At the support group today we had an opportunity to do a writing exercise based on a heart prompt. This was mine.

Twisted inner heart, transparent but hidden. I once was warm and pliant, but now I am cold and hard. Blue ribbons, pink ribbons, spiderwebs flung across the cavern like an explosion.
It was an explosion.
It nearly killed me.
Nearly.
But now there is beauty in the mess left behind.
There is life still slowly beating.
I am glass, waiting to shatter, but for the moment I sit in your hand, in your pocket, weighted like a large pebble. With smooth edges I slide back from where you took me. Hide me, guard me, keep me safe.
I wait for another day.

Love is not a word I use very much anymore. It is too risky. Love I left behind, buried in the ground with my son.
It is not gone – just missing. Maybe I’ll find it again someday.
The metronome tick-tocks. It is stuck in a loop, never forward, never back, just stuck, counting down from nothing to nothing. Where do I go from here? How do I find my heart again if I’m not allowed to move? I wish I could reach out and stop the beat. Or change it. But it’s not mine to touch, my arm isn’t that long. I grow restless, frustrated. This is not my beat anymore. I start to hate it, despise it.
This is not love. I’ve lost it and I need it back.

I am not one who has ever believed in the saying that when one door shuts, another opens. I rather see it as a random game of cards – some doors close, some open, but not necessarily in a way that can help you out. Sometimes maybe they all slam shut at the same time.

Yesterday my one major client, the one providing me with my one bit of reliable income, told me they no longer needed me. It wasn’t a huge hit to the point that it affects our bills or lifestyle, as my freelancing just isn’t big enough to create that much of an impact, but it still hurts. That was our emergency money, our “fun stuff” money. And more than that it was a door shutting in my face unexpectedly. I think the unexpectedness of it is what’s really bugging me. I do not like having to deal with surprizes, but that is life.

This morning at the bank my computer was having issues and throwing some weird error message and not allowing me to do anything. I called the IT department, who then forwarded the problem along to the software company. Me, being an IT-trained and experienced person, didn’t want to just sit around waiting for someone to maybe figured it out and get back to me. So I poked around in the computer, tried clearing some cache files out and such, and voila, error fixed. I called back the IT department to tell them I had fixed it and told them what the problem was. He was rather stunned, and then impressed. That was when the guy remembered who I was and that I had mentioned I have a degree in IT. He told his boss about it, and then called me back up to tell me to send over my resume.

Now I’m not putting any weight on the idea that they’ll turn around and hire me tomorrow, because it’s a very small IT department and I don’t think they’re looking to add anyone. But the fact of the matter is that I made an impression, and they’ll have my resume on-hand when they are. I’ve been looking for a job in IT, but, as a person with the college training but little real-world experience, it is very hard to find a place to get into the field. I need to get my foot in the door, and maybe this will be it.

The thing is, regardless of why you think the doors open and close, one will eventually open. I just happened to get a reminder of that very soon after one closed, and I am thankful for that. Sometimes I just need a little encouragement – especially since I’m trying to move in a direction I haven’t before.

::

I’m going to be 27 in a couple of months and it feels like I still have so much more to learn about myself, about life. In one way that doesn’t seem surprizing, it is only 27, after all. And yet I guess I always figured by my late twenties I’d have a little bit more of a handle on my own self, that I’d feel more like an adult rather than a student still searching for her comfort zone. I had hoped to have more self-confidence, more success – maybe those go hand-in-hand.

I wish I wasn’t so afraid. You’d think after what I’ve been through that the little things wouldn’t bother me so much – and sometimes they don’t. But sometimes, often, they do. In many ways I wish I cared less, like the months after Devin died where nothing else really did matter. Our minds went into crisis mode, where everything else was insignificant out of pure self-preservation, knowing that we were already taxed to our limits dealing with the only one thing that did matter, and anything else would send us over the edge. There was a comforting peace to that numbness, in knowing so very clearly what was important in your life and that everything else could wait. But somehow over the last year it has crept back in, the anxiety and fear that stems simply from caring: caring about what people think, about what I do, about who I am, about the future. Life does keep moving, and you either have to move with it or sink. So, damnit, why does it feel like I’m still just trying to keep my head above water?

