It’s so hard when it doesn’t come easy

Today has not been a good day – not even a little.  First some back story; when my husband’s father passed away his house was willed to the hubs and his two brothers.  This is a gigantic house on the west coast – none of them could afford the mortgage on it so they decided to hire a property manager and rent the property out (the same family has rented it out all these years).  It rents very well because it’s a big house in an amazing neighborhood in a superb school district.  A few years later one of his brothers wanted his share of the money out of the house so that he and his fiancee (soon to be ex-wife) could buy a townhouse.  My husband and his youngest brother did the dumbest thing imaginable because I wasn’t around to tell them they were being stupid (and apparently no one else felt the need to do so) – they figured up how much they “thought” the house was worth and then divided it by three.  A new loan was taken out to pay for this (in addition to the bit that was still on the mortgage).  My husband’s brother walked away with $250,000 – my husband walked away with a half a million dollar loan in his name. When we got married we decided we wanted to buy a house, we obviously couldn’t do that with a $550,000 mortgage hanging over our heads.  My husband looked into selling the house and upon doing that all hell broke loose.  His younger brother absolutely refused to budge.  Their mother in a desperate attempt to keep the peace decided to “buy” my husband out – which basically involved her borrowing money and giving us $80,000 for his share of the house, with the promise to figure out a way to get the house mortgage out of his name and into hers.  This was three years ago – the mortgage is still in his name.  We took that $80,000 and purchased the home we currently reside in, we paid for it entirely in cash and because of that we have full equity in our home but no way to get that equity because of the mortgage from hell that my husband is still carrying.  The last six months we have been faxing papers, signing papers, etc in regards to his mom getting a loan to buy the loan out.  Today, we find out that loan is a bust – they won’t finalize it because it would be between a mother and a son or some bull crap.

The ONLY reason we want access to the equity in our home is so that we can pay for IVF – that is it.  My husband talked to his mother today and asked if there was any way she could just borrow 50k in equity off of her house, we open up a joint account which we would then deposit the payments in every month and the payment would be auto deducted by the bank via that account.  She informed my husband that she actually has a 115k line of credit available on her house that she isn’t using, but she thinks she still wants to go the loan route for now and keep trying.  ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!?!?!?!  (sorry if my language offends you, but I just can’t deal with censoring myself today) . I realize that that is her money and I am in no position to “demand” it but out of all of her children my husband is so financially responsible it borders on insane.  None of our bills are EVER late, we live below our means, I am so incredibly anal about bill paying and finances (I use an excel spreadsheet that is so ridiculously detailed that it would make someone with OCD weep in appreciation) .

If we can’t get the 50k from his mom the only other choice we have is to sue his brother and have a judge force him to sell it.  My husbands family is the most anti-drama family on the earth – so having to make that choice would cause my husband severe heartache and I don’t want to be the cause of that.

I am so frustrated, so angry, so pissed off, so heartbroken.  If my body would just do what it’s supposed to do this wouldn’t even be a damn issue – we would have no problem just carrying that mortgage – but no, my body refused to cooperate.  My husband has super sperm and I’m just broken. All we want is a family, I don’t understand why it’s so hard – why every time we think something is going well some thing pops up to remind us that it’s not.

I am so tired of waiting for a chance to be a mother.  I get angry thinking we could spend 50k  and having nothing to show for it, and then I feel like people will think we “wasted” all that money.  I worry that if his mother would agree to lend us the 50k, I would feel immense pressure for it to work and if it doesn’t work then I will feel like even more of a failure.

I think about the fact that I should have been due next month and if I were still pregnant then none of this would even be an issue.  I think about the baby I lost and wonder if that’s the closest I’m ever going to get.  That alone has been really weighing heavily on my heart and mind the last few weeks, so adding this to it is just too much for me to really process/deal with currently.

The only bright spot in today was that my period stopped, but the small joy of that is nothing compared to the crap of everything else.

 

“It felt like a given
Something a woman’s born to do
A natural ambition
To see a reflection of me and you

And I’d feel so guilty
If that was a gift I couldn’t give
And could you be happy
If life wasn’t how we pictured it
…..
It’s so hard when it doesn’t come easy
It’s so hard when it doesn’t come fast
It’s so hard when it doesn’t come easy
So hard”

I am done with my graceless heart

Last night as we were laying in bed my husband leaned over and whispered a question in my ear.  He asked “Are you happy?”.  I continued to lay there for a moment unsure of what to say, in that moment I was content and comfortable looking forward to drifting off to sleep.  But, content and comfortable do not equal happy.  I am happy with my husband, I am happy with my little corner of the world but there are so many things that I am not happy with.  Would it have been right to say “yes”, would it have been better to say “no”, instead I simply said “I don’t know”.  Because while I am happy about certain things I am unhappy with infertility and this body that can’t seem to get anything right; I am unhappy with my weight,  with my social anxiety, with medical issues going on with my mother, and with stress and loss.  However does that unhappiness equal total unhappiness or is no one either or, do we constantly live in a grey area.  Ping ponging back and forth between the happy and the sad, the mediocre and the magnificent.  If I currently reside in that ugly grey area then I am sick of it, I am sick of walking around with a ugly dark pit deep inside of me, that stomach churning feeling of believing you are missing something, that there was something you were supposed to do but have somehow forgotten what it was.  I let the worry gnaw at my soul until I can feel it in every fiber of my being.

