Every Single Day

Assumptions. My worst enemy. They have been for most of my life actually. I remember being in high school and thinking about the upcoming youth group camping trip or my next basketball game and imagining all the grand, magical things that were going to happen. I still struggle with this in my own household. My husband jokingly calls them, “expectation talks” when we are making plans or getting to leave for a trip. He knows that in my head I have the entire thing planned out and I intend for it to be executed in that exact way. So in order to save our marriage another ridiculous fight he always asks me what my expectations are and then we work out a realistic plan together. See, the problem with assumptions is that when those assumptions do not become reality, we usually get mad or disappointed and then we find ourselves in our planned outing with a sour attitude. This tends to just make life miserable a majority of the time. I’ve had to learn to fight these in myself so that I’m not letting amazing moments pass me by because they aren’t happening just the way I expected them too.

My biggest battle with this has of course been my infertility. I assumed, as most women do, that as soon as I decided to have kids it would be in my control to do so and would happily play out the way I wanted. When Kurtis and I decided to start trying it was the beginning of August, so I did all the calculations and if it took a month or two to get pregnant we could still make a charming announcement at Christmas to all our family; little baby shoes wrapped up with an ultrasound, everyone’s surprised and delighted faces. I seriously imagined the whole scene on multiple occasions. So, after 5 months of trying and some emerging medical conditions, guess who cried and hated Christmas that year? Yep, this gal. It was early February when I finally got into the doctor, had all the talks, made a plan of action, and then boom, expectations right back up there! What a whirlwind cycle!

Even after 3 years, failed fertility treatments, and beginning an adoption journey I find myself still struggling in different ways. I have now started to assume that I can handle pregnancy announcements, baby showers, and walking through the children’s aisles at Target and while I have made great strides in this area, I still catch myself getting really angry or sad, when an announcement crosses my screen on Facebook and I have to step back and remind myself that this should not steal my joy.

What it comes down to I think is that I’m ready to find out how this story ends. I’ve imagined the ending for so long. I’ve made up multiple endings in fact. Through this whole journey it’s felt like I’ve been reading a multi-part thriller and although I’ve found out the ending of each individual book, the final book in the series hasn’t been released and it’s getting harder to wait to find out how the entire journey ends. But, this is real life, there is no “release date.” Only time, patience, and an everyday battle with imaginary scenarios and assumptions. This takes effort on my part every single day and constant, gentle reminders from those around me. So, once again, here I am writing this post to help remind myself in an effort to grow through this unpredictable journey.

