Keeping Distracted

There's a giant gender-neutral-colored elephant in the room. I'm at 6 DPO today. And I'm the last one left.

Of all the girls in my world, the ones who are just good friends of mine, the ones who started out their TTC journeys around the time I did, the ones who started later, the ones who didn't intend to start at all...the last two got their BFPs last week. I'm not saying there are no other girls who are still out there, still trying, girls who have been trying for much longer than me. I'm saying in my immediate universe, I'm the last one. And not the last one out of like three or four. TH and I counted last night (ok, I counted for him)--13. Thirteen girls who were in my immediate circle of friends, regardless of how we met or whether we're family. And that's not even the count of tangential acquaintances who have gotten their BFPs in the last six months. I stopped counting that number at 24.

What's weighing so heavily on me about that is not that I begrudge any of them their BFPs, their golden tickets to move forward out of this purgatory, this waiting room. It's just that I'm left. Our weekly check-ins (bless you, Monkey, I know you're still there with me) will now be empty. Or at least partially filled with girls I have no connection to, no emotional investment in. And who am I going to drink with at FJHHs? That's right: TH. He volunteered to come drink with me. I guess fertility juice would do us both some good. How sad is that? My husband is stepping so that I don't have to drink alone.

I went out shopping with my mom the day after Christmas. We had to return a shirt my dad got that was the wrong size. We tried to find the counter that had the shortest line, a counter in an out-of-the-way nook of the store. We ended up at the baby section. For the first time in six months, I wasn't drawn to looking at those tiny, adorable little clothes. For the first time, it hurt me to look at them. It felt like my heart was a similarly charged magnet and it was being repelled from them. It actually felt like my heart was being pushed back, away from them. Or maybe not pushed. Maybe it was backing away from them on its own. Maybe it just didn't want to be surrounded by the reminder, a thousand tiny, adorable reminders, that I am left.

So yeah, there's this elephant in the room that follows me around everywhere I go. When I'm not thinking about it, when I find a way to be blessedly distracted, I'll suddenly remember that there's something going on, there's something big that is floating at the corner of my consciousness, some shadow I can see out of the corner of my eye, and I wonder what it was that I have going on, and then I remember, and the elephant returns to sit on me, and I remember why I feel so heavy. This happens a thousand times a day.

I know I shouldn't be so gloomy. I know I should be optimistic and upbeat and hopeful. But I'm just finding it pointless this time. Why get excited and hopeful when I can just wait and see what happens? Why risk the fall, the feeling of foolishness, the insanity of doing the same things we've been doing for six months and expecting a different outcome? TH told me last night he didn't want me lifting something heavy because I'm pregnant. Again, again, he's confident. Sure. Certain. I asked him how he does it, and why he wants me to NOT get my hopes up. He laughed and said it's because he's so used to being wrong, it doesn't crush him the way it crushes me. Silly man. Always protecting me.

So I've thrown myself into projects. Our cats ruined the carpet in the third bedroom, so we had it stripped out. I had the brilliant idea of painting it before we put the new carpet in. So we are. We are painting our nursery. Our future nursery. Maybe not the best project to keep me distracted from babies, but strangely enough it has helped. Given me something concrete to focus on. And we're having to do it in stages--first the top half, wait for that to dry. Then the bottom half, wait for that to dry. Then the stars on top of the bottom half, wait for that to dry. Then the chair rail. Then the new carpet. This should take me a while. Which is good.

We also bought new bookshelves for our office. Finally. We had been using the Walmart bookshelves I had gotten for my first apartment in college ten years ago. So we are going to put those together today.

And we have a lot of laundry to do. A lot of putting away presents. Planning of New Year's Eve festivities. Packing up of Christmas decorations.

So that's how I'm keeping distracted. From my temps (funny temp story: I wake up early to temp and then go back to sleep. After temping this morning, after a drop, I kept dreaming, hoping, it was tomorrow morning already so that I could temp again and see if it came back up, see if the pattern looked better than it looked today). From what DPO it is. From my lack of hope. From my knowledge that everyone else has moved on. From all these things that dance at the edge of my thoughts and threaten to drown me.

And when TH looks over and I'm staring into space, he knows the tide has come in and I'm staring at the world from the bottom of the sea.