Look Out! It’s Holiday Depression Time! :(

Another Christmas without a child.

I’m getting VERY SICK of this.

In 2008, I cried over a negative pregnancy test on Christmas Day.

In 2009, I was mourning my grandmother’s death.

In 2010, I got the terrible news just in time for Christmas that my mean-spirited atheist sister was pregnant with #3.

And in 2011, I’m left with memories from the past three Christmases, plus impending menstruation on Christmas Eve Day, plus an update from my social worker that was basically the equivalent of “no babies are available” all over again.  Plus, as of recently, the news that my mean-spirited atheist sister is coming into town with her outspoken atheist husband and three children.  Think of her husband as a young, arrogant Christopher Hitchens type contrast with my husband and me.  Not a pretty picture.

Soo….. I’m looking forward to getting it all over with and then getting on to yet another year of infertility.  I wish I could knock myself out for the holidays and sleep through them.  It would be FAR more pleasant than sitting and listening to my brother-in-law pop off about how much God sucks and how fortune he is to have a new, high-paying job, and three kids, while everyone else just lets him get away with it.

And meanwhile, we’re starting to receive cards in the mail again.  I actually hoped we WOULDN’T get many cards this year.  I was hoping and praying we’d be spared the “look-at-my-life, -I’m-blessed-with-babies” cards (ie. pregnancy or birth announcement Christmas cards).  Alas, one of my husband’s close friends sent a photo of him, his dog, and his pregnant wife, signed by the FOUR of them.  It took me a while to realize his wife was pregnant.  I had thought at first she was just plain putting on weight.  Whoops.

Soooooooo….. any ideas as to HOW THE HECK I CAN MANAGE THROUGH YET ANOTHER HORRIBLE HOLIDAY SEASON?  Ugh!!!!

I was TOTALLY not looking forward to Christmas 2011.  Though I still admit, Christmas 2010 was worse.  But don’t worry, Christmas 2011.  You still have plenty of days left to ruin things and beat last year’s personal misery index.

And in the midst of it, we are STILL waiting.  And questioning ourselves.  Questioning our relationship.  Questioning our lives.  Questioning God.  Questioning EVERYTHING.  I hate infertility!  I hate time off of teaching!  I’d rather be with my little second graders (I actually have a really wonderful class this year!) than stuck home for the holidays with negative thoughts and a negative outlook for the future.  People told me I’d have a baby within 3 years of when we started trying.  Huh… we’re going on 4 in February.  Still no baby.  I am really upset.  I wish I could wake up out of this nightmare.  I wish all the fertile myrtles of the world could spend just 5 minutes in my shoes so they could see how it feels and be a little more sensitive towards the plight of the infertile.  But… no such luck.

I really wish there was a such thing as Christmas miracles.

All I Want for Christmas…

… is to make it through without a major episode of nonstop crying, rage, and anger.

My birthday did not go well this year.  People tried hard to make me happy, but the bottom line is, I hit two triggers during those stressful days leading up to my Big Bad Day, and I was recovering on my actual birthday, meaning I did not get to do anything I had wanted (ie. get coffee, see friends, laugh, go to church, do whatever the heck I wanted).

I hate this time of year with a passion.  I used to love it, but ever since I started this painful, broken road of life called Infertility, I have grown to dread and despise this time of year.  You are supposed to be elated, celebrating.  Celebrating what?  Celebrating my life when I don’t feel like I want to live?  Celebrating Jesus’ existence?  Can’t I do that last thing every day?  And anyway, what do Santa Claus, Christmas Trees, Black Friday, and the frantic, desperate dash to make ourselves happy have to do with Jesus?  Nothing.

If anything, I’ve noticed that people grow even more self-centered around the holidays and all the more reason why I despise this time of year.

I hope, every year, that one year, I’ll have a reason to set up my tree, a reason to shop with joy, and a little child’s eyes to watch the holidays in bewilderment and newfound excitement.  But instead, every year, it’s a shrinking income, the gift of birthday depression and bad memories of previous years of heartache, and a society that is totally clueless about the pain of the Perpetually Childless woman.

