I’m not sure where to begin. Logic would say at the beginning, but I can’t. It’s too much. I know I haven’t updated. I know I haven’t spoken. My throat got so tired, you see. I opened myself up to ignorance and misunderstanding. I opened myself up–really is the point. And I stopped wanting to be open.

For those of you who have asked, no, this silence is not because of a baby. And I know that I’ve volunteered my life as a window into this world, and I know that you mean well, but it feels like daggers to have to continuously answer, “no, no I’m not pregnant.”

I’ve deleted my social media apps, checking in infrequently via the old school world wide web. I couldn’t take the noise anymore. I couldn’t take another surprise pregnancy announcement. I couldn’t watch as people who neither wanted nor hoped for a child were blessed with one. And maybe you think I just sound bitter and jealous. I am, but I certainly don’t apologize for it.

I went silent about two months ago, when we were told that instead of going through the transfer process, I would have to rush into surgery to remove the minefield of benign growths in my uterus. One moment I was looking at cribs and thinking of baby names, the next I was crumpling up more pages in my calendar, angry that I let myself go there.

“It’s only a few more months,” people would say and I had to try not to combust. It’s not only a few more months. It’s the weeks within those months and the days within those weeks. It’s a month’s worth of moments of hurt that are so intense, you wonder if you’ll survive. It’s months plus the years proceeding them. Years that have felt like millennia. 

I stand by the fact that I don’t believe any person can understand the pain of infertility until they’ve gone through it. It’s not because I “choose” for people not to understand. It’s not because I like to isolate myself–this experience is isolating. It’s because unlike so many other kinds of heartache, it’s not a pain that gets better with time; the very opposite in fact. Each day compounds on the one before it and how can you really avoid compounding hurt?

So, I’ve been biding my time. I’ve been doing my best to focus on other aspects of life, to enjoy my marriage and my family. To pour myself into work and invest in my hobbies. Some days I win the battle of keeping myself together. Some days I lose. Right now, I’m just exhausted. I’m tired of the fight. I’m tired of getting back up. I’m tired of falling down. I’m tired of the hope and the hate and the faith and the failure.

I’ve simply needed, as they would say, a Clean Well-Lit Place. I’ve just needed to quiet my inner writer and let my story go on in silence. There is peace here sometimes.

 

Photo by Francisco Moreno on Unsplash