.  It's a different bitterness than I had before - this time I'm genuinely happy for other people if they get pregnant.  God, I wouldn't want them to go through this.  I'm happy that they are spared this particular brand of hell.  I don't even mind seeing babies or pregnant women so much, as they seem so far removed from me that it doesn't register as much as it used to.  I suppose I'm learning how to be a childless person, how to be the maiden aunt.  I look at childless people a lot more these days.  I notice them, I try to gauge if they carry a constant sadness around with them or if they are happy with their lot in life.  But the bitterness is there, and it's all about me, about me not getting what I wanted, about being denied, about being thwarted and stunted.  Oh, and I'm angry right along with the bitterness, I'm angry that my life has sunk to this, this desperate chase to have a child.  The money I have spent, the hours of anguish that I have wasted, the evenings I have stayed in nurturing my ovaries while my friends have gone out for cocktails and fun, the idiocy of McDonald's-eating meth-smoking* lazy ass morons getting to procreate while I sit in my organic, toxic free home waiting for a child to enlighten with trips to Europe, and reading of books, and gentle sweet accepting love.

I do try to accept that life is fundamentally unfair.  That I have plenty of good things that other people don't, and that just because I have been denied this one thing does not make my life crap.  But it's not shifting the bitterness or the anger.  I don't know if I even want to shift the bitterness, to be honest.  I'm trying to use it to propel my life in another direction, to view it as the defining time that will shape the second half of my life into something else.  Something better.  Something more tolerant and understanding of other peoples frailties and difficulties, and yes, their lazy ass moronic ways.  Something that can be about helping other people, and not just about a career and a nice house and exotic vacations and pretty children who go to the right college.  But damn, it is a painful transition to go through.

*Do you smoke meth?  Or do something else like snort it?  I am ignorant.