I'm losing it...

I'm having a really hard time. I just finished reading Harry Potter (book 6) in preparation for the movie :) and was struck by a passage towards the end (no spoilers so don't worry) between Dumbledore and Harry. Harry was worried about the similarities between himself and he-who-must-not-be-named considering their biographies, among other things, are similar. Dumbledore remarked that a main difference is that Harry had not allowed himself to be consumed and taken over by hate and that, considering the life he had lived and all he had been through, was quite remarkable. This passage from a children's book struck me because I feel that I am falling victim to hate similar to Voldemort!

I can't get over this miscarriage and the unfairness and unjustness of it all. I have no hope left, no love. It is all just too unfair. We deserve more than this and I can't seem to snap out of it. I understand that, in the grand scheme, infertility is something that can be "dealt" with--so to speak, i.e., it's not HIV, it's not cancer, it's not life threatening. I get all of that and more, it's just I can't stop feeling sorry for myself. It's terrible. As I've blogged about before we have friends that are expecting babies or have had them very recently and I absolutely cannot be happy for them. I just can't right now and it makes me feel completely horrible! I had a flash of panic thinking about the "what if" of my brother and his wife getting pregnant and having another baby (the third). I panicked because I don't know how I would react. The mere thought of it happening makes me sick. This is what infertility can do to a person. The inconveniences, the intrusions, the procedures, the money, the shattered hopes and dreams are all things I've been dealing with, in my opinion, rather well. But this new one...this loss of love and ability to be happy for others and this self-centered pathetic feeling of sorrow for myself, I cannot shake and I feel terrible. I am continually challenging the powers that be (but probably aren't) to make things right. This is too unfair and unjust to stand. IM and I have sacrificed soooo much...tooo much...to have a little success. IVF with donor eggs is not a miracle (although it is if you think hard about it). I'm not asking for a miracle here....I'm just asking for a chance to be able to fulfill a shadow of our dream when we got married: to have kids and a family.

Another thing I've had the wonderful opportunity to learn through this infertility journey is how couples that have experienced a tragedy break up. Whenever I heard of these couples that lost a child to a murder or accident and then eventually got divorced I was always amazed at how something that should have brought them together actually pushed them apart. I get that now. It has nothing to do with a lack of love between each other or of blaming the other for the tragedy (that's what I used to think) or whatever. Instead, I think it is a matter of having no other way to move on. It's just very difficult to move on WITH that person. I'm not suggesting that IM and I are having troubles...we're not. But I can understand the feeling. When IM and I got married we always always always imagined having a family. It was a given and something both of us were looking forward to when the time was right. To have the dream severely altered or taken away entirely is a pretty tough thing to confront and "moving on" is difficult. To start a family was "our" dream...together...it makes no sense without the other.