Yesterday was a good day. I got to get on the water and row. I rowed with my husband. It was like when you are little and playing in the sand at the beach. The world shrinks to the water and sand and how they flow around each other. I then had coffee with a mate and we talked a good talk. I love it when you start making a piece of your life better, more right. And then I visited a friend who was sick and entertained her lovely kids while she got some rest. They were grumpy by dinner time, which was late for them, but I was honored to be part of it – the good and the bad.

Today… not so good. As alive as I felt yesterday, today I feel nearly impotent with my life. I spend all day watching TV dramas online. I ran away. I ate crap food. I did little to help myself.

I even called my best friend. And I heard her baby cry and coo and it was the most beautiful piercing sound. And the tears have been just below the surface ever since. Even listening to my friend discuss how to sort out their tricky work/financial situation with such grace and confidence tore through me. If her husband gets a raise, she quits her job and they move closer to his job. If not, she goes full time as a teacher, they move closer to her school (and the grandparents) and share the summers together (and lots of cheap meals at home). When I asked her about how she felt about leaving the house they’ve worked so hard to rebuild… she immediately state how moving was nothing compared to getting to spend more time with the kids while they are little.   That simple.  Kids.. Little.. Spending time.. being able to decide where to live without heartache.

I am lost about Italy. I am lost about how to move forward with another cycle. My life is up in the air and I was so desperate to carve out a bit of control, that I actually enjoyed paying bills today.  I keep thinking that I should be organizing another cycle.. but even if I get up the nerve to ask a friend, and they said yes today, it would be a month of tests, then the 3 month wait period. We’d be looking at October or Novemeber. No December cycles at my clinic.   January and February would be too hard –  a postive, and I’d be tempted to not get on the plane to Italy because I’d want to stay here and have my dream of raising a kid in this place I have chosen as my home.  a negative – oh it would be unbearable to up and move across the word right after that.  Assuming we move… but there isn’t much point in trying to organize a cycle now when there is only a small window of time if the person is ready to say yes now.

So I wait… no cycle, no dog, no changing my job role, no weeding the winter garden, no dreaming… until my husband gets a formal offer from the Italian folks.  I waited on my last donor for 3 months. And now I wait for this.  I hear that patience is a good skill to have as a mother.  I sure am getting prepared the hard way.

Back to crap TV… how do you turn off your brain when you are waiting?

There have been several things building to this post… which means I haven’t a prayer of writing what I actually have been thinking.

First point – day 4 or so of my relationship with my husband, back when he was just the guy crashing at my friends’ house.  I was all of 18 and said something I thought was OH-so-CLEVER, which means it wasn’t at all. It was something about yesterday’s tomorrow is a great place to be.. because well I was seeing him that day and today is yesterday’s tomorrow. 

Second point, this weekend I ran away with my husband to a place that is completely magically-

During the trip he asked me how I was doing with the fertility stuff. At least he didn’t ask for a number, but please, what exactly does one say.  So I said lots and lots of things. All in all I am happy with how my progress is going.  I am to the point that I know I will survive and find a meaningful life without kids, but that I really really want them. And then grief came up.  He said something that I took to mean that he doesn’t get why you would grieve a possibility…. hmm and after much babbling I finally said, all grief is about losing a possibility.  I don’t grieve the days I spent with those that have died, but all the days I didn’t get but WANTED.  I don’t know if they would have been at my wedding, if they’d have phoned me today, or sent me Christmas cards that made me well up emotion.  I never knew exactly what would be, but I did dream, assume, and anticipate the future with them.  When the possibility of those future events ceases, that is when I grieve.   Grief for me is all about the future… and it hurts in the present.. and I use the past memories as the hammer to beat my heart with, but at the end of the day, I grieve the future that I am not going to get. 

Third point… Niobe asked the question about living in the moment and really that is the crux of everything spinning in my head at the  moment. 

Long before I started coping with infertility and the grief of having no eggs at 28 (or 29.. or more currently at 30) I started realizing that I spent most of my time in the past and future.  I love to plan.  I love to anticipate what it will feel like to take off for an overseas trip, to walk in my cap and gown, and to hold my child for the first time.  I sit and feel those dreams as though reality… I also play the past over and over in my mind. I love to go to a place and remember the events that transpired there.  I love re-reading letters and text messages.  I love being transported to that time and place.

