One day, toward the end of a conversation I was having with the painter David Salle in his studio, on White Street, he looked at me and said, “Has this every happened to you? Have you ever thought that your real life hasn’t begun yet?”
“I think I know what you mean.”
“You know–soon. Soon you’ll start your real life.”
–Janet Malcolm, “Forty-One False Starts”
This. This is my life. I don’t even know what I can add to this.
Found on The Happiness Project blog.
Do you ever have just an unbelievably awkward experience where your brain just totally fails you?
I tried to walk into the bathroom at work. This particular door swings into the bathroom to open. There was a woman walking out at the same time. She stepped back, which I took to be an indication that she was letting me in before exiting. I was a little startled since I had just done that thing where you start to push in on the door and all of a sudden, it flies open much faster than you expect because someone else is pulling it. But you have no idea that someone else is pulling it because your brain hasn’t made the connection yet and so you’re shocked that you are so powerful as to push the door wide open with so little exertion.
So, I realize that she is stepping back to let me in and I start to walk forward. It’s too late though because she took my startled hesitation as a sign that I was waiting for her to step out. So we’re both walking towards each other. We pause, step back and then step forward again at the same time. Except this time I don’t pause after that second step forward. Something in my brain disconnects and I process the part where she steps back but not the part where she steps forward. So we are both walking forward pretty much about the slam into each other. She stops and I keep plowing forward. She looked a little shocked and I said, “oh my gosh, excuse me.” BUT I KEPT WALKING FORWARD. So I pretty much ran this lady over, apologized while doing it and KEPT GOING.
It’s like my brain stopped working entirely. I lost all sense of decorum. No, wait. I didn’t lose all sense of decorum. I knew enough to apologize for what I was doing. I just didn’t know enough to stop doing it. She made a comment where she apologized like it was her fault. I got the sense though that she was saying it in the way where you say, “Oh, excuse me” to someone who is being rude and you want to point it out to them in a passive-aggressive way. I can’t really fault her for that. I didn’t really need it pointed it out to me, though. I knew I was being rude. I just couldn’t stop my body.
I’m so grateful no one else was in the bathroom once I finally got in there. Since I promptly walked into a stall, closed the door and said out loud, “What the fuck was that?” and then started laughing hysterically at my own stupidity.
Stupid Stork wrote a post about infertiles in film and reminded me of a movie I had blocked out of my memory: Away We Go starring Maya Rudolph and John Krasinski. I watched this movie right after I lost the baby. I think. I don’t really remember. I know I watched it but I can’t remember when. All I know is that when I watched a scene she posted on her blog, I had this feeling. It was a feeling like “once upon a time this broke my heart into a million pieces and made me feel like dying.” This feeling usually happens when I remember things that happened either while I was pregnant or after we lost him. That’s not really the point of the story, though.
The point is that the part of the movie she posted on her blog was my favorite then and it’s my favorite now. It’s when they visit their friends in Montreal who have a bunch of adopted kids and this seemingly awesome life. Before they even walk into their house, they are awed by it. They have this gorgeous house, they are grown-ups (compared to how Maya and John’s characters feel about their lives) and obviously have it together. They walk into the house and are greeted with a Sound of Music sing-a-long and the happy chaos of a big happy family. They then go out for an awesome night on the town that makes it seem like this couple has everything they could ever want to be happy. After a lot of drinking, they go out to grab a bite to eat and the guy (played by Chris Messina, who I also love) says this about parenting:
It’s all those good things you have in you. The love, the wisdom, the generosity, the selflessness, the patience. The patience! At 3 A.M. when everyone’s awake because Ibrahim is sick and he can’t find the bathroom and he’s just puked all over Katia’s bed. Patience when you blink, when you blink, and it’s 5:30 and it’s time to get up again and you know you’re going to be tired all day, all week, all your fucking life. And you’re thinking what happened to Greece? What happened to swimming naked off the coast of Greece? And you have to be willing to make the family out of whatever you have.
Then his wife (played by Melanie Lynskey, who I also love so I think I just love everyone in this movie) says the title of this post.
You have to be so much better than you ever thought you could be.
She’s talking about parenting but she’s talking about so much more. Later on, it is revealed that she has just recently had her fifth miscarriage. That seemingly perfect life is not so perfect after all and they don’t have everything they’ve ever wanted. Maybe I’m reading way too much into this but I feel like when she says that, she’s not just talking about being a parent this huge family she has created through adoption. I feel like she is also talking about being a parent to those five babies that she lost.
Later on, her husband says:
I know she loves all those kids like, like they were her own blood. But, I wonder if we’ve been selfish. People like us we wait till our thirties and then we’re surprised when the babies aren’t so easy to make anymore and then every day another million fourteen-year-olds get pregnant without trying. It’s a terrible feeling, this helpless, man. You just watch these babies grow and then fade. You don’t know if you’re supposed to name them, or bury them, or… I’m sorry.
