A Word

I know I've probably grown much more sensitive over the last several years since I've been dealing with IF. In other ways, I've grown much tougher, but I'll admit... words hurt. Words can be a healing balm, yet some words can hurt very much:

• "Well, everything happens for a reason"
• "Get over it"
• "Maybe God doesn't want you to be a mother"
• "Oh, you can't have kids - ya want mine?"
• "No kids, man - you're so lucky!"
  
• "Wow, my husband just looks at me and bam, I'm pregnant!"
• "Oh, yeah - that whole infertility thing..."
• "Just relax! If it's meant to be, it'll happen!"
• "You just need to think more positive."
  

Today I heard more hurtful words. They weren't meant to be, I do know that. It's never meant with malice. It's probably better to let these words go, but they seep into all those vulnerable crevices. See, on any given day, I'm already on the edge. I can leave the house and walk around, smile and joke, work and run around doing what I need to do, but inside I'm just a bundle of nerves and vulnerability. On a day like today, two days after yet another BFN, the day AF shows up... it's all I can do to get out of bed, let alone go out and face the world. Of course, people don't know that, unless they're lucky enough to read my super fun and awesome and blog here. Since the lucky 99.99999999% of the population doesn't read it, I don't really expect that anyone knows where I really am. I guess that's why they say to be nicer than necessary, since we're all fighting some kind of battle.

I brace myself against known triggers, like pregnant women at the grocery store, but there are more triggers than you can imagine. After all, the world must procreate, right? Survival of the species, and all that jazz. Getting pregnant and having kids is the norm, after all. If I were trying to beat alcoholism, I'd avoid bars and liquor stores, but I can't avoid pregnant women and children. I can't avoid all the reminders. They're all over, but sometimes they come out of no where, and I'm dumbfounded. Usually I'm so dumbfounded that I have little or no response. Besides, if I tried to respond, I'd probably just start crying. I have a real fear, in these situations, that if I start crying I'll never stop.

Yeah, sure, I'm more sensitive. But please, any non-IF friends reading this, before you judge me as being too sensitive and whiny, or overreacting, just try imagining living with IF a day, a week, a month, month after month, a year, year after year, six years and counting... Please, just try walking a mile in my flip flops before you judge. The world keeps moving on and it tends to expect us to just get over this, to just resolve it. In real life, major life trauma doesn't just resolve itself in the span of a 30 or 60 minute television show. Would that it did! Instead, we watch our friends get pregnant, have babies, have birthday parties - when you're my age, you watch your friends' kids go off to college and get married... We listen to the pride, the complaints, the fun, we look at the pictures, we read the excessively fertile Facebook postings - and we are happy for our friends. We are! So we try our best to show that happiness, to not cry in front of them, to try not to make anyone uncomfortable. We try to be more happy than bitter.

IF isn't the only thing that produces the walking wounded, of course. There are plenty of other hurt people walking around out there, for one reason or another, with other issues that don't just go away in 30 or 60 minutes. After all, this is life - and sometimes life is pain, highness. It's hard, no one really knows what to say or do to someone in pain - especially someone who doesn't just get over it quickly. I get that. No one means harm, and I honestly don't mean any of this critically. I get it. Still, these things make the hurt hurt and this is where I process that.

It's just, let's all please be gentle with each other. Let's use our words to support and encourage. I think it's fair to say that most of us need more caring, than advice on how you think our problem can be fixed. We could use more offers to listen, than invasive or judgmental questions. We'd love more words of love, than pat answers. We don't need tough love, rather we need patience and understanding. If you don't know what to say, that's ok - no one does! Just let us know you're praying, offer a hug, ask if there's anything you can do, send a card, just check in with us once in a while to let us know you care.... just be our friend.

To those of you who have done those very sorts of things during my life with IF - which probably includes you if you're someone who I told about this blog, and who reads it - thank you, thank you so so so very much. It means more than you'll ever know!!!

“How far you go in life depends on your being tender with the young, compassionate with the aged, sympathetic with the striving, and tolerant of the weak and the strong. Because someday in life you will have been all of these.” (George Washington Carver)