Life Lessons

I started reading blogs last year, one night when I couldn’t sleep, while waiting to miscarry. It occurred to me people were wrong and that it is possible to be a little bit pregnant. On a whim, I googled “a little bit pregnant” and of course I ended up at alittlepregnant.com and drawn into the IF blogdom where pain, sorrow, anger and humor, the same emotions I was fumbling through, leaped out my computer screen and into my heart.

Many of those old friends have, by now, found their way through the first phase of IF and achieved or are on their way of achieving their THB (take home baby--either through adoption or IVF). Their struggles now are different and, to be honest, I don’t quite relate to them as fully now but I enjoy spending time with them. Just, not in the same way.

In these last weeks, as I have started my own blog I have come upon new friends. Some of them struggling with their first IVFs or trying DE/IVF, some not infertile at all. In getting to know these new friends, I am realizing more and more how I am in a time in my life where I am, for want of a better word, living the prime of my life. That sounds funny on one level, because I always thought the prime of your life was supposed to be the good times. But, no doubt about it I am living my prime.

To really get a sense of what I’m trying to convey, I should probably backtrack about a year. Last November, one of my cousins was getting married. I was still in a fragile emotional state as my due date was November 8 and I wasn’t sure I could handle a wedding two weeks later, where there would be other cousins my age with their toddler children and possibly pregnant with their second child. I decided it would be best to stay away. I learned early November that it was the right decision. In talking with my mom, I found out that my cousin who was 3 months older than me, who had a 3 year old was also skipping the wedding because she was due to have her second child the same week as the wedding. It turned out she had her second daughter the very day of the wedding and I knew, knew I would have been a broken mess of a blob at the reception. Crisis averted, good for me.

Later, when I saw pictures of the wedding and all my family, I was struck by how old my parents and their generation looked. I had this overwhelming sense that I, my brother and all my other cousins were the adults in our family, now. Until that moment, I still thought of myself as young, still seated at the child’s table. But, seeing those pictures reminded me of the pictures from my parent’s wedding album and how their parents looked aged in them. I had somehow stepped into my parents shoes and walked around in them without realizing it. I couldn’t deny it anymore. I was no longer a child.

With adult shoes comes experiencing the adult life. As I re-connected with some of my cousins who also wanted to have kids, we shared more than our common struggle with getting pregnant. We shared our life experiences, heartaches and struggles. And, in learning of their struggles, I realized how much pain each person in the world experiences in their life. This was reinforced as I learned about the heartaches and struggles of my new internet friends. The struggles in their detail may vary among all of us, but the level and depth of the heartache are similar. I have learned it is not the cause of the pain that determines the degree of the heartache. One might say that my infertility is more heartbreaking than your broken engagement or your cancer is more heartbreaking than my inability to have biological children. But the heartache that accompanies the burdens you endure in life is equal. Pain is pain. But, we as adults, we fight on. Sometimes bravely. Sometimes blindly. But we go on.

I have fought depression in my life. Most recently due to IF. In those times, I have often wondered why do I go on living? What is the point if I can’t possibly have the type of life I envision? In this last year, I have slowly come to the realization that most everyone has something in their life they aren’t happy about, wish were different, wish would go away. I have realized that this struggle to cope with these things, to make something out of it is what adults do. As children, the people who take care of us shield us from having to struggle with this too much or help us find our way through it. As people get old and leave their prime of life, they live more passively and leave it up to us “young people” to deal with the world. But as adults in our prime, we struggle to live and re-shape our dreams as life throws us ordeals that test our capabilities. In our prime, we cope, adapt and try to move forward as best we can. Because that is our part in life’s journey.