the one i've been avoiding.

so.

hi there.

this feels a little awkward, me trying to start writing here again after just disappearing last year. I told you i was training for a half-marathon, and we were right in the middle of a guest room renovation, and then I just stopped sharing. I have no excuses. well, I have them, but none of them are all that good. the truth is, i was sharing some things, but not the things that really mattered to me; the things that kept me up at night and made my heart hurt. and only sharing the shiny parts seemed empty.  

so now I'm sharing:

a lot can and has happened over the last 36 months: I have fallen into and then back out of love with baby names. I have taken my temperature more times than I ever did in my previous 27 years combined. I cried at weddings and baby showers and funerals. I completed several different exercise regimens, and gave up on multiple diets. I decided not to sign up for several things that would have been so much fun "because i'll probably have a baby by then." friends of mine have been pregnant. twice. I have been promoted at work. I have questioned whether or not I actually want to ever have kids. I have seen the word "infertility" in heartbreaking official doctor handwriting. we have talked to fertility specialists, and evaluated our feelings about fostering and adoption. I almost just gave up completely and got a puppy.

the first year (omg2014), I lived in a perpetual state of blind optimism. we were both young, healthy, responsible adults: I figured it would be a matter of months before we would get to share happy news with family friends.

instead, the months just kept going, eventually fading into a hazy stress-filled loop of timing, temperatures, vitamins, waiting, and hope, but ultimately ending in crushing disappointment, tears, and wine. I told a few people that we were trying, but eventually even talking about it made me cry, so I stopped, and settled myself into the loop.

and then after a while i decided to take a step to change the loop, because it turns out that living my life in a state of waiting with no end in sight was proving to be miserable. so I played on an indoor soccer team with my coworkers last winter. I trained for and ran a half-marathon in Yellowstone with my mom. I let my husband get a motorcycle. I turned the extra room in my house into a craft room instead of a nursery. I dyed my hair like fire.

but I still didn't talk about it. it was foremost in my mind, and every month was just the same old loop of silently hoping, stressing, waiting, doubting, desperation, rage, bleeding, crying, and wine. I never said anything because I didn't want to be the girl who cried infertility a few weeks before finding out she was pregnant. I didn't want people to treat me differently if they knew what I was struggling with. but I also kind of did want them to treat me differently - I wanted them to understand, but I didn't want to cry in front of them. because crying would show weakness, and I needed to be strong. I wanted them to know I was struggling, but I didn't want to burden them with it, because I knew everyone else has their own struggles, some of them seemingly so much bigger than my own. I didn't want them to borrow my struggle- I wanted it to be my own, even though I was crumbling under the weight of it.  I know it doesn't make a lot of sense, but neither does infertility.

and now I think I'm done with that whole silent thing, too. so I'm talking about it. or at least writing it here. and then maybe I might work up the nerve to say it out loud to people, face to face. and then I might be able to make a real plan for moving forward through it.

its unexplained infertility. and it sucks.