Today on the radio, the K-Love DJ talked about poor Michelle Duggar, suffering from a miscarriage.  It always irks me when celebrities’ pain is more significant than normal, every day people’s sorrows.  Michelle Duggar’s miscarriage was tragic for her and her family–but frankly, she has 19 other wonderful kids to love.  Women who have miscarriages and no other babies have to go home to an empty nursery.  And women who can’t even get pregnant at all don’t even have the hope of imaging that one day, in Heaven, they will meet their unborn angels.  Those of us who have never even been pregnant have nothing but broken dreams year after year.  I wish someone would publicly support us, not just Michelle Duggar, because this hurt is just as deep, but without consolation of older children.

So this year, 2011, as I go through the holiday season with nothing but recent painful birthday moments and last year’s bitter Christmas “gift” of learning about my sister’s pregnancy, all I can EVER hope for is that somehow, I can make it through these days without a total breakdown.  Days where I don’t cry and feel depressed are little celebrations for me.  I wonder if my life will always feel this way, if things will ever improve.  But when the status quo has stayed the same for years and years — I still have a jobless husband who is bordering his own depressive issues — and a shrinking income for a stressful job — I wonder if this is as good as it gets, if the best days are behind me, and if life will ever improve.

This holiday season, please reach out and love someone with infertility.  You have no idea how much they need comfort this holiday season.  Maybe not quite in the same way as couples who have lost children or families who have lost loved ones, but it’s still an enormous loss — a loss of control and one’s dreams — and everything becomes so much worse around this time of the year.

I’d say hooray for 2012, may it be better than 2008, 2009, 2010, and 2011, but after so many years of disappointment, I am no longer holding expectations for a New Year.

Birthdays and Infertility

The two worst days of an infertile woman’s life are her birthday and Christmas.

Unfortunately for me, both of them occur within three weeks of each other, in December.

My birthday totally stresses me out.  First of all, it’s a reminder of that ever-ticking time clock in the back of my mind that is screaming, YOU’RE ONLY 8 YEARS AWAY FROM 40!  NOW YOU’RE ONLY 7 YEARS AWAY FROM 40!  NEXT YEAR YOU’LL ONLY BE 6 YEARS AWAY FROM 40!  It’s a huge reminder that my dreams of a large family with six kids are not intended to come true, and that as time passes, I’ll be lucky enough to have even one child.

Then, too, is that people mean fully well and want to do nice things for me.  However, the more reminders I get for my birthday, the more miserable I become.  Right now, all I want for my birthday is to do what I want.  I have so little control over my life that just ONCE, for ONE day, I want to do whatever I want!  And maybe all I want for my birthday is to go to church, come home and do my own creative writing, and maybe go to dinner, and then my Bible study.  That’s all.  But everyone wants to celebrate it.  I honestly don’t feel like celebrating anything right now; I feel like my life is a tornado spinning out of control more and more.  What am I supposed to celebrate?  I’d rather just get my way for ONCE and move on after the dreaded birthday is over.  But you just can’t even have that on your stupid birthday!

So when people ask me what I’m doing for my birthday, they don’t realize just how much I’m trying to FORGET the stupid birthday.  It creates even more stress on me because suddenly, I have to try to guess at what special events in which I will partake on that dreaded day.  Maybe I just want to relax.  Maybe I just want to spend my day in prayer.  Maybe I just want to spend my day pretending it’s anything BUT my birthday.

This year my birthday will be especially stressful.  I’m glad to be home from school, but in a way, not really.  I have friends who have just moved back into town and want to see me ON MY BIRTHDAY, but I don’t feel like socializing.  It isn’t their fault; they have no idea that birthdays can drive an infertile woman crazy.  They don’t know that when they moved away 3 years ago, I had honestly thought I’d have a baby by the time they returned.  So seeing them, as much as I like them, is yet another reminder of failure for me.  Then, too, my family wants to lavish me with presents, as if all the material goods in the world could could somehow make up for the fact that my nursery is STILL empty after FOUR long years of Infertility Hell!  I just want to scream LEAVE ME ALONE, EVERYONE!  Let me forget my stupid birthday!  But I also know that someday, my parents and husband may not be there to spend time with me on my birthday, and in a  dark, lonely world of shrinking families and a lack of a future generation, it is entirely possible that if my husband passes away before I do, I will likely be spending all future birthdays alone.  So I force myself to put on a plastic smile and do whatever they want, even though it isn’t what I really want, just so that one day, when I really am all alone, I can look back and remember that at least my husband and parents loved me.

