I think I’m just going to accept that May is not my NaBloPoMo month, and try again another time. A strange thing happens when I sit down to write something, anything, because the clock is ticking and I want to go to bed but I haven’t posted and I must! post! because NaBloPoMo! I don’t like to feel like I failed, so I keep trying and then I start posting long rambles off the top of my head or cute YouTube videos.

And there’s nothing wrong with any of that, to a degree. However, I just read over the last couple of weeks of posts and I don’t feel that they do even a passable job of what I created this blog to do.

I’m here because I’m lonely. I’m here because people who are lonely the way I am lonely have a very hard time finding each other. I’m here because I have spent many a three o’clock in the morning typing in one search phrase after another, hoping to find someone else who is fighting some of the same fights I am. I’m here because I found so many strong women, beautiful women, hurting women, bravely writing down the nitty gritty details of their struggles and these stories helped sustain me. I’m here because I hope that I might sustain someone else even as I myself am still supported by the words of the people I have found who will share such private battles with the lonely souls still awake at three o’clock in the morning.

Being hearing impaired is lonely.
Having bipolar disorder is lonely.
Being an undergraduate student in your mid-thirties is lonely.
Being a Biblical Studies major is lonely.
Being infertile is lonely.

And even though it shouldn’t be, being desperately in love with God is sometimes the loneliest feeling there is.

So there it is. I’m dropping any attempt to be slick or intellectual or one of the cool kids. I’m just here to share the things I struggle with, the things I’m trying to understand and the things I am learning.

And I am actually learning more than usual these days, now that my HK!N 190 class has started! I love being back on campus. Love it. I am a little unsure of how I feel about summer courses, though – tomorrow is the end of the first week and we’re having our midterm exam. Whoa! It really does feel like being on fast forward. I’m very much looking forward to the weekend. I wonder if it will feel longer than usual or if it will fly by like the week did?

I’ve often wondered what kind of advice Charles Darwin would offer to infertile couples if he were to have an advice column. Like a Dear Abby or Miss Manners thing but with all his answers being inspired by his famous contribution to evolutionary biology, namely, natural selection.

So, being half of an infertile couple, and realizing that this is the second cycle in a row that I have observed intense and burning hatred of my husband during “that magical time” when really, really hating someone is totally not conducive to the type of activity needed to procreate with them, and being fairly cognizant of some of the rules of nature, I concluded it would be incredibly helpful if Darwin were still here to offer his sage advice. Perhaps it would have gone something like this:

Dear Darwin,

I have been married eight and a half years, during which time we have conceived only once. I found a great book which is teaching me how to observe my cycles so my mate and I can be sure we are engaging in the relevant activities at the appropriate time.

Unfortunately, we are realizing that during the appropriate time, certain changes take place in my body that the book doesn’t mention. For example, I develop the ability to smell my mate’s offensive foot odor from ten feet away. Also, my eyes develop the astonishing ability to see through walls to perceive that he has left the toilet seat up, and I can hear snorts at the end of his laugh that I can’t hear at any other time of the month.

My needs change as well. Usually I enjoy close physical proximity with my mate, but at the precise time in my cycle that such proximity would be productive, I find I would much rather get just close enough to remove some vital part of his anatomy in order to bludgeon him to death with it. Needless to say, my mate’s survival instincts prevent him from coming close to the den during these days, despite my loud insistence that he do his male duties or lose his male goodies.

Everyone in the world of evolutionary biology hails your theory of Natural Selection as being as close to a universal truth as we’ll ever get, so please tell me, Mr. Darwin. How can Natural Selection help us have a child?

Sincerely,
Mrs. Half an Infertile Couple

Dear Mrs. Half,

For the love of all that is holy, do not reproduce. Get a puppy. No. Get a goldfish. And only one. If you get two, they will form a suicide pact. Should two such woefully incompatible and mismatched human beings continue to try to procreate, Natural Selection will see to it that the offspring hates each other and you. And if your offspring have offspring, well, they will just eat it. Take my advice. Sterilize yourselves and have sex with hot random inebriated strangers at that precise time in your cycle so as to further the genes of people who deserve it, for they have been blessed by Natural Selection.

