31 Is the New 21

Yesterday was my birthday. In true birthday form, I was in tears before 7am, driving along on my way to work and crying because I had, stupidly, peed on an hcg stick before leaving and it was, naturally, negative with no chance of there being any sort of trace of hcg anywhere. Never mind the lingering concept of knowing that this is not where I wanted to be at 31 nor did I ever expect to be here. Forget the fact that I am being pumped full of the 'mones and am therefore about a billion percent more emotional than normal. Nope, the tears were brought on by my full-on stupidity of peeing on a godforsaken stick before I went to work on the day of my birthday, 6 days post frozen transfer.

 By the time I arrived at work, I'd already screwed up my makeup and my entire day. My boss fully forgot my birthday (again) which is fine, it's a week after New Year's, I don't expect anyone to care or remember when I go out of my way to make everyone else's birthdays special (hello, bitter? party of one). The Facebook notos flooded in but really, do any of those people give a shit? And how much has Facebook ruined our culture, by the way, when my own mother and brother thought a simple post on my wall was going to suffice?

Yes, I'm full of self-pity mixed with wallowing over the probability of another negative beta mixed with self-sabotage from forcing the negative test upon myself. Luckily the boys I watch were sweet as pie all day, making me toy cakes and just as I was about to "blow them out" saying, "No no, it's not ready yet" and running to grab some other drool and snot covered toy to add. The stress of the day must've shown on my face because one of the 2 year olds looked at me while I was changing his diaper and asked, "Are you otay, (my name)?" I nearly lost it right there but just planted as many kisses and hugs upon him as he would allow before running off to be a race car.

I work long hours on Wednesdays but this day, somehow, mercifully went by at a bearable speed and by the time I got home, I just wanted to curl up with my dogs and my husband and cry. The fact that there were NO birthday cards in the mailbox ensured plenty of tears by the time the dogs greeted me (yes, I'm a spoiled brat, but it was my birthday and I will cry if I need to). My grandmother, who is 90 and is always ever so punctual with a card and a check for any occasion, is in the hospital so the disappointment of not having a card was then replaced with guilt for being so self-centered when my grandmother is sick, cue more tears.

By the time Husband walked through the door - with an embarrassingly large bouquet of flowers - I was a balled up, bawling mess on the floor next to the dog bed. Husband is ever the optimist about our infertility battle so he simply held me and told me I was being dumb about the testing, then he said something that really broke me, he said, "don't you think I blame myself for this every day?" Great. At this point I think I had cried myself into a lower immune system and all of the snots and coughs and grossness the kids I watch have rained upon me for the past two weeks caught up with me and I became sick within literally minutes of my husband coming home. Because, why not? It's my birthday, dammit. Let's cap off a fantastic day with an annoying cold and no appetite. Wah wah wah.

Now I am here all stuffy and gross, supposed to be renewing my driver's license with THE hottest DMV photo of all time. Looks like I'm driving without a license til next week.

Life Today

I had monitoring for my first Frozen Embryo Transfer (FET) on Saturday. It will be far less invasive and less time consuming however it is much less likely to work and I am not even expecting that the two embryos we have left will even survive the thaw, but it is something instead of nothing. Christmas is now a week and a half away and I have been finding myself internally angry a lot of the time. It's not that I'm taking anger out on a single soul - or at least, I hope I am not - but inside my head, there are angry, awful thoughts and mean words for almost every situation I find myself in and almost every person I come across. I know this is not healthy and I also recognize that it is me who is the problem (if it smells like shit everywhere you go, check under your own shoe, and all that).

Being aware of the anger and having an idea of where it stems from is all well and good, but how to let go? For some reason, I thought perhaps the teachings of Buddha would help me. I have no idea what brought this on or why I knew to turn to Buddhism, but I did and for the time being, I feel slightly at peace, although I know that I have a very long way to go and will need many, many reminders along the way. I thought I'd share something I read before bed last night from "Buddha In Blue Jeans" by the poet and Zen priest, Tai Sheridan:

Pain Is Natural

Pain is a natural part of life, 

Learn to accept it, 

Learn to take care of it

as best you can. 

Decrease the complaining. 

Decrease the self-centeredness around it.

Everybody has pain. 

Breathe and relax

into the pain 

as best you can. 

Please accept natural pain. 

Because that's what the anger is about, isn't it, in the end? It's due to the pain and suffering that consumes us and makes us forget that we are not alone and that our pain is not the only pain. I've been trying to remind myself this year that I can choose to say, "No one has any idea what I'm going through," or, I can say, "I have no idea what anyone else is going through." It's very hard, much harder than self-pity but it does help.