I wanted a baby at 29.  No baby.  I wanted a baby at 30.  I actually thought I was pregnant at one point and the due date would have actually been my thirtieth birthday.  At that time I remember I had thought, “Well, a little late for my first child, but it would be cool to share a birthday with my baby.”  Turns out, there was no baby.  I turned 30, then 31, and no baby.  By the time 32 came, I felt pretty disappointed and full of despair.  Even our adoption process just isn’t working, and I’ve questioned why God doesn’t seem to want us to become parents.  It just doesn’t make sense.  Every single person who meets me thinks I’d make a GREAT mom.  And not to sound arrogant–I know I wouldn’t be perfect–but I actually think I’d be a decent mom, too.  So why won’t I get that chance?  I’m devastated. All I feel like doing on Sunday, my dreaded birthday, is to cry my eyes out.  But instead, another year dawns and I’ll be 33, and still no baby.  If only, if only….  If life worked out the way it was supposed to, I should have a three-year-old on Sunday.

Nobody seems to know just HOW stressful your birthday is when you’re not expecting.  It’s one of the worst days of the year.  Barring some last-minute miracle, which is like a 99.99999% chance of not happening, I will not be a mom before I’m 33.  Which means I’m even older.  I just want to cry over my broken dreams.  I’m so miserable!

Infertility has a real way of knocking all the joy out of one’s birthday.

Christmas is also a miserable day for those of us women facing infertility, but that’s for another post.

Casey Anthony Trial

It’s been frequently mentioned online to be the “trial of the century,” and a trial that “everyone can relate to” for a myriad of reasons.  My interest in this case is that of a woman yearning for a beautiful baby just like that precious Caylee Anthony who died and quite possibly in the hands of a negligent mother.

Sure, watching the expression on Casey Anthony’s face as she cries and brightens when being declared “not guilty” for the death of her daughter in a way, brings me relief.  After all, guilty or not, it would be cruel to see someone die for a crime that would hopefully not be replicated–assuming she doesn’t get blessed with more children that she doesn’t want.

But on the other hand, I feel an anger that goes with the world of Infertility in which justice is not served and the guilty go free.  I personally do believe that Casey does have some role in her little girl’s death.  And while it’s not necessarily a premeditated murder, I do think that she still played some sort of role.  Negligence, perhaps, and certainly, guilty of being a bad parent who parties while her daughter is dead.  I have a major problem with that, as does a better part of the nation.

I’m glad I wasn’t a juror in that trial.  I would have had to excuse myself due to my infertility.  I could not handle judging a mother who may or may not have killed her precious baby girl.  I would have given anything to have had that baby.

All women who kill their children, or who are that negligent, should be sterilized, unable to have more children.  Or Social Services should remove any further children from their homes.  Ugh.  It makes me sick that Casey Anthony didn’t at least get charged with negligence or manslaughter.  Wasn’t Caylee supposed to be in her mother’s care at the time?  Sick, sick, sick!!!

Too Busy to Hear a Prayer?

Can God multi-task?

It seems very impossible, even though the Bible says with God anything is possible.  After all, I’ve seen countless examples of the blunders that occur when we multi-task.  Texting while driving equals accident.  Playing video games while cooking equals burned food.  Drinking coffee while sending email equals damaged laptop.  And the list goes on.

Furthermore, there is only so much we as humans can do.  When we’re talking to a person on a phone, we can’t talk to another person in the same room–at least not well.  We say our attention is “divided.”  And we say that receiving full attention is called “undivided attention.”

What I really want right now is God’s UNDIVIDED attention, and that means for just a few minutes, He takes his hears and eyes off of my sister the atheist and pays the attention to me, who has felt neglected and unheard by Him for three years.  I at least would like to have an answered prayer for myself, like, “How do I know you really love me, God?”

When we think that Jesus died for us, it’s enough to convict many people.  But it also has to carry a personal meaning, a personal conviction.  It can’t be enough to say, “Oh, Jesus died for you.”  It demeans Jesus’ suffering and death to say that he loves the whole world and died for everyone, because it negates a personal level.  Did Jesus REALLY die for me, or am I just a side-effect when he really intended to die for my sister instead?

So if God is busy blessing the people who don’t believe in Him, why won’t He let the blessings flow over those who do believe in Him, too?  Or am I destined to walk this road of Infertility Hell until I die and having children no longer holds any further interest for me?

