It may not be all good, but it's not all bad, either

Right from the beginning I wanted to keep this blog on topic. To stick to infertility and, more specifically for the time being, my last-gasp attempts at ART. It's a little depressing to read, though, isn't it?

Well of course it is! IF sucks old dirty rotten donkey eggs. (No offense to donkeys. Really, I don't know where that came from.) There's nothing bright and sunny about the topic. If I'm not whining — er, blogging — about my inability to do the ONE thing my body was uniquely created to do, I'm worrying about the emotional and financial tolls 4.5 years of failed TTC efforts have exacted. Or I'm venting about my state's lack of mandated coverage for medically necessary fertility care. OR, I'm reminding myself that it's illegal for me to snatch that tiny, helpless, perfect, crying infant I saw today in the park — the one whose mother kept slamming down her book so she could lean over the stroller and say "SHUT UP."

All that stuff is honest and comes with the experience. It helps for me to express some of it. But I often find myself looking for positive things to write, on topic, too. It's hard to pull off, though, because most of my happy thoughts and news have nothing to do with my theme here. I want to add a different dimension, but I kinda can't and sorta won't. While every day looks like a bad day when viewed through the IF lens, I think writing about that life angle every day is not the best thing for me. So I don't. Except when I hit a streak where I do.

The point to all this? Good question. Let's see if I can work out an answer.

IF takes up a ton of space in my life, to be sure, but I work on staying rooted in the reality of my WHOLE life, both what's going on now and what the future may hold. I'm grateful that IF hasn't erased the rest of me, and I guess maybe that's where I'm going with this today:

I don't know how this IVF will go. I don't know what we'll do if it fails. I can't predict exactly how the pain from these "infertile years" will color the rest of my life. What I do know is that, no matter what happens, I won't be denied a life. Because I already have one. And it's a good one, at that.