Grey skies, clear goals

Hi All,

This is Grey again, glad to be back with you. Thank you all for your very warm reception following my last post. It was very validating and you are helping me understand community on a deeper level. I hope I can give you what you gave me.

Our transfer is coming up and Cristy and I are filled with anxiety. For a fleeting moment awhile back, I felt like I could forget, escape. I even thought, hey, this isn't so bad. Who needs kids? But I know at my very core it isn't true. I need kids. No material, no personal freedom can fill a kid-shaped hole in my heart. We have to resolve. We have to do this. No waiting, no running. I can sprint, but have always been a terrible distance runner. She has started meds. I've been working on the logistics of getting our embies transferred to the new facility. More meds on the way. This is going to happen.

Not again I hope. This year started with our slightly late 2011 Christmas miracle destroyed on New Year's like a Christmas tree burned down by its own lights with the presents and innocence underneath. A nasty picture, but a profound minimization of our miscarriage. I wish our tree had burned down and not our pregnancy. I think you all know what I would have given to stop it because you probably would too. I don't want this again. But I can't fix it, I can't control it. I can only proceed into the dark. I grind my teeth and swallow. I take comfort knowing this is what the best of men do for their families, suffer fear and doubt.

I want a child. I want to grow my family with Cristy. This want is a need actually, natural and just. But there is the memory of hurt. Of loss. Doing this again is an exercise in will, not of any curiosity anymore. Last year, there was hope and curiosity. Before that, naivety. What a child I was, so haughty and confident. Now, there is willpower forced into a hope-shaped vessel. I fear that there is also a growing callousness spawned by the abuse of infertility. I want her to be happy. I want to be happy. Therefore, the callousness must not be. I cannot raise a child of any kind in bitterness. It negates the purpose. My soul must remain fertile if my body is not.

Adoption is still possible, still real, ever so personal, but seems far away. I want to do this if we can birth children or not, but it would take months after our theoretical move just to get started. More desert. Just one more dune to go. You said that 6 dunes ago.

There are times I feel better. Usually, these correspond to some time I'm feeling valuable at work or exercising or Cristy is happy. I try to soak these up. Try to keep them going.

Cristy and I are trying, trying to do this, trying to support each other. We fail sometimes. Then, we get back up and try again. Nothing particularly elegant, just grit derived from love and the clarity of what we want.