I pray that God will take away my desire to have children and that I will learn to be happy without having them, as that appears to be His will.  I pray that I will be normal, be able to be happy for others (even my sister), and that I can feel healthy and whole again, instead of broken and neglected.  I pray that my relationship with God can be healed.  I think I’d rather have a healthy relationship with God and serve as a role model for others–like I used to be–instead of a model of suffering.  I can’t suffer with dignity, and at the very least, I wish I could do that.  I wish someone could look at my walk and say, “Wow, that woman’s been through a lot, but she still serves God well.  She is my role model.”  But people can’t say that about me.  Maybe I’m such an awful person that I deserve IF Hell after all.  I just wish God would heal me and make me whole again, children or no children.  At least I could feel better about myself that way, even if I am never able to feel hopeful about the future.

I just wish God would take a few minutes of time to hear my prayer.  I’m sure He has so many other issues to contend with.  People in far worse spots than I’m in right now.  Their prayers really do deserve to be heard first, over mine.  But then, when He gets ready to dole out blessings, I hope He stops and looks down on me today with pity and heals me.  If I can’t be blessed with a baby, at least I could be healed from my pain and my horrific attitude.  I just want to be the real me again, the person I was before Infertility Hell hit.

Heartache

Today I feel heartbroken.

My sister’s baby has already gone home.  So the prayers that I prayed for her were not only answered, but answered in abundance–quite the opposite of the 3 1/2 year long prayers I have made on behalf of my own unable-to-be-conceived children.

I feel so heartbroken because, probably what hurts me more deeply than knowing my sister is so happy while her joy creates more infertility pains for me, is that I feel completely unloved by God right now.  Totally abandoned and forgotten.

This morning in church, while everyone praised Him, I spent most of my time daydreaming and trying to imagine what life would be like if God REALLY loved me.  I don’t feel loved at all by Him.

My sister was the favored child in our household, and God showed no pity on me.  He could have favored me, specially since I’m the Christian and my sister is not.  He could have at least leveled out the playing field by blessing us both equally.  But He didn’t do that, either.  Instead, He let me walk down the unending road of Infertility Hell while my sister continues to be blessed daily.  I can just imagine her smiling and laughing and hugging her new baby and the two older children cooing and playing with their baby sister while I sit and stare at my empty nursery and wonder why I even bothered to buy a house four years ago when it clearly isn’t being used to raise a child.

In church, during all the worship time, I pleaded with God in my silent prayers and begged and said, “Please show me that you love me!”

The sign of God’s feelings for me was to receive yet another update about my sister’s blessing.  So that’s it, the proof that God hates me.  Giving me exactly what I DON’T want in response to my prayer.

I wonder at times like these why I still choose to believe in God at all.  I feel like He hates me.  I know He’s too busy blessing others to pay any attention to me.  Just like my parents and even my husband–they all think my sister’s worth the attention and the blessings.  My parents drive out to see my sister.  My husband tells me I need to fix my relationship with my sister (and thus opening myself up to more heartache) because my “poor sister needs me.”  (Yeah, right….).  Deep down inside, my hubby’s support of my sister conjures up scary memories of teenage boys who wouldn’t cast me a second look but fell smitten with my prettier sister, and deep down inside, I still have that horror that my own husband would dump me for her.  Even though he does love me and is otherwise supportive–at least to the best of his ability, before his patience runs out.  There are only so many nights of tears that he can tolerate.

But I also know that there has to be a God.  Who else created life?  Oh wait, my dumb sister and brother-in-law did, right?

The idea of Jesus willingly dying for me seems so intangible, if not a very highly unlikely scenario, when you’re in the midst of feeling ignored by the God who supposedly loves you.  I cling to this dream that I had back in the fall, in which Jesus was in a courtroom and was declared guilty (even though he’s innocent) and was sentenced to die and I tried to save him.  It’s the most real sign I’ve seen all year of God’s interest in me–assuming He has any at all.

I just want to know why God is MIA and why He’s been so absent from my life these past several months–ever since I started this blog and before I learned my sister’s “good” news.  I feel like God has totally abandoned me and has instead chosen to bless the atheists instead of me, the believer.  It makes no sense to me.

