One more reason to talk about vaginas :

 

 You’ve all been quite polite and well behaved here as of late. Blogationships are wonderful, in that prying just isn’t the thing to do. But honestly, I tell you, thee internets, the juice that I can’t handle opening to the RLF’s so don’t be shy if you really want to know.

It’s been hard. I’m not taking my shots anymore, and I’m not going for another insemination for the moment. Why? I dunno, it’s complicated.

(Um, here’s the part where we get to talk about vaginas. Again.)

I’ve spread my legs for so many people in so many different situations this past year. If I’d been smart enough to charge admision I’d be a rich woman by now. But I didn’t. And they didn’t pay me. I rather have the feeling to have paid them, and paid dearly.

Remember this exam? Suffice it to say that it and things it has resurfaced is why I am seeking therapy today and why I can hardly stand to have Manboy touch me. It sucks. Sucks for me, sucks for hm. If there is one good thing that I can think of coming out of this whole infertility/speculum/cold/pinching/instrument crisis, it is maybe the therapist I’ve recently started seeing. Why?

Two reasons.

1. Hello. It has been a long time since someone told me something about my own problems that I couldn’t have figured out on my own from a bit of good, old fashioned navel-gazing.

2. She looks like a muppet, and that makes me happy when I am with her.

She listened and then said some stuff I already knew, of course, but had the decency at the same time to not insult my intelligence with cutsie illustrations and talk down to me like the headshrink I saw with Manboy a couple of months ago. She was righteously indignant with my fertility specialist in her muppet’s-hair-hanging-everywhere kind of way. She insulted my gynecologist and said he was a creepster perv, that he had treated me like a walking vagina, said that the people who were running some of these tests were ridiculous, and cruel, and that a doctor’s job is to treat a whole person, not just an ailment.

She blurted ot out, dry, flat, and straight. She said things that I hadn’t, couldn’t have allowed my self to think. But her words resounded, echoed in their painful truth as I struggled to keep tears from falling. 

I felt – strangely justified.

 I’ve basically accepted the fact that my body has betrayed me, that I waited too long, that ovaries do not always measure time in years, rather they age at their own pace, and for whatever reason mine are tired, done, and have decided to call it a day. I’d like to try again, I’d like to hope and to say that it’s going to work, and that this time I will be stronger, that this time I will not break down, that this time I won’t let it destroy me. But I’m not sure that I could maintain that promise. I’m not sure that I could do it again. Maybe if it had happened differently. Maybe if I hadn’t felt so alone, hardened, like a naked piece of meat on a cold metal table. Maybe if I had been given a thin sheet at least, to cover myself.

But I can’t do it again. Not like this, not in those conditions, not in this state. Something has to give. Until then, I’m frozen.

We’ve started the proceedings for adoption. I have always wanted to adopt, especially an older child, or two from the same family, real orphans, desolate, to give them a chance, to change their destiny. Maybe it sounds stupid, but it’s a long time dream.

I told Manboy about this dream when we were engaged. It scared him. I kept talking to him about it. He began to understand. We said we’d do it once our bio-kids were born. We said we’d do it once we’d established ourselves financially, once we’d settled down and had a nice pre-packaged  family life.

Things don’t always happen like you plan them.

I may never grow a baby in my own womb. My body may never make it’s own food. I may never know the wonder and the horror of childbirth.

I’m not okay with that. I’d like to say the contrary, but I’m exhausted, as that’s what I claim daily to those around. The truth is that I can’t feel much of anything. The truth is I think it’s fucked up. Fucked up wrong.

So we’ll adopt, and we’ll do it for them, not for us. We’ll do it because we will love them and we’ll be able to give them a life they otherwise would not have. We’ll do it because we believe in Destiny.

Today it is Manboy pushing for us to go forward, it is Manboy who is doing the calling and the writing and the asking and the paperwork. It is Manboy who is strong enough to believe, strong enough to be disappointed.

Infertility has changed us. It has brought us to a place where heaviness as a cloak becomes ordinary, and I no longer worry when I see dark circles under his hazel eyes. I hope that we will be strong when they come to see us, when they interview us to see if we are fit to be parents. I hope my house will be clean enough and I will have recently had my hair cut. I hope that the lines in my face do not give to much away. I hope we can win.

We’ve already lost so much.