My husband (and a few others)  have introduced me to the concept of now.  The idea that all we really have is the moment.. all we can do is experience and shape the current moment.  It becomes the past we get to remember in the future. It is all that we can shape.  I sort of think of it like those mushroom knitting things.. with the future running through it into the past. 

Now I will never ever be someone that only lives in the moment, however I do know that my life is better when I live in the moment at least part of everyday.  I still choose to spend some of my time remember the past and dreaming about the future, but that is just one of the many things I can do withe the present moment. On my choice board also are the option to be driving, rowing, singing, dancing, making love, doing laundry, eating, drinking, frollicking in mud puddles… If I only worry about the future or remember the past, I would miss out on these and my future and then my past eventually becomes rather dull. 

Today I lived in the moment several times:

• walking from the train to work listening to This American Life on my ipod while taking in all the people and buildings and weather
• rowing in the dark after work thinking only about the rthythm of the people in the stern of the boat.  my mind was completely full with the task and feeling the movement of the boat, the sounds of the harbour, and the feel of the night
• when listening to a friend talk about her client who just died of ALS
• when walking home listening to more stuff on my ipod feeling the night air against my face

I wasn’t thinking about the details at the time, but looking back I can remember so many details because I was just in the moment, not thinking of the future or remember past events.  I know what the people were wearing.  What the air smelled like. What my heart felt like.    It is all there when I think back.. all but what my mind was thinking, because it was perfectly full engaging in the moment and that is a kind of retreat for me that I am encouraging when I can.   I think living in the moment for me has a lot to do with the concept of flow.  That said, sometimes I can get to that feeling by remember past events or dreaming about future ones, both are wodnerful ways to spend the moment in my book (but something I am not sure my husband fully groks about me)

When have you been in the moment this week?

A friend emailed that he was getting the “snip” (his words not mine) next week… and my immediate reaction was ‘welcome to the dark side mate – you’ll be infertile like me!”

hmmm, not exactly true. Not exactly helpful… but I do see progress in there somewhere:)

I thought I’d take up Anna’s question she wrote about on her blog regarding why we blog…

I too am someone who needs to verbally process.  There are several major non-fertility things going on my life at the moment that I want to process out loud.  Italy is one of them. Another one is best left undiscussed.  Then there are questions regarding whether work is challenging enough for me. I am constantly pushing beyond my job description and eventually I’ll need to stop or move on.  And if I am truly honest, all of them lead back to me struggling to reinvent myself as someone who may never have kids, but hasn’t given up but is also not actively doing much about the problem at this exact moment.  Infertility really does shake things up aye?

But moving back to the question at hand.  I think aloud and do this best when there is an audience.  If I can’t make sense of something, it helps  me to try to explain it to others.  This community of bloggers has been a god send because even though 12% of the people I am meeting in the real world  might know something about this, I can’t just go about processing aloud on the city bus about my menopausal body and think I’m doing any one any favors!

But here I can write my story.  I can try on voices… some days I write angry. Somedays I try on being calm about it all. Some days I just share something random that I can’t share in real life.  In real life I strive to be me, but also be exuding grace under pressure… here I can try a few other approaches on and not worry too much if I can’t pull it off just yet.  

I can write my story without all the background.  I can select bits and bobs to share.  And for the most part I can relax that this isn’t going to blow up in my face somehow. 

But mostly I find that the words just flow because I know I am going to hit publish, typos and all, and someone will read this and that so far that has been really safe.  If I had a huge readership, it would be much harder. 

I am writing for me, but you guys are what prevent writers block.  There is something about that listening ear, that silence that begs to be filled, that look someone gives you that encourages you to spill a bit of your story… I don’t feel compelled to write (or talk) because of these things, but they draw out my story when I can’t do that myself. 

So thank you for being out there… you have helped me so much, even if you’ve never commented.  It just helps to know you are there, and I trust that for the most part no one is bothering to visit my blog if they don’t have good intentions.

I also am fascinated by how my story and other people’s stories bounce off each other.  I love following comments back to their blog and am amazed at how similar and how different people’s commenting styles can be to their blogging voices.  I guess it has to do with how we all relate to each others words. 

So in the spirit of Anna ending her post with a quesiton (and niobe’s masterful way of doing this) I’ll try to conclude with a question myself…  what flavour of blog draws you back again and again?    I am drawn to those that include great dialogue and those where people are reinventing themselves bravely no matter what is thrown their way.  One provides humanity and often humor, the other flavour provides me with great hope and voyeristic mentorship.