Sometimes I get to a point where I think I'm doing pretty well with some kind of acceptance of the infertility situation. Then, things like my birthday come up. From now until forever, my birthday will ever be tied to the failure of the implanting of my 3 weak embryos. This year was 5 years. And, because of when my birthday falls, Christmas is forever tied to the due date that never was. This Christmas, we'd have a 5 year old or 5 years olds if all had worked out.
I also have moments when I try to accept it by looking at the reality of who I am and who I would have been. What I mean is that I look at how things are for the best because I would have sucked at parenting.
Like, when Jarvis loses his shit because a car door shut or someone had the nerve to come to the front door. I have yet to figure out the dog mom way of fixing that behavior. Then, there are the times we're on a walk and he goes all in with his sniffing. He bears down with all his weight pushed into his legs which push into the ground and this bearing down also turns off his hearing of me calling him. I have to give quite the yank of the leash. Dog mom WINNING!
Here's the place I list all my step-parenting fails.
Okay, I'm not actually going to go into all of that because that would really bring this post down...
...more than it actually has gone.
The other day I was thinking about the parenting win that ECT would have been. Who knows how things would have played out if I did successfully get pregnant and give birth and have the responsibility of a little human or humans? Maybe ECT wouldn't have been on the table because some kind of hormonal shift that helped my brain. Anyway, if we had a kid or kids while I went through ECT, that would mean that, not only would I have lost a year of my own life, I would have lost a year in the life of my child or children. That's pretty shitty.
There's no real way to wrap this up. My mind is a kind of chaos. I'm feeling everything and nothing all at once.
Oh, and before all the "You would have been a great mom" or "You are too hard on yourself", those don't help. I know you might think they'll help me get out of this pity party, it has the opposite effect. Let me put it this way. If you wanted to be a surgeon for years and you put so much time into going to school and you worked so hard and then, BAM! you are blinded. Everything you envisioned for yourself is gone. Would you really want someone telling you what a great surgeon you would have been?
I think you are a great dog mom. You are an awesome aunt. By all accounts you've rocked the heck out of step parenting. Being a mom doesn't define us or our worth. If anything, the more I do this, the less I identify myself as only or primarily the mother of small persons. Life is what it is (whether for predetermined reasons, or strictly on chance, what do I know?) You are the best Meg I know, and I'm so happy you are my friend. Not a platitude, just the truth that I think you should hear.
ReplyDeleteThank you!
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