“It’s hard to find motivation to do anything at times like this. It’s hard to cope or to even see through the fog at all when your mind is so focused on something that it wants so much. Recover. Not just physically, but emotionally. Let things settle, and yes, that means let it all out. Grieve. This is a grieving process.”             ~London Blogger Friend

London Blogger Friend and I don’t actually know each other. We just follow each other’s blogs. But we’ve developed an interesting relationship in that we somehow understand each other, even though we’re going through vastly different, yet somewhat similar, life battles at present. The comments we leave each other on blog posts are often long enough to be blog posts themselves. We’re somehow invested in each other and each other’s well being, despite the fact that I don’t even know her name, and I’m not sure if she knows mine.

She gave me the above advice recently regarding my ongoing struggle with infertility, which always becomes an open wound at the holidays, especially this year. Because this was supposed to be the year. Guaranteed. But because nothing good can happen to me in regards to health for the last four years…and I’m not sure how optimistic I am about next year either.

So this is me, letting it all out.

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I woke up every morning for more than a year and my first action, after shutting my alarm off, would be to take my basal body temperature and record it.

I’ve peed in a cup every morning roughly 10 days out of every month to take well over 100 ovulation tests (Maybe I just ovulate on the later side of things…?) Only 3 were ever positive. And those, we came to understand, were probably flukes.

I’ve recorded what my cervical mucus looks like. (Wet? White? Turbid? Sticky? Stretchy? Transparent? Like a raw egg white?)

I took medication to force my body to do what it refused to do. I suffered emotional meltdowns, an eye disorder, and four ovarian cysts from the medication. And still my body wouldn’t respond.

We did it all at the right time based on what the doctor said and what my body’s signs were telling us.

I had five surgeries, two of which were out of state and out of pocket. I’ve had a trochar shoved through my belly button three times. I’ve had various operating apparatus shoved in every hole my body possesses with the exception of my eyes and ears. I’ve had tools shoved up my nose and a hole drilled through my skull and a catheter with a metal stent threaded from my femoral artery in my groin all the way up into the internal carotid artery in my head.

My tubes are open (proven by three of those surgeries). My follicles are “lovely” according to a reproductive endocrinology fellow. Unfortunately, my uterus is soft and boggy likely due to adenomyosis, but it’s not as bad as it could be.

I went through all of that over a period of three years. Just to be able to have a baby.

But my body is still raising me a giant middle finger. It just won’t do what it’s biologically designed to do. At least not yet. It’s only been three months since the removal of the brain tumor that was putting the brakes on my reproductive capabilities prior to that for who knows how long.

Meanwhile…

The upstairs bedroom that will hopefully someday be the nursery sits cold, empty, and unfinished, needing new paint and new carpet following reconstruction of the whole front wall last year.

The few baby items I have remain closed up in a plastic container.

The books I have from my childhood remain shut away in a spare closet.

The maternity shirt I have to surprise my husband with remains stuffed away in our closet.

And while the emotions are sometimes raw, I’ve slowly become dead inside. Hollow. It’s been such a long road of disappointment and failure that my heart has hardened.

“How, how many fires, to make you feel pure again, alive again?
And what will it take, what has to break, for you to begin again?
What will it take?

Oh, you gotta let, let it all come out
Let, let it all come out
Right now
Right now…”

newsboys, “Let It All Come Out”

I don’t know when I’ll be ready to try again. We’ve taken an 11-month break, yet I still don’t feel ready. Perhaps I need to finish grieving 2016 first. The year that needs to end so I can move on.

I’m trying to let it all out. But it’s not enough…

Now what do I do?

?ribbonrx