my so-called life

I keep being told that I need to find a way to cope with the fact people in my life will continue to get pregnant and have babies.

My therapist tells me. So does my husband. My mother-in-law. Even my inner voice contributes to the litany.

I shouldn't constantly avoid people, I've been told. I shouldn't lock myself away in the safety of my own home because, dammit, that's life, and I have to live it.

I know how to cope: I just need to get knocked up - just once -with a baby that my stupid defective body won't kill. After all, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, right?

Apparently, this is not an acceptable response to anyone. I've been told that I need to accept that it just might not happen, because, really, an eight time loser can't really expect to break the streak with a win.

And I say FUCK 'EM. (Remember that scene in Legends of the Fall when the Hopkins character - recovering from a stroke - says "Fuck em" in his slurred speech, after - or maybe before, I can't quite remember - heroically defending his family? That's how I say it, anytime I have occasion to. I don't know why, or why I felt the need to share that particular craziness here. But, for authenticity's sake, imagine me saying it just like him, only I'm not holding a shotgun.)

I have come too far down this road to turn around now. I need to follow it to the end, wherever that may be. There are things we haven't tried; there is hope for me, even if I'm the only one to see it. I'm too damned stubborn for my own good, perhaps. But isn't that what we are all taught as children? We are told to follow our dreams, to fight for what we want, to try try again in the face of failure, that we all have the potential to be whatever it is that we want to be in life.

It's the American way.

Unless, of course, you happen to be semi-fertile, and what you want is to carry a pregnancy to term and look into your baby's eyes for the first time and fall in love. To feel his kicks in your belly and to push him out when the time comes; to smell his sweet smell and finally have him here to fill your empty arms after all of this waiting and heartbreak .

Then, you are told that you need to find a new dream. You are told that really, you should spend Christmas with the family and your very pregnant sister-in-law and you shouldn't have a panic attack, watching her and her fat belly care for a toddler; it shouldn't bother you to watch the family fawn over her - the giver of life - knowing that no one even gives a flying rat's ass about the fact that you - the giver of death - just lost another one. You shouldn't think about how she will have conceived and given birth to two children in less than half the time it has taken you to give death to eight. And really, you shouldn't cry about it at all because, dammit, that's life, and you have to live it.

FUCK 'EM.