What If....

I am a different person now because of infertility?

What if the person that I was is gone?  I was a kick-ass, get-it-done, nothing-can-stop-me, take-no-shit, pull-no-punches, pink-wearing, faux-hawk-wearing, pretty all-around awesome chick.  Who I am now?  This person who thought nothing could beat her, is getting beaten.  This thing is beating me down, and it HAS changed me.  There is no "what if" anymore.  It just is.  My "what if" happened.

To just give you a run-down of everything I have given infertility, I think I shall use the cool list feature I just learned how to use.  I give you.....


THE LIST

• 8 years
• 87 pregnancy test.  Yes, that is the correct number.  All negative
• Three surgeries
• 1 ovulation predictor
• 27 ovulation test strips
• 2 marriages
• My hair-While treating the Endometriosis with Lupron
• My body-losing and gaining weight due to illness 
• Countless depressing poems
• My nails-I chew them when I am stressed
• 13 doctors
• $54,000.00 (at last count)
• Two ovaries
• One cervix
• One uterus

I gave these things to infertility.  Just gave em up.  Handed them over gladly in hopes that it would get me a child in return.  It hasn't yet.  Instead I find myself faced with this person that I hardly recognize.  This person who, when faced with choosing biological children over getting out of pain, chose to give up the one thing that I never thought I would be able to give up.  I handed that over too.  I said here, take these things from me, anything you want....just get me out of pain and make me normal again.

But I was wrong.

It didn't make me normal it made me even more different.  It made me this person I am now.  And I am not sure who she is.  In all reality is pisses me off.  It pisses me off that I am different now, that I have somehow lost who I am.  So that is my "what if" now.  What if I am a different person?  A person who has no faith and thinks about living child-free sometimes.  A person who still can't go to the baby aisle in the store, because I still feel like something has been stolen from me.  A person, who despite all the people in her life that tell her differently, still feels as though there was something more she could have done to make her dreams come true.  This might be me.

But what if that is ok?  What if its ok that I never really get over it and I still think about it years later and I still feel like I was robbed?  What if that makes me the kind of person who doesn't take things for granted...a person who sees all the blessings in her life...because the blessings in her pre-hyst life weren't ever really seen?  What if the person I am now is the person I was always meant to be?  A person who sees life...and loves what there is to be loved out of it.  That's more than I had before.  Loving what there is to love.  Before I wasn't able to love anything but the thing I didn't have.

So maybe its not the end of the world after all.  Maybe, just maybe, I will live.  I will be ok.  And maybe I will be a different Sara.  One who still kicks ass...but also sees that there is true suffering in the world.  Because I have been there.  So maybe thats the real reason why.

And maybe its ok.

For more information on infertility.....
www.resolve.org/infertility101
National Infertility Awareness Week....

www.resolve.org/takecharge