You have to be so much better than you ever thought you could be to watch those babies grow and fade. You have to be so much better than you ever thought you could be to name those babies and bury them and to not want to shake those fourteen-year-olds and to not beat yourself up for waiting until what you thought would be the right time. Most of all, you have to be so much stronger than you ever imagined to try again. I always get upset when people call me strong. I tell people I’m not strong and that I’m just moving forward because it’s the only thing I can do. But I’m wrong. I am strong. We all are. Despite the loss, we move forward. Even if you’ve never been pregnant, every failed cycle is a loss. My friend calls them misconceptions. She’s right. A loss is called a miscarriage but there isn’t a word to describe the loss of that hope of a baby month after month and year after year. There should be a word for that.
Despite the failed cycles, the miscarriages, the stillbirths, we move forward. We conceive again. We adopt. We choose to live a life without children. We try to make our families out of whatever we have, whether it’s our biology or adoption or just making a family out of the two of you. We feel like we don’t have a choice so it doesn’t mean anything. That’s wrong. First of all, we do have a choice. We could crumble, fall apart and never get out of bed again. We don’t. (And when we do, we realize we can’t do it forever.) Second of all, moving forward requires every bit of strength we have. We open ourselves up to a world of loss again and again in the hopes of building a better life for ourselves, no matter which way we decide to resolve our infertility.
I have been beating myself up lately about taking so long with the adoption process. I feel like we have dragged our feet every step of the way. We have taken our sweet time with everything and I feel like people are judging us because we should be on the books already. I feel like if I really wanted a baby badly enough, I’d be done already. A couple that was in a class with us already has a baby! I feel like I have failed already.
But it is HARD, people. It is so hard. Once we are on the books, we are opening ourselves up again. There is the possibility of more loss out there. Yes, if we stick with the wait, we will have a baby at the end. In between now and then, we could still lose, though. We could be scammed. We could have a birth mother choose us and change her mind. She can change her mind before the birth, after the birth, or after we take the baby home. We can have a birth father decide to parent. There is so much that can happen between now and our happy ending. It’s really freaking hard and it’s really freaking scary.
So, I am being strong. I am putting myself out there and it might hurt. Our profile is nearly done. Soon,we will officially be a waiting family and that is going to require me to be so much better than I ever thought I could be. I’m going to have to stop being so hard on myself because there’s already enough stress involved in moving forward and I’m going to need my strength.
PS I don’t know why but I can’t put the video in here so here’s a link.
1. I am watching: Strip Search
My husband reads this website and goes to this convention every year. When he came home from the convention, he turned on an episode of this show. It’s basically a reality tv show that airs on YouTube where they are looking for someone to draw an online comic strip. It is so random because I would have never watched this show on my own, but he just started playing a bunch of episodes and I became invested in these people and can’t wait to see who wins!
2. I am reading: Eleanor and Park by Rainbow Rowell
This book got rave reviews from multiple people whose opinions I respect. It’s a YA book about teens in high school but it doesn’t really read like one. At least the very beginning doesn’t which is as far as I’ve gotten so far. From the beginning though, I was hooked by the writing and the characters. Even though I just began the book and they literally had like one bus ride together, I’m dying to find out how Eleanor and Park’s relationship progresses.
3. I am pinning: Adoption announcements.
Because why not plan ahead? Even though the profile isn’t done yet (but we’re close), while I wait for it to be completed, I look ahead to the future. That’s where the fun stuff is!
4. I am listening to: The National
Their new album comes out tomorrow.
5. I am eating: Cinammon sugar pretzels
We bought one of those Auntie Anne’s at home kits and my husband made them tonight. They were incredible! He did such a great job. Although it would be much easier just to buy them. 
6. Different blogs I am loving:
This is amazing. This woman is blogging her old diary entries from when she was in middle school. Reading them is almost painful because some of the entries could have come out of my own diary. It’s crazy how dramatic everything was when we were young. Emotions were high and every situation seemed like it could change your life.
I can be changed by what happens to me. I refuse to be reduced by it. – Maya Angelou
At my infertility support group, someone labeled herself as defective because she’s comes to the end of the road of her fertility treatments and has only losses to show for it and no live baby. It broke my heart to hear her say that about herself because I don’t see her as defective. And yet, I see myself as defective. It took 8 IUIs to get me pregnant. Then once I did get pregnant, my body revolted. It went full on crazy. My baby was healthy and fine but my body gave up.
It’s funny how we see ourselves. I doubt that this woman would ever call me defective. Yet, she has no problem labeling herself. I would never ever describe someone else as defective, especially not based on their ability to carry a child. When it comes to me, though, I can very easily label myself a failure.
It’s so easy to judge yourself. It’s so easy to blame yourself. It’s extremely difficult to rise above. But we have to try.
Thing number 1: Arrested Development is coming back. Oh Bluth family, how I missed you!
Thing number 2: A cat walking a dog home. I wish our animals got along like this.
Thing number 3: A comedian hired a skywriter (funded by Kickstarter) to write a joke in the sky.
Thing number 4: This commercial makes me want to eat nothing but Oreos for the rest of my life.