I do not like the jealous, angry, bitter pieces of me. I hate feeling upset at others’ successes… it makes me feel like a terrible person. Why can’t I just feel happy, even at a distance? The bitterness just bubbles up, congealing from little disappointments to one giant bubble of unhappiness. I know where it comes from, I know where it starts: I feel like I have failed myself in so many ways. My unhappiness is not because of others – triggered by others, but it comes from within myself. I know that, but I don’t know how to escape it, either. I don’t know how to lose the pain I carry around with me.

I miss that feeling of happiness… the feeling that you’re holding something so precious and so perfect that nothing can touch it, that it outweighs everything else.

I have my therapy appointment on Monday. It has been a hard month and in my mind I have been logging all the things things I want to talk about… the concerns, the frustrations, the utter confusions. I don’t go so far as to make an actual list, though some days it is tempting, lest I forget something important.

I don’t know why it has been such a hard month for me, though I have my suspicions: the forced break and July being the month we got pregnant with Devin. Not even cycling this month just makes 2 years ago seem so very far away. But I wasn’t even thinking about that until yesterday when the thought snapped into place and I leaned over to Den and said, “It’s July.”

But I don’t know. It could just as likely be one of those things, the normal ebb and flow of loss and infertility. Some months are just harder than others, it’s just how it is.

::

I have felt myself drawing inward. When I am feeling down is when I most need support, and yet it is when I am the most sensitive. Instinctively I pull back, separating myself, giving myself a large buffer zone. It makes me feel even more alone, but social interactions can be full of anxiety. My paranoia starts sneaking in, frustrating me yet charming me at the same time. It becomes so hard to see things clearly. I wish I had the kind of self-confidence I project. I don’t. Sometimes I almost have it, but I’m always one little slip away from falling into self-doubt and fear. I have always felt this way – always the child who tried her best to please her teachers, fearful of falling short. But instead of becoming a friend-pleaser I isolated myself, doing my own thing instead of even trying to fit in. I was the loner, the bookworm, the geek. I was the weird one. Now I’m out in the real world, being an adult, and I find myself being far more normal than ever before. I feel comfortable in it, too, much to my surprize. But it makes me nervous, too. I feel like I twist and turn right along the edge, and I frequently have to fight the urge to run and hide before I get hurt. I am too sensitive, too soft.

Frequently I wonder what other people see. Not just when they look at me, but when they look at anything. When I drive down the road all the little things along the way now evoke memories for me. I have lived here for 4 years, and the way I see the town has changed because of my experiences. I frequently wonder as I drive along, how does my husband see these same streets? He’s lived here all his life, has had vastly different experiences than I have in my short 4 years. I try to wrap my brain around the idea that every single person driving through that intersection sees it in a different way, colored by their own personality and experiences. I wonder what my parents see when they visit; I try to remember how I saw it the very first time… how confusing it must have been.

It is the same way with people. Sometimes I stand in front of our full-length mirror and just stare at myself, tilting my head to the right and the left, squinting my eyes a little. I can spend the whole day looking down at my body and seeing one thing, then step in front of the mirror and be shocked that it looks so different from another person’s view. I lean forward to examine my nose, my eyes, that big zit that popped up on the side of my nose. I know every curve so very intimately, but then I think… if I saw myself in a crowd, would I recognize me? Would I think she had too large of a nose, would I wonder if that slightly pooched belly meant that she was pregnant? Would I think she moved gracefully or haltingly, is she tall or short? My mind struggles to picture it, but fails – I am too close to ever remove myself to the objective view.

Of all the things in the world, of all the knowledge, all the theories, all the philosophy and mathematics, the one thing I want to really truly understand I am simply too wrapped up in to ever really know. I’m not sure it’s even possible to ever truly understand oneself, though that doesn’t stop us from trying. There are always discoveries, there are degrees to attain. But there is no equation, there is no guidebook. We’re all just flailing around, doing the best that we can.

Dear baby boy:

It has been two years since we first found out you were going to be ours, two years since that light came into my life. I know most people don’t consider a positive pregnancy test the start, but with you…. you left too soon. But I had 8 months with you. 8 months of feeling the happiest I’ve ever felt in my life. 8 months of knowing that things were going to be different… that things were different. And this was the start of it. Staring at that pregnancy test, feeling my heart race, feeling giddy and shocked and struck with a sense of wonder beyond anything I had known. I looked at that positive pregnancy test, with two pink lines, and knew you were there, growing.

