This Shit is Hard.

Here's the thing- You never really walk away from infertility.  It's a loss and a grief that you will carry with you the rest of your life.  It changes you forever.  There are no easy answers and there are no perfect outcomes.  To deny that minimizes your journey.

The hubs and I have decided to move on and aggressively pursue adopting an older child.  We are signed up for parenting classes and working on what we'll need to do to pass a home study.  We are also thinking about seeking a second opinion with a new Reproductive Endocrinologist.  We're also thinking about throwing up our hands and walking away from the whole damn thing- for good.   Or becoming foster parents.  Sometimes, we're thinking about all of these options and changing our mind in the course of a day or even an hour. 

Clearly, there is no instruction manual for this kind of thing.

In the process, we are simply driving our friends and family members crazy.  Thinking out loud.  Announcing that we are pursuing one path, only to retract our decision later.  These lovely, lovely people root and cheer for us the whole way through.  If they have even half as much battle fatigue as we do, their kindness is nothing short of a miracle.   They love us and just want us to be happy.  The problem is that we're not even sure anymore what will make us happy.

Did I mention that this shit is hard?

Recently, I find myself reluctant to talk about it with our loved ones. Or I feel bad when I do bring it up.   I sense that this is becoming too much.  It's gone on for too long.  The back and forth and wheel spinning is exhausting.  There are other things happening in the world and our quest to have children is starting to become more than a little self involved.  It's tough.  I need support.  We need support.  We and the loved ones in our life also need resolution .

It's hard to resolve when you are still working things out.  The grief goes on and on.  Choices, choices everywhere and sometimes you're just too damn overwhelmed /tired/sad/angry to pick one.  But the whole time, you feel an urgent need to decide, to 'move on',  to solve the situation.  I know I need to accept this new normal and understand that the course of my life will be different. 

Historically, this is not a strength of mine. 

When my parents divorced, I was a junior in high school.  For many, many years after that I spent a lot of time mentally dividing my life up into the "before" and "after" of the divorce.  It took me almost a decade to process the grief of my nuclear family changing and ending.  To accept the new normal and understand that the course of my life would be different.  Not bad, just different.  For a long, long time- I was unable to truly accept it.  I had a very happy childhood and it ended when my parents split.  It was  surreal - almost as if that whole life before ceased to exist.  I literally ached and mourned for my "before" life.  

I was homesick for something that no longer existed.  A home I could not return home to. 

Lately, I'm struck by how much my reaction to infertility mirrors that divorce journey.  Deep, deep grief.  The death of a dream and a huge change in the course of my life- one I did not ask for.  I've been angry and sad and felt hopeless.   And that same nagging feeling of being homesick for a space or place you can never return to. 

The grief is the thing.  You can't shop it away.  You can't run it away.  Or wish it away. Or sleep it away.  There is no escape.  Trust me.  I've tried.  Very hard. 

Without fail, the grief returns.  And it's exhausting.

It makes you want to leave a giant out of office message to the world.  One that will give you the space and energy to begin to process this experience.  To mourn your losses and assess your choices.

Just when it feels like the whole world should come to a screeching  halt, life moves on.  In the time we're been on this road,  the loved ones in our life have married, had multiple children, moved across the country.  They've graduated from college and gone off into the world.  They have tried new jobs and some even have even passed on. 

And here we are.  In the same boat we were paddling almost three years ago. Assessing our options and changing our minds on a daily basis.  No easy answers or magic solutions ahead.

Like I said before-this shit is hard.