Imaginations run wild

There was an interesting conversation on our Facebook page awhile back. I said that when there are new babies or little kids, I love to be able to hold them and squeeze them and pinch their chubby little cheeks. Not everyone agreed with me, and a couple of people said they absolutely can't handle being around other peoples' kids.

It's very hard to explain to people who have children what my experience is like. Without thinking about it, when I hold a baby or when a little kid asks to hold my hand or play a game, my imagination runs wild. "This is what it would be like if I was ever to become a mommy," my brain says. Believe me, I wish my brain would not have these flashes of insight. I wish it would keep itself grounded. But still, on it goes. "This is what it would be like to have an adoring little face looking up at you all the time. This is what it would be like to go out and have people assume that the baby or kid is yours. The knowing glances, the smiles, all of it would be directed at you. This is what it would be like."

The problem with my brain doing this, of course, is that none of these babies or kids are mine. The time comes when they ask for their mom, or when their mom picks them up to snuggle, or something else happens to break the spell. I find these little moments to be devastating, no matter how healed I am. It is Don Quixote realizing that he is not really a knight, but rather just a crazy guy in love with a prostitute who waved a sword at some windmills.

I'm not that crazy but still!

These two elements, the ability of my brain to fantasize away and then the breaking of the dream, happen without any thought from my conscious self. I hang around kids thinking that it's great that my friends have such wonderful children, or that there are such wonderful kids in my family. But my brain is a sneaky thing.

I am trying to think of an appropriate analogy that would help my friends with children understand my probably confusing reactions. I ask to see pictures of their kids, I ask if I can hold the baby, but then I might get quiet or withdrawn later. What is that all about, they likely wonder. If holding a baby upsets me, why do I do it? If being around kids upsets me, why do I do that?

I love children. That's the whole reason why I want to have my own. It's like lusting after something someone else has. You aren't wanting it just for the heck of it. You aren't envious just because it passes the time. I love children. I love their innocence. I love how their personalities start mixing with imitations of various adults they know. And babies, well, who can resist a sleepy little warm bundle of baby mush?

I don't expose myself to children to teach myself to cope better or because I really enjoy the endless cycles it puts me into. I love children, and I always think that if I can't have my own, why not enjoy the children who are already around. It all seems reasonable till I'm in the process, and then my brain goes wild again, imagining things that can never be, offering me a peek into the toy store before the curtain goes down.

This is one area where I will say I think suffering from infertility is harder than a lot of other things a person can deal with. It's so easy to get glimpses into what your life could be like. When you babysit, when you are accompanying a parent and their kid shopping or to a restaurant. For brief moments you have a glimpse at the one thing you want but can't have. And that's the part that I need to figure out how to get around.

Do you have that problem? Have you found a way to deal with it? I'd love to hear about it.

Conversations

It seems like a lot of the joy people express when they've been struggling to have a child and then they finally have one is that they can finally participate in the same conversations as everyone else. This is not often verbalized, of course, but you kind of sense it. The people that used to be mocked or joked about are now just people to talk to. Pregnancy ups and downs, diapers, the first this, the first that -- all of this is now fair game for the formerly excluded man or woman.

Conversations are so important in our daily lives, and yet I think we probably take them for granted. A conversation is a sharing of thoughts, experiences, and ideas. Sharing a conversation can strengthen and deepen a friendship or relationship. Feeling excluded from the conversation can result in a weakening of the relationship or feelings of depression. We know all of this stuff in our heads, but we don't really think about it much.

Since the onslaught of online networking sites, especially Facebook, it seems like common conversations are ever-present. As a woman who has no chance of going through pregnancy and who has a pretty slim chance of ever having a child in any way, being exposed to these conversations can really wear me down sometimes. It's not that I begrudge people these conversations, and no matter how tempting it may be, I don't really think it's right to say, "Hey, can all of you new parents I'm friends with talk about other stuff?" What I really lament though is that pregnancy and then parenthood are so all-encompassing and major life factors that there aren't many other conversations going on that I can relate to. My Facebook network has become a place where I can't really feel comfortable a lot of the time, and the same holds true for real-life gatherings.

What can we do about this? Well, like I said, I suppose one option could be to try to change the subject, but that gets pretty obvious and pretty old after awhile, and I think it can also come across as selfish. "What, I can't talk to another friend of mine about the fact that this major change is coming in my life?" Yeah. I wouldn't like that either.

Not surprisingly, starting a conversation about infertility doesn't really work either. Talking about nausea and morning sickness at a dinner table still carries an air of excitement. Talking about depression because of infertility is a real buzz kill.

I guess, in an ideal world, folks would occasionally take breaks from their talk of pregnancy and excitement and wonder and ask me about that book I mentioned, or ask me how my trip was, or ask me what crafts I'm working on these days. Or tell me about books they're reading. But in an ideal world, I would still be able to have good conversations with people who have children or who are expecting. They would still meet me at points that we have in common and we could return to those points, much like you used to return to the "safe" spot during games of tag. I would never ask someone to squelch their joy or excitement or sharing. I just wish infertility wasn't synonymous with feeling left out.