I can’t believe it’s been 2 years since then. By the time I get pregnant with your next sibling there will have been 2 years between successful IVF cycles. That is the timing I wanted between you and your sibling. I want to keep this happy and remember all the good things, but it’s been a long time. I’m getting so tired, baby boy… so tired of waiting. I can accept the reality that you will never be here with us, but I can’t understand why you don’t have a sibling growing yet. We almost did. We thought we did.

I don’t like watching the time go by.

I love my living room. I think I have always known this, but talking about things with my therapist today really solidified it in my head: I really love my living room.

I didn’t always. There was a time when it, like the entire rest of the house, disgusted me. It had dark wood panelling and horrid wallpaper and just looked like a disgusting, old, dirty cave. When we pulled the paneling down I worked very hard to find the perfect paint color, a very light grey-green. I have two shelves of photos, one of Den and me, one for Devin. I hung some of my photos on the wall. It’s not done yet – there’s still a built-in bookcase to paint, and the trim hasn’t been painted yet either. But it’s airy. Bright. There are windows on both sides of the room that we open to let a breeze through. Even when the rest of the house is too warm, I sit beneath the lazily spinning ceiling fan and feel perfect. I can sit here and look out at our yard, at the sky and the sun. Yesterday morning I set up my laptop, pulled out my notepad, and worked on some freelance projects. I felt at peace – and how often does that happen? I love this room for that reason alone.

This was the room I set up camp in when I got my Zoe as a puppy. Both of our desks and computers were in the second bedroom (the “baby’s room”), with far too many cords and other chewables for a new puppy. So I shut all the doors, set up the baby gate, and used the living room as my home base. I had my laptop on the kitchen table, the TV, the couch, and lots and lots of dog toys. I remember those months with so much joy. There was no baby at that point, no TTC. No job. Just my little furry baby and me all day. We’d play on the floor with her toys, then she’d sack out on my lap or on her pillow like only a baby can. I’d watch TV for an hour, legs going numb, because I couldn’t bear to move her.

That’s always how I pictured my time with a baby: here in this living room, baby toys everywhere, just me on the floor all day, doing nothing and everything… and finding joy beyond words in doing it. This room has all those memories, and all those hopes and dreams. I hope someday I’ll be able to fulfill them.

Twitter and I are breaking up.

I like the concept. It works well for me. But the problem is the public-ness of it all. I know, I write in a public blog about my reproductive system, what could possibly be more public than that? The thing is, this blog is moderately “hidden” from search engines. I am not stupid, I know that nothing is fool-proof, but I have some sense of being left alone in the internet world. I am here, wide open, if you know where to look – on the infertility blog rolls, from other blogs. But some random schmo searching for “condoms” won’t suddenly pop up in my blog. I have things in place to keep the spam away – and it actually does a reasonably good job of it, too.

Twitter spam is irritating as hell. I get it in all forms – the random friender that is really just a spam front; the @replies from some company/product that I might have mentioned off-hand; and the people who twitter and add others just for the numbers and the publicity. It pisses me off. Don’t use me to make a buck. Some days I feel like the only thing my twitter account does is allow this crap to find me. I now think twice about what words I’m using. It’s negated all the positives.

I find myself liking Facebook more, though I post much less there than I do in Twitter. I know who is reading, and it’s a lot more interactive. (It’s also a lot more family members, which is why I keep discussions of my hooha down to a minimum there… hence having twitter separate.)

So I might be going friends-only with twitter. Which means no happy twitter updates at the top of the blog during IVF stuff… which is the reason I started it in the first place. This is a problem. I dislike problems.

It comes in waves, sneaking up on me, crushing me when I least expect it. Panic. Fear. There are days when I feel like I’m sitting underwater, the pressure sitting on my chest, like a physical manifestation of the huge obstacles in my way. It sits there, unmoving, and I slowly suffocate.

