worn out oars

There’s this girl I know, K. We went to the same high school, and although we’ve never been close friends we’ve always run with the same social crowd.

Truth be told, although many of my (formerly) close friends love her, I’ve always found her to be more than a little annoying. She’s a bit of a control freak, and has always expected that things would go as she planned them. She married her 1st husband in a ceremony that was beyond extravagant.

Anyway, shortly after her 1st wedding, Hubby and I started trying to conceive. And then we had that first mind shattering miscarriage, followed closely by the devastation of the second.

This slice of time was hideous for me – I was starting to wonder if it would ever happen, what I could have done to deserve a double dose of failure, and if all I had ahead of me was heartbreak (guess I know the answer to that question now!). I spent days pouring over books on conception and pregnancy and miscarriage. K and I were at some party together during this time, and the conversation turned to having babies.

“Well,” she said, with a haughty shake of her head, “I know that when I want to have a baby I’ll have one right away.”

“And how do you know that?” I asked.

“I can feel when I ovulate every month. The rest is simple,” she said, looking at me.

I wanted to scream and shout that she didn’t have a fucking clue, and then I committed the cardinal sin of the infertile: I wished IF on her. I did, and I’m ashamed of it, but at that moment I wished that she would know just a slice of the pain I was experiencing.

Anyway, she went on to divorce first husband, marry second husband, and start trying to conceive.

Nothing happened.

She tried for years, and then because she lives in a state that mandates coverage for infertility, she tried IVF. It worked. Yesterday, she gave birth to a baby girl.

And again, I am slapped hard with the realization that my life is stuck – we’ve decided to become parents, we’ve changed our whole lives so that we could be good parents. We’ve left behind the life of the DINKS (dual income no kids) that we were, and yet we can’t get to where we want.

We’re in limbo. I’ve been here long enough for K to have gotten divorced, remarried, try for a baby long enough to get diagnosed as infertile, try fertility treatments, get pregnant and have a healthy baby girl.

I feel like we’re in a rowboat, stuck in the middle of a lake so big we can barely see the shore. We’re rowing and rowing and rowing, as hard as we can, sweating and panting and getting desperate to get to shore, where it seems the happiness is. We can hear the party, and all around us boats are moving. Some are moving more slowly than others, some so slowly they hardly appear to be moving. Some boats find a current and drift in to shore with no effort at all. But us – we’re stuck, we’re stranded, our oars are falling apart from all that damned rowing, and I feel like we’re going to die here. (I may have read this somewhere – not sure – but it feels like such an apt description).