Reminders

I read a blog today but a wonderful person, SIF, where she talks about a relationship she has witnessed with her "little sister" and that family.  She warns at the beginning of the post that she is taking something that SO isn't about her and making it into something about her.

But the thing is, when you are going through infertility, everything can be connected to it.  Maybe because the world surrounds us with mothers and fathers and happy families that only remind us that those people aren't us.

I know that people probably look at us as selfish, or attention seeking.  Us beautiful, strong, fighting women...who are only fighting for what we were denied when our bodies failed us.  I have been unfortunate enough to live around, and even with sometimes, people who don't seem to understand why everything connects back to this loss, and why we can't "just get over it."

The thing that no one seems to understand with the whole getting over it thing, is that we have had a loss.  A real, true, in your face no going away any time soon loss.  And it is just as real to us as if we had gotten a call from a hospital in the middle of the night that someone we loved had passed.  The diagnosis of "infertile," however it comes and whatever comes with it, is just as life changing and significant as any other loss.  And people need to realize this.

And everything does remind us of it.  Most times its seeing some other family go through some crisis or change or something, and wondering if we will ever get to have that.  Other times its seeing people who see their children as some sort of burden, some sort of annoyance that wants breakfast while they want to sleep in on Saturday mornings.  All these things remind us that the world isn't fair and our bodies don't work the way they are supposed to...that we have been denied those "annoyances" that other people far less deserving have been given.

Everything reminds me that I am barren.  Even if I spend the entire day inside and don't watch any TV or listen to music that you would think would remind a person of children in any way, I am still reminded.  I am reminded when I cook dinner and its just for two people.  I am reminded of it when I look at my husband, and I know that even if we are lucky enough to one day have a family through the miracle of adoption, I will never see his sweet eyes look back at me through my child.  I am reminded of it when I look at my paintings on the wall and even though I didn't mean to put it there, there is always some little piece of my lost somewhere in all those oils.  Hidden, but there just the same.  Because I can't do ANYTHING without that loss being there.  Its there, it is always going to be there...and like it or not, I am going to be reminded of it through little things that catch me off guard for the rest of my life.  One of these days maybe I will wake up and the hyst and my kids and all those things that I really don't want to think about won't be the FIRST thing that I think about.  But its not now.  And even if I get to that day in once piece, which seems such an impossibility right now, I know that there will never be a day that I won't be reminded of my loss...and I have a right to feel it.  I have a right to be pissed.  And anyone who says otherwise can wonder this....lose a child, then come tell me it shouldn't hurt.  My memory is my own, even if its just memories of a child in a dream...and its my own to treasure if I chose.

When someone you love becomes a memory, the memory becomes a treasure.
~Author Unknown