I had the appointment with my RE today, the consult to talk protocol and plans for this next cycle. I went in with a little bit of hope that he’d have some new idea, some new research paper, that could point us in the right direction. He didn’t have any. I wasn’t shocked by that, but I was a little disappointed. We’re going to do the same protocol as last time, he might change dosage very slightly as we go. Last cycle went very well for me, so it’s truly not a terrible thing. At least we’re in a better spot than we were before the last stims cycle. At least this one has a much better chance of giving good eggs.

But it’s the eggs, it all comes down to the eggs. After talking for a bit I said to him, “I’m guessing you’d recommend putting in more than one this time.” He certainly does. For me his recommendation is transferring 2 or 3 embryos at day 3, or 2 blastocysts on day 5. At this point it’s pretty clear I am not a “normal” IVF patient, and just don’t fall into the normal recommendations. I observed that my implantation rate has not been good. He told me that the research is showing that women with low oocyte maturity – people like me – seem to have a much lower pregnancy rate than normal patients…. our eggs just don’t stick very well. Even though they look like perfect embryos, dividing and growing and getting a really good rating. There’s still something just not right about them.

He made a mistake, though. We were looking at my full IVF history, with my losses and everything, and he said how just unfortunately I’ve been. I was quick to point out that I did get a viable pregnancy with my own egg, a healthy baby… that my stillbirth was a freak accident, and not connected to this egg immaturity problem. He said, “We don’t know that for sure.” My thoughts froze. I acquiesced and conversation moved on, but inside my head I was saying, No, no, no. Don’t say that, it’s not true. It’s not true. Don’t put those thoughts in my head! I’ve spent the rest of the day with a little voice in the back of my head wondering if it was possible. What if something is truly that fucked up about my eggs? Devin’s placenta was small, he was small. Maybe what killed him was a freak accident, but was there something else wrong? Was it really truly a complete fluke that I have these two really rare things happen to me… or are they connected? After returning to work I wanted to huddle in the corner with my hands pressed to my ears, as if that could keep my fears – my paranoia – at bay.

I left my appointment with my light jacket pulled haphazardly over my head in an attempt to protect myself from the downpour, but I couldn’t throw a cover over my heart. I am so broken. I sat in the car for a while, called Den, replayed thoughts and numbers and realizations. When he was talking about my eggs and pregnancy rate I knew he was right. I’ve known the truth for a while, but today it hit me full-on. Hearing the doctor say what I already knew made it real. There is something very wrong with my eggs. All of IVF is a gamble, but for me they truly are shooting in the dark. All the normal statistics just don’t apply.

I will be transferring two embryos next time, because I have finally accepted that the chance of me getting twins is pretty much nil. As much as I want to believe it has something to do with the cycle, the quality of the egg…. the last cycle really blew it out for me, I think. A perfect blastocyst, from a stims cycle that produced a embryo that led to a pregnancy, a FET without the demands of stims… it was the ideal cycle. If any of them were going to work, it was. And it didn’t. It simply didn’t. Once the possibility of twins – and the higher risk that entails – is removed, then transferring more makes sense. I need to be pregnant. Maybe this will help it happen sooner.

But the thought also panics me. I have only two stims cycles left under my insurance coverage, and whatever frozen transfers may result from those stims. That’s it. Total, lifetime. I know it seems foolish, but I start thinking about how it is looking more and more that we will never get the two living children we’ve always wanted, to raise together. And sometimes, when I am feeling really low, I wonder if we will have enough to bring home even one. It does seem like 2 stims cycles and FETs is enough to get me pregnant at least once…. but what if I lose that one, too? It just doesn’t seem to be enough of a buffer. I’m suddenly staring at the end of the road drawing nearer and it’s freaking me out.

Back when we started this journey into IVF we had only 2 stims cycles covered, but that seemed like plenty enough. That was back when the chance of pregnancy was over 50%, when stims cycles would result in a basketful of eggs, where babies didn’t die and miscarriages happened to other people. Now I’m adding it all up and it scares the shit out of me.

My doctor told me I’m handling all these disappointments and losses with a lot of grace. And I am, in some ways. But he doesn’t see how my grace is based entirely on the faith that this will work out in the end – that all of this pain and suffering will be worth it when I bring home my child. And he doesn’t see how very dark it gets when I allow the possibility that this won’t end well at all.