Don't forget what you love

On Monday, I returned from a trip to Boston. I've been wanting to go to Boston for a very long time. First there is all of the Revolutionary War history that happened there. Then, when I was pursuing my Masters in History, I wrote my thesis on a slave poet named Phillis Wheatley, who lived (and died in poverty) in Boston.

I've been on a real high since I got back.

You see, in Boston, I remembered everything about my greatest love - History. It might seem strange that a person could forget something as basic as "I really love this." However, when you are on a really bumpy roller coaster, which is perhaps the best description I have for infertility, sometimes your focus becomes narrow.

For the last ten years, there have been a lot of periods of time where my brain was consumed with trying to make sense of this strange diagnosis I live with. Why can other people so easily have children, to the point where they have children "accidentally," and I, who always imagined myself as a mother, can never even hope to have children who are really mine? What is that all about? How can I make it through another day with this great weight on my heart? How can I express joy for other people who seem to just be living out all of my dreams?

I haven't spent a lot of time in the last ten years thinking about things that I really really liked. I made up all sorts of reasons for this. I was soooo selfless. I was sooo busy. Whatever the reasons were, ultimately the fact was that I had become separated from myself. Depression and various hardships had split me from who I truly was, and I was lost.

Unlike in the soap operas, I was not able to take a random trip for 3 months to go looking for answers. That's the problem with real life. It keeps going, and you have to keep doing little things like getting up, going to work, and doing laundry. Finding your bliss gets put even further back on the back burner.

I remember, now, though, that History has always been my greatest love for as long as I can remember. I remember reading a book when I was first learning to read. It was called Wagon Wheels, and it was the story of a Black family who traveled to Nicodemus, Kansas. I had read it tons of times when one day I noticed the afterword. It was a true story!

I remember finding out that I was part Cherokee.

I remember going to Washington, D.C. for the first time, going to Mount Vernon, and somehow sensing that I was in a place of great importance.

My love of History is like being a fangirl or a fanboy for a celebrity. To walk in places where people I read about walked, to touch things that people I admire touched. These are things that fill me with incomprehensible joy. And it's something that likely will seem very strange to a lot of people. But that's okay. This is my bliss. We've been separated for quite some time, and it's so nice to have my arms around it again.

Do you remember what your bliss is? Do you know what it is without thinking? Is there something you can see or hear that makes you weep for joy right away, before you can even analyze what is going on?

Don't lose track of that. Don't try to fill that space with something else that makes sense to other people. Find your bliss and let it be your compass. Don't let it get lost like I did with mine. It is a long and winding unbroken path to get back to the paved road of right direction. Stay on, ever forward, and take it for all that it's worth.

"All Joy and No Fun"

A friend of mine just posted this article to Facebook today:

"All Joy And No Fun"

It's a long article, the general jist of which is that a lot of parents find that parenting is exhausting, not a lot of fun, hard to manage, stressful, sometimes painful, but oftentimes extremely rewarding. The article talks about how people with children often appear to be less lonely than those without children, and their lives seem to be, to them, more full.

Now, of course, reading this article from the perspective of someone diagnosed with infertility was an interesting experience. Perhaps the biggest surprise for me in all of my years of struggling has been the immense PRESSURE I felt to somehow have a child. For many years, I wouldn't even contemplate buying myself things or going on trips because, I would callously joke to myself, I was saving up to buy a baby.

Where does all of that pressure come from? It makes sense from a primeval or historical perspective. Humans used to have to reproduce to keep the race and evolution going. Reproducing was about keeping land in the family, trying for sons and beautiful daughters who would ensure our well-being i old age. Children, as the article points out, were farm hands and would keep the family business running. But what about now?

Of course, I still am deeply pained that I was not given a choice in this matter. It has marked my life without question. But the article is interesting in that it points out, as few rarely do, that parenthood is not necessarily enough to fulfill your every wish and desire. You as a person, as an individual, are still really important, whether or not you can or decide to have children.

My greatest fear for myself, over the last couple of years, and for others struggling with the same fight, is that being diagnosed with infertility can make you feel like you have no purpose. But based on this article, parenthood can sometimes make you feel that way too. When you are cleaning up messes at 2 AM, when your child is throwing a tantrum at a nice restaurant, or when you just want to relax and not hear the word "mommy" or "daddy" for a moment, maybe at those times you wonder what your life's purpose really is. 

So you see, we childless folk have something to share with our friends and relatives who have children. We all still need to value ourselves. We all still need to find a purpose that extends beyond the biological and emotional realities of reproduction. If we do not value ourselves, even 15 children would not be enough to make us feel happy. If we are okay with ourselves, we can head on our way to healing.

Interested, as always, in your thoughts!