When I asked my husband the same question, his answer was an unaffected “yes”.  I don’t feel as though he was lying, I just feel as though he is better at compartmentalization than I am.  He worries and he hurts but at the end of day he believes that everything is going to be okay.  I’ve never been that way, I wish that I could learn how.  Instead I have always been the person who lets worry and anxiety consume them till there is not much left.  My husband suggested that I go talk to someone, I might.  I know that to be able to have IVF be successful I need to do EVERYTHING in my power to make it so, not just making my body healthier but my heart and mind as well.  I’ve been to therapists in the past and they have never done much good, maybe this time will be different.  I have something else to fight for besides just myself this time around, and that has to count for something.

I’m a little black rain cloud

So this is me today

It’s one of “those days” – I honestly hate “those days”.  The kind of day where it probably would have been better if I would just have stayed in bed.  I’ve been snippy towards my dogs, started a tear-filled argument with my husband for reasons that are truly beyond me at this point.  I’ve tried to listen to music to cheer me up it just makes me angry, I tried to make cupcakes and they just made me sad.  I tried to look at stuff online and it all made me feel miserable inside.

I’d like to think that this is just me being hormonal – but what hormones?  I started back on my metformin but I don’t recall it making me depressed before (at least not this far gone).  I’ve battled with super serious depression in my life before so I know that as shitty as today feels (and trust me it feels plenty shitty) it pales in comparison to other days I’ve had in the past.  The extra crappy thing is that I get so angry at myself for being sad (for what feels like no reason), I feel like I don’t have the right to be sad or like if I am sad I should just suck it up.  There is a part of me that because of all the infertility stuff I feel like I shouldn’t be depressed as there is a part of me that feels like people will judge me for my sadness; and they will feel like my infertility is deserved because “sad people don’t make good mothers” – I know this is all bullshit, but it doesn’t stop me from feeling that way.  Is every day of my life like this – obviously no, I have great days – most of my days are great days.  But some days are just faking it type of days, and other rarer days are days like today.

Some days – such as today – I just wish that things were easier and that life would magically work out like I always thought it would.  I really wish I had more people to talk to but the only people I have are my husband and my mother, who both are dealing with a lot themselves right now.  So I come here, pour out my heart but never completely for fear of being judged “unfit” to mother the child that nature hasn’t seen fit to let me have (yet?).  I know that I would make a good mother; but I feel like others might not see that, all they would see is a woman who cries when she makes cupcakes.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way

Well it wasn’t….

The idea is that you grow up, fall in love, get married, have a baby – it’s all so simple, so normal, everyone does it right?  It’s the thing you believe your entire life, it’s the thing you believe when you are 11 years old pouring over baby name books and imaging what your babies will look like with your junior high school crush.  It’s what you believe when as a responsible college student you go on birth control, it’s what you believe when you finally get around to meeting the man of your dreams and you plan your life together with that man.  It’s what you believe when you decide to “start trying”, it’s what you still try to tell yourself when you realize that your cycles have never been regular, it’s what you are still trying to tell yourself a year later when there is no baby not even a pregnancy.

It was supposed to be so simple – Well it wasn’t.

Almost three years of trying, doctors, “unexplained infertility”, 3 IUI’s, 1 miscarriage, two broken hearts and more tears than could ever be counted.  It’s seeing your husbands face at a positive result only to have to bear witness to the devastation that follows when for whatever reason your baby couldn’t stay.  It’s not knowing what to say to people who ask “why don’t you have kids yet”, it’s the anger welling up in the back of your throat when they tell you “just adopt” – as if it was just that easy.  It’s the pain in your heart watching your friends with their kids and the anger at yourself for feeling that way.  It’s the righteous anger of watching people “accidentally” get pregnant, it’s watching people you know who can barely care for themselves have all the ease in the world when it comes to having a baby.

It’s going to baby showers and smiling then crying in your car the whole way home.

It’s avoiding the baby aisle at the store because you just can’t deal with it.

It’s yelling on the phone with insurance companies about what is and what isn’t covered under your pathetic “infertility coverage” – it’s crying into your husbands arms after you hang up because of sheer frustration.

It’s living a life apart and all consuming and knowing that the majority of the people who love you just can’t understand.

It’s explaining to your mother for the 50th time what happens during IUI and IVF’s, but having no answer when she asks you why it’s so expensive or why your insurance won’t pay for it.

It’s knowing when the doctor office calls if the news is going to be bad or good based solely on the tone of their voice when they say hello.

It’s having knowledge that no one should have to have.

This wasn’t supposed to be my life – but it is. I can’t change it by wishing for it to be something that it is not, I can only try to keep going – get out of bed every morning, breathe and just keep going.

I want nothing more than to have a child that has my eyes and my husbands dark beautiful hair.  I want to introduce our child to this world, I want to watch them learn and grow and I want them never to have to go through what we went through.

So we keep going – we keep trying.  This fall it will be IVF, how many rounds will we have to do and will any of them be successful, only G-d knows that.  So we keep going – we keep trying, I try to hang on to that hopeful little girl of 11 who believed it would all be so easy, who named children that she believed she would have.  I keep those names on my heart now, for fear of writing them down.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way.