Sincerely,
Charles Darwin

Dear Mr. Darwin,

If Natural Selection isn’t smart enough to get around Clomid, wine, roses, and IUI’s, well, I guess we aren’t too worried about being blessed by it. Thanks anyway.

Mr. & Mrs. Infertile

It’s hard for me to put into words everything I’m feeling tonight. I want to take some time to look back on the year and try to let the maelstrom of emotion distill into something wise and calm that I can take hold of and carry into the new year… I need to be still. It’s hard to though, when you live with someone who would much rather be surrounded by noise and activity!

But I need to take time. Just a moment or two. Just to take it all in. ..

January ~ the year begins with me in a funk and I spend most of the month just trying to show up for class 8 hours a day, five days a week. February ~ I learn the cause of my “lady difficulties” is something growing where only babies should grow, and has likely precluded babies growing there thus far. I’m scared and shaken. March ~ our apartment, a basement suite, is flooded from a leak in the hot water system and the resulting devastation renders us homeless. We spend the month freezing in other people’s basements and looking for a new apartment. We lose all our money, many possessions, and most of our hope. The surgery I need is relegated to the very back of my mind. April ~ we are rescued by God leading us to a beautiful apartment and I get sick with the flu, bronchitis, and a sinus infection, all at the same time. Barely manage to write my exams and papers. May & June ~ the loveliest time with my parents, husband, friends, the most relaxed I have ever been. Pure bliss. July ~ my husband and I end seven years of strife and bitterness, and God joins our souls together in a new marriage. We finally see the OBGYN about the growth in my uterus. It is a polyp. It must come out. We are told we are extremely unlikely to ever conceive on our own. I focus on my health instead. By August ~ I have lost 35 pounds. We are broke, so broke, but so happy with each other and so in love. We don’t know it, but we conceive our first child this month! Will forever believe in miracles. September ~ my husband goes back to school for the first time in twenty years, and I return to school for my second straight year. Increasing exhaustion and nausea prompt my therapist to ask if I could be pregnant. I laugh. We get a test to “rule it out”. At 4:11 AM, September 19, it’s positive. The boundaries of the earth are too narrow for my joy. My entire existence ceases and is remade for one purpose: to nourish and grow our baby. Our baby. October ~ ultrasound! Pure joy, pure love, seeing my baby’s heart beating on the screen. But the spotting is not going away, and I try not to worry because it upsets my husband, but deep down, I’m worried. Thoughts are consumed with trying to determine if symptoms are lessening, if bleeding is worsening. Suddenly, symptoms stop. So does bleeding. One week later, 3:24 AM on October 19, only 13 weeks and 3 days along, I wake up soaked in blood. I deliver in the ER. It was a boy, and he is dead. The bleeding does not stop. I lose too much blood and wind up in surgery. My last thought before the anesthesia drags me under is that it’s okay if I don’t wake up. One week later to the day, my Nana dies. November ~ I’m still in school. I didn’t quit when we discovered our pregnancy, and now it’s too late to quit. I do everything I can. I hurt more than I can believe. Then our car was stolen. We lose what little money we had left. November is a blur. December ~ I go under and don’t come back up again. I cannot think, cannot study, cannot focus. God is with me. My professors are amazing. I file Incompletes on all my courses. My thoughts are silent for many days.

But slowly… I begin to heal. The nights I stay up to see the clock flicker to 3:24 AM are fewer. The days I feel hopeful about the future happen more often. I still get surprised by the undertow of grief every now and then, the sudden flooding of my eyes. I know it will be some time before that goes away. In some far-away little part of me, I don’t want it to.

And now the very active and noisy one I live with is no longer slumbering peacefully on the couch as in the photo, but very much awake and wanting more attention than I can spare while typing, so this will be it for that last post of the year!

Perhaps tomorrow will bring thoughts of the year to come. For now, these last thoughts belong with the last year and I am content to leave them there.