Realizations

As I turned the calendar page this morning, two things struck me. First, today marks two years since we first started trying to conceive. Second, our donor's retrieval should be in about two weeks (gasp)! Wow. How is it possible that I've spent the past two years so narrowly focused on this one goal? It's not quite like sitting down in front of the computer for a minute, and suddenly realizing an hour's gone by. I mean, my life has generally continued in spite of my devotion to the task at hand. But, this journey has certainly been my primary preoccupation while life moved on around me for the past two years. 

I have changed because of IF. I don't know that all of the changes are permanent - at least, I hope not. I have isolated myself, I have become self-centered, mean, angry, and alarmingly jealous. At the same time, I have been incredibly humbled. I cannot achieve anything I want by working very hard at it. That's been and continues to be such a hard pill for my Puritan work ethic to swallow. I cannot do everything by myself. That was a hard realization for my fierce independent streak. I need my husband. I need his help just to keep my head above water sometimes. And, this is OUR problem, so it's OK to be weak in front of him and tell him I need his help.

I hope I maintain some of the humility and patience I have gained through this process - regardless of whether we ever have a child. But, I really hope that I can find a way to shed some of this bitter anger, if we never do reach the goal. I believe that it will subside should we be successful. But, I fear it will never go away if we're not.

Now, onto the second realization. Holy crap, it's June! In less than a week, I'll know whether my lining is good. In two weeks, we'll know how many eggs we got and maybe a fertilization report. In three weeks, I hope we'll have transferred. And, in four weeks, we'll know if this whole complicated experiment has worked. I am scared out of my wits. I can't believe it's here already. I've been going through the motions of the cycle, but I have felt detached from it still. I am terrified to have hope, but it's within me nonetheless. I realized that today.