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October 20, 2003 ~ The Cards We're Dealt
Monday.
I don't know where to start. I feel that I need to follow up on that last entry, because I certainly still have a lot loose thoughts floating around about it. But how to organize those into a coherent entry...?
I can say this. I was stunned by the quantity and quality of guestbook responses and emails. Thank you. You all gave Morgan and me a lot to think about, and I feel like we're surrounded with comfort, hope, and concern. A few of you, who have the same disease, have been affected by it, or know someone who has, and who gave me your success stories despite the odds--my thanks, especially, to you.
I've cried a little more, talked with Morgan a lot more, talked with a few friends (thank you and you), and thought and thought and thought. I don't know if this issue and those thoughts will ever have a conclusion, but I'd like to say a few things. Imagine a little roadsign posted here. "Warning: sharp turns, hazardous bumps, and falling rocks ahead." Transitions, lead-ins, and polite grammar may be lacking.
This disease is never going to go away. Incurable. I've known that, and have been saddened and angered by its permanence, ever since I finally figured out what it is. But I try not to shake my fist at the heavens too often. Doesn't do a damn bit of good.
Ever since I figured out what it is, though, I've been in a good bit of denial. Not only did I completely ignore the probability of infertility, I have also been thinking that I can beat it. That if I am good, if I am perfect at my preventative regime, keep my diet perfectly balanced within the set parameters, exercise religiously, don't touch a trace of any of the forbidden foods, products, or drinks, and hope with all my might... it will go away. The pain won't ever happen again. I'll be able to have a baby, and keep it.
But every once in a while, I have a month where the pain is up at its nearly unbearable levels, almost to what it was pre-prevention campaign. And, those months, I tell myself, "It's because I was lax in exercising this week. It's because I had some sugar three days ago. It's because we ate out a few too many times, and the restaurants weren't serving organic food." And I scold myself for my imperfection, and I promise to do better the next month.
I've got to stop blaming myself for the effects of this disease. And most of all, I need to stop expecting and believing that this disease is in my control, is something that I can control. It's not. I have it. It hurts. No matter what I do, it will not go away. I will get better at coping. I will find new ways to deal with it. But it's not going away. It's not going away. It's not going away, and there is nothing that I can do about that. I'll do my very best at prevention tactics, and I'll seek what treatments there are, but I've got to stop punishing myself for a failure that is not mine.
Honestly, I feel lucky. Some people have to admit "this is not going away" about diseases and disorders that cause far worse things than pain and possible infertility. There are rules. We are all handed our cards. We can't return them or exchange them. But we can be clever about how we play them.
I am slowly progressing toward infertility, if I'm not already there. Okay. Fact. There's my card. How am I going to play it?
Instinct tells me to try for pregnancy now, because it can only get harder and harder from here on out, if it's not already improbable. Hurry! You're running out of time!.
I've always felt an overwhelming pull to have children. And not just to have children, but to make children. That biological pull to mix my genetic material with his, to create, through love, through passion, through striving. For my body to do what it's built to do, to carry, to nourish a child. To feel that physical bond. Not only with the baby, but with Morgan, too. I dream of pregnancy frequently. Childbirth, yes, I want that too. I want that pain and struggle, I want to bring a life into the world. I want to breastfeed. I want to raise, nurture, love. These pulls and urges have been with me for most of my life, so strong. I've always felt that it is part of what I am here to do.
For the first time in my life, this weekend I admitted the possibility that I may never have those experiences. Especially in light of our need to wait several years before we try, while Morgan goes to grad school. It was a pretty hard blow, to look directly at the cracks in that dream and realize that they're getting bigger.
But. (And several of you echoed this). What happens will happen. All my life, things have worked out, my path has unfolded as it should. Sometimes what happened was different than what I expected, but, looking back, what happened was right. I have to have faith that if that dream is meant to be, then it will be. There is hope. There is lots of hope. Those cracks are just cracks. The dream is still there, just a little harder to navigate. We will still have a chance, hopefully a good chance, and that is better than nothing.
At the same time that I've felt this overwhelming pull to conceive, I've also always known that there are certain things that I want for my children and for myself in raising my children. The main thing that I want in that is for Morgan to be both fully involved in raising them and also fulfilled in his own life.
One of the many things that I love about Morgan is his drive, his passion, his need to take this one precious life of his and follow through on what he dreams for it. Morgan is incredibly motivated, when he makes a decision to pursue a goal. And he is incapable of settling for less than what he knows that he can do. He can't be happy or fulfilled by working a job that pays the bills but has no passion, no purpose.
Grad school for him is not about a career, it is not a financial decision, it is not about gaining an education to make more money when he comes out. It is about pursuing a vocation that has meaning and depth and vision for him. A career is about making money. Morgan wants, needs, to do spiritually fulfilling work, towards a higher purpose. Yes, it is what he does to pay the bills. But it is also what he does to make his mark on the world, to fulfill his purpose. He cannot settle for something that merely pays bills. That path is not in him. Do you see the difference?
To reach for the stars is an essential part of this man whom I love. If he didn't try for graduate school, he wouldn't be Morgan. He wouldn't be the man whom I love, and the man with whom I want to make children, want to raise children.
To be that man, he needs to pursue this dream now, while he's still in the academic track, while he doesn't have dependents to be concerned for instead. Yes, we could have children now, struggle and scrape by and possibly even manage to get him through school in the mean time. I know that children are not that expensive, with the right choices. (Graduate school is expensive, though). I know that there are ways to work from home and raise children at the same time. But I don't want daddy to be that man who comes in at night to kiss the kids goodnight and then goes back to work on his doctoral thesis. Morgan doesn't want that either. He wants, badly, to raise children, as I do. And to be fully there, to be present in raising them, he has to pursue this dream first.
So, I look at my hand of cards. I lay one down. Grad school for Morgan, first. How will the remaining cards play out? Will I still be fertile when he's done with grad school? Don't know. We'll have to wait and see how the game plays out, see what my remaining cards mean. I hope that was a clever move...
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