I’m trying to gather my thoughts to do a proper post but it’s not going very quickly. Mostly, I think I’m scared shitless about my looming LH surge and subsequent first attempt at DI. I’ve never really done the two week wait. I don’t know if I can handle it. I don’t know if I can handle the disappointment. I’m scared it won’t work and scared it will work. It’s so weird to be so freaked out. And then I alternate between fear and moments of total peace and feeling right with everything. Gaah!
I was reminded recently someone’s post, possibly Kate’s, although I can’t find it right now, about a dream I had a while ago. It was a total grief dream, one of those ones where you wake up and your whole body is tense because of how hard you were crying in the dream.
I dreamed I was sitting in a sort of cafe with a bunch of women, except we were all sitting at our own tables. Some tables had 2 people at them, but mostly, everyone was spread out. And I knew that all these women were my fellow IF bloggers. We didn’t talk about it – I just knew that. I was feeling shy and kind of vulnerable being with everyone in real life, even though I wasn’t talking to anyone. And then a group of people came in, and proceeded to conduct an armed robbery. A guy held a gun on everyone in the room, and a woman and a few other guys went around to each person collecting whatever they had. And I sat there, frozen and terrified, waiting for them to come to me, praying that they wouldn’t take my rings. I wear 3 rings – one was given to me by my parents when I graduated from high school, one is the plain silver band Manny gave me when he proposed, and one is my wedding band. (The one from my folks and my wedding band were made by the same goldsmith – she is amazing and the rings are even more precious to me because they are handmade and I know the person who made them.) So I was hoping they would just take my wallet and anything else except my rings, and as I sat there, I felt more and more desperate to hang onto my rings. Eventually, the woman came up to me and took my purse and maybe a few other things, but she didn’t take my rings. And I started to relax, and then she noticed the rings and asked for them, too. It felt so painful. I handed them to her and as I did that, I looked her right in the eye. Without saying anything to her, my look communicated how much she was hurting me by taking these things from me. And without her saying anything to me, she communicated that she knew how much she was hurting me but also that she didn’t care. Tough luck. Too bad. Those are just the cards you’ve been dealt, honey. And with that, I began to cry. To sob, to keen, to weep – for my own loss I had just suffered, and for the loss of everyone else in that room. But they were all quiet, and I was just crying for everyone. And that made me cry even harder, because I felt so alone in my sadness and grief, even though I knew they were all suffering, too.
Then I woke up. I felt pretty haunted all day after that – just really fragile and isolated. It was a terrible feeling, not only because it was a harrowing dream, but because I really don’t feel like that’s my experience here in the blogosphere. I’ve really felt so much a part of a community here and in many ways feel like finding you all has been a real turning point in my whole journey with IF. The main thing that I have felt alone about is my situation – there aren’t any other bloggers that I’ve found yet who are dealing with failed vasectomy reversal, and most people out there dealing with male factor where sperm retrieval is a possibility tend to do that before going on to DI. Sometimes I wish our issues and choices were more common so that I could feel like part of the gang – or maybe I just sometimes wish I had made more common choices for the same reason. But really, I feel like my choices have been the right ones for me, and for Manny, and I’m at peace with where I am. Most of the time, anyway.
I don’t think the dream was about this, though. I think it was just about how much we have to let go of in this journey. The things that are so precious to us and the things we are so attached to. But those things being precious to us doesn’t mean they are within our control. Doesn’t mean we’ll get them. And I guess that’s where I find peace in all of this – there are things that are precious to me, but I can’t control whether I’ll ever have them or not. I don’t have to let go of my feelings toward having children – I will always want to birth my own babies, and raise them and love them – but I know it’s not up to me. The dream was maybe just a reminder of how much I want this, and also a reminder of how it can be taken away.
