8am. The alarm wakes us and my husband hands me the thermometer. 97.4 and I am numb. I wait, half asleep and half awake in the nightmare that feels like I keep waking up into over and over again, and try again. Maybe my mouth was open. 97.5. I toss the thermometer onto the side table and roll over. It’s just another month of the same-old, same-old. My husband gets up to make coffee, and wakes me again, so sweetly, so lovingly. I die a little inside because I know, even though he holds it in for my sake, he hurts just as much.
I trudge my sorry ass out of bed and stumble to the bathroom to see if the sinful curse has found it’s way to me yet again. My husband brings me the reserved black ceremonial panties for the death drain that will take place over the next few days. But, there’s nothing yet. I’m still spotting for the 3rd day in a row. Maybe it’s implantation bleeding. Maybe I developed a cyst that burst. Maybe I’m hitting menopause. Maybe the sky is falling. I put on a little barbie sized pad just to keep track of what’s happening, for what it’s worth.
I feel so disheartened. I get so tired of this, month after month. Noon comes and I’m inspired to temp again after spying it on the sink while sitting on the toilet. 98.6 – Well that’s high! I reach for that shred of optimism and leave realism to flush away with my spotted tissue. Sigh, and I realize just what I’m doing. Same-old, same old.
There’s meat to cook, laundry to put away, emails to be answered and work to be done. I’m sitting at my desk swallowing the defiant lump that keeps fighting to rise in my throat. My back is turned to my work partner who happens to also be my loving husband, and I hope he doesn’t turn to talk about work. Poor man. He has put up with so much disappointment, been so strong, even through his own tears. There’s something about a man that cries when it really hurts that touches me so deeply. To know my shortcoming – my inadequacy – causes that pain he doesn’t nearly deserve an ounce of…
My body aches like I have the flu. Not because I’m cramping, but from the hollow space that keeps growing inside me, a little more with every month that goes by.
I go over and over the mistakes I’ve made over the years. I try to discount them all and convince myself it wasn’t this or that that’s causing this problem now. I try telling my little inner Catholic girl that no, this isn’t punishment and it’s not something I deserve and it’s not contributing to the forgiveness of someones sins, and it’s not keeping my mother in or out of heaven, and it’s not something she can control, and it’s not something God is withholding from me because he has a twisted sense of humor.
I’m losing my mind.
I feel like curling up and sleeping for a very, very long time.