When I embarked on my twenties I had never fallen in love. I mean, I pined over a boy here and there, but nothing that even approached puppy love. Plus, boys didn’t seem to want much to do with me; I was very well-behaved, very smart, and a little awkward, and that doesn’t really make for a very fun teenage girlfriend.

Most of my younger years I was okay with it; I even actively avoided it sometimes (e.g. My freshman year of high school I found out a boy I had a crush on liked me back, and I spent the next month or two avoiding situations where he could talk to me). But as my twenties arrived I began to long to try out that part of life – to have someone to kiss and cuddle, someone that made my heart jump – to the point that it sort of ached.

I was relating this aching to a friend once and concluded that “in the meantime, it’s nice to be able to turn up my music and fall in love vicariously.” Music has a way of reaching my heart, heightening existing emotions or instilling new ones, that is not short of magical.

I like to read other infertility blogs because they affect me much in the way music does. Reading what other women have written about the struggles and pain of infertility helps me to feel. So many of you articulate your emotions and experiences so much better than I can, and reading your words somehow simultaneously sharpens and soothes all of the emotions that come along with the journey of infertility.

I’ve been reading blog posts this evening from The Creme de la Creme of 2007 on the Stirrup Queens and Sperm Palace Jesters blog. I went to them because I am feeling emotionally dull. Today I feel nothing about my struggle to create new life except mechanical:

• T minus 5 days – 7-day cycle of progestins to induce menstruation
• T minus 15 days – menstruation
• T minus 20 days – 5-day cycle of clomiphene citrate to induce ovulation
• T minus 26 days – begin testing for surge of luteinizing hormone, indicator of impending menstruation, and commence sexual intercourse q.o.d. to ensure proper placement of male gametes at the time of ovulation
• T minus etc.

These blog entries are supposed to be particularly poignant and touching; they won a prize for being so. I can see that they are beautiful and honest, but they are not reaching me the way they normally would. It makes me sad that I’m not feeling. But sad only in a vague sense; I need something to help that sadness along, to sharpen it so it can work in me to bring back my emotions. I want to feel every bit of this, as crazy as it makes me, so that when my baby finally comes it will be the amazing culmination that it should be.

The one entry I read that did touch me was one called Lucky wherein the writer talks about how much her husband means to her and how he has been a boon to her in their struggle with infertility. It made me re-remember how lucky I am to have my wonderful Jeffrey.

Case in point, I was just thinking that maybe I needed a little music to help trip the emotion switch since the blogs weren’t doing it, when he came in with his guitar to sit with me and play. It’s sublime. He just sang, “…walked to hell and back to see you smile.” He would, too. Man, I want to make babies with him!

Ah. There they are, those emotions.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, January 22nd, 2008 at 11:39 pm and is filed under Frustration, Jeffrey. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.