No real end, no real beginning

I’ve sat down a couple of times in the past week to write this post. It’s been difficult though. I’ve felt in a slump again. It all started last week on a high note. We had our first of three interview sessions for our adoption home study. It was exciting to feel like we were finally there, finally taking the next concrete steps to reach the ultimate goal. Our adoption specialist is fantastic and made us both so comfortable during the interview. We both left feeling pretty hopeful that we are going to be awesome parents, in the not so distant future. There is always that part of me though that holds me back and says, “be realistic, ” “you still know the average wait time,” “don’t get your hopes too high.” But every once in awhile I let the hopeful side win a little bit more than the logical side. I think that is where I was at after Monday’s meeting. Enjoying the hope, letting myself have a small moment of bliss. Then came Thursday. Thursday was an emotional roller coaster and in only a 2 hour block at that. We had our first group meeting for the adoption process that night. It was a panel discussion. The first hour hosted by adoptive parents sharing their story and answering questions and the second hour hosted by birth moms sharing their story and answering questions. Intense. To be honest, Kurtis and I went into this meeting with a bit of arrogance. We had already done our months of research, spoken with people who had adopted, who had been adopted, read up on the process, the agencies, read opinion pieces, and talked about it endlessly together. We felt we would not have much to gain from this meeting as it was structured for those who had not done this amount of due diligence already. While we were not completely wrong on this point, I never expected the emotional reaction I would have to this meeting and the processing that took place afterward. It was a unique one for me. There were moments of choking back tears, moments of anger, moments of deep sadness, moments of hope, moments of disconnectedness, and moments of pure reflection on my own human nature. When leaving this event, I was still all over the place. As Kurtis attempted to discuss the meeting with me I simply could not understand my current condition and struggled to have any meaningful conversation about it. It’s taken me almost an entire week to figure it out. That moment of hope I allowed myself on Monday, that small moment of vulnerability I indulged in came crashing down on me on Thursday night. It certainly was not a bad or weak thing to give myself that moment on Monday, but I simply was not prepared for what an influx of information and emotion might do to that moment of vulnerability. Up to this point in the adoption process, I have been strong, I have been efficient in focusing on what needs to get done and keeping myself on a realistic timeline. I have felt confident in checking off the boxes of the to-do list for this process and knowing that every box gets us closer. But vulnerability does not care about those things, it cares about the heart and what the heart deeply desires. Thursday was difficult because my heart had to truly accept that the grief is not over yet, the heartbreak is not over yet, the highs and lows are not over yet, but more than anything this journey is not over yet. For all the joy and pain it will bring this journey still has an unknowable amount of time left. That was hard to take in when I have been so focused on getting us there, getting us through each gate, getting all the more closer. In reality, this journey that we are on does not have a start point and an end point. I am beginning to fully embrace that this is a lifelong journey we are on. Not only lifelong because of the parenting piece, but lifelong because there are so many unknowns and things to navigate for years to come. I’m not sure either of us fully understand what that wholly means right now, but we have a lifetime to figure it out.

Patience is a virtue. Especially when it comes to being patient with yourself.

I wrote the following paragraph over a month ago now:

Another 4 weeks, another failed procedure. I’m spent. Physically, emotionally, mentally, just utter exhaustion. I’ve actually being having a pretty big pity party for myself this week. It’s crazy how easy we can justify anything when we really want to. It’s not that I think I shouldn’t allow myself to be sad and upset and work through the healthy emotions that surround a difficult life situation, but rather the things I let myself get away with while going through it. I justify bad eating habits, laziness, irritability toward others, even poor hygiene sometimes. Even as a therapist I let myself slip into the mindset of “it’s just my depression” or “I just need to check out today, I’ll do better tomorrow.”  I come up with all sorts of reasons why it’s okay for me to indulge or slack off. Then I face my guilt for doing so, which takes a whole new toll on my mind, body, and spirit. It’s a dangerous cycle, dangerous because it’s so easy to slip into and then forget how to get out again.

However, I never posted it. I never posted it because I wanted to add more, I wanted to follow up with some amazing revelation about how to get out of that cycle. That revelation never came and weeks passed and I ignored that I ever wrote those words. Today I knew I had to sit down and read those words again. I had to be reminded of the cycle, of how easy it is to get stuck and that’s what I am right now, stuck.

I’m learning though. I’m learning the balance of allowing myself the pain, the frustration, the need for a moment away, without allowing myself to use it to justify every bad habit, behavior, and thought. It’s an everyday battle. I’m terrible at those. I’m more of a “identify the problem, fix it, and move on” personality type (also known as Type A…). It’s just not that simple when it comes to this problem. I wish it was, I wish I could discover that big revelation I was waiting for a month ago and move on from this, but instead I have to embrace it. I have to be okay with “good enough.” That’s where I’m at. I’m doing what I can and settling for “good enough.” That’s really all we can ever do no matter the situation. But I’m sitting here behind the screen telling all of you, it’s the most difficult lesson I’ve had to learn to date. So I’m going to exercise my best patience with myself and charge forward. I’m going to trust that someday I will learn to embrace this lesson fully and enjoy a fuller, more relaxed, satisfied life.

I wish the same for all of you. Thanks for tracking with me on this journey. I’m humbled by you all.