I try to remind myself of the story that circulates email boxes about the two angels who visit a cruel man and a farmer.  The farmer’s cow dies and the cruel man gets money.  But in the end, the cow’s death was a blessing because it could have been the farmer’s wife instead.  And the cruel man gets money only to lead a miserable life and die unhappy.  I can’t help but to wonder, is it possible that somehow, giving my sister the things I want is only making her miserable while somehow, I’m supposed to learn how to be happy living a life without any children?  I really wish I could see the bigger picture and get some answers.  Bad.

I really don’t know what the real story behind my miserable life is.  Is it that God decided not to give me children so that my husband and I could travel all the time?  Or that I’m actually happier being alone, and so somehow, I might be far more miserable if I did have kids?  Is it that He still wants to bless me with children, but He wanted to get my sister’s blessings “over with” and out of the way so that I could enjoy mine even more?  (At least my sister’s baby was born before we went to Hawaii!).

I just wish I could climb up a high rock and look out from a vantage point to see what’s really going on here.  Where is God in this time of extreme trial?  Why doesn’t He notice me?  Does He hear my cries every night?  Does He see how frustrated my husband is with me whenever I’m moping around the house because I’m so depressed?  Does He know how scared I am that after Hawaii, I’ll terrified that I have nothing left in life to look forward to?  I just don’t know what’s going on, why God is so absent right now, and whether or not He loves me.  And that’s the saddest thing of all.  If I couldn’t have a child, at least God could show me a sign that He still loved me.  Thus far, I’ve seen not a single signal or sign, and I really needed one.

Where is God when I need Him?

Can’t Take the Wait

I just feel like I can’t take the wait one more second.

It’s been nearly two years since my hubby and I set out to adopt.  We were approved in February 2010.  We’ve been waiting nearly 1 1/2 years now to bring home our bundle.

But we’ve waited longer for parenthood than that.

Like most couples who seek to adopt, we’ve tried to have a biological child.  That ultimately led to frustration every month.  We still go through a monthly frustration, too, as mine is due here any day now (GRR!!!).  I’m still PMSing, too, which isn’t helping me to cope with my sister’s recent blessing.

So in actuality, my husband and I have been waiting for 3 years and 5 months now to become parents.  I’ve reached a point where I wonder, “How much longer can I stand it?”

I think I’m at the breaking point.  I’m beginning to question which would be worth more:  holding on indefinitely until our social worker says, “Hey, I have a baby for you,” which could be months or even years from now.  Or maintaining sanity and accepting the possibility that we will not have children, and at least finding closure.  I feel like I need to be in a position of certainty.  Either we WILL have kids or we WON’T have kids.  But I can’t tolerate one more moment of uncertainty from Infertility Hell.

Today my social worker sent us a message (really, to everyone, I imagine) sharing how difficult a 2 1/2 year wait was for someone else, how they held on, and how things worked out eventually.  And I’m sure that was God’s way of telling me to hold on.  But I can’t, and that’s the problem.

Right now I’m so anxious and apprehensive, I feel shaky and jittery.  Like I’ve had too much caffeine.  I’m planning to burn off some energy at the gym pool this afternoon in hopes it helps.  And I’m hungry, so a filling lunch may help.  But deep down, I’m scared.  My budding anxiety disorder seems to be growing.

I want to be healthy and filled with joy like I used to be before the journey into Infertility Hell.  I’m tired of looking back and having regrets like, “If only I’d met my husband sooner and we’d started trying sooner,” or “If only we never even used condoms, maybe we would have had a ‘honeymoon baby,’” or “If only I had given myself away before marriage years beforehand.”  You get filled with questions like these when you walk through Infertility Hell.  It’s a trademark of the terrible disease itself.  Rationally, I know things probably would not have been better and would have been significantly worse if I had been sexually active before marriage (I wouldn’t have wanted to have a baby with anyone other than my husband!).  But dark questions mark the dim lighting of this roadway ahead, and this is what my brain thinks.  This is why I SO BADLY want to see the light again, why I SO BADLY want to escape the perils of Infertility Hell.  I can’t take it.  Not one more second.

So what’s a girl to do?  I don’t know.  I just know the wait has become too long and too trying for me.  I do know that I’m running on emotions brought on by PMS and my sister’s recent birth–a dangerous combination of events for the Infertile Woman to experience.  I just pray that God will pull me through this and tell me He still loves me.  I need to hear it.