defining words

When H & I went to the City Hall to have our new car registration, we were already told it would not be pretty. In line just to get a number, we mentioned to the number guy how unbelievably long the wait is going to be considering they already have 5 windows all dedicated to car registration. "Do you have a health problem?" he casually asked with a smile & continued, "Is your wife pregnant?" So of course we waited for almost 2 hours. Blessed to be both healthy but yes, another one of those privileges of being a mother. Ketchup bottle from Haba

There's nothing more appropriate than Douglas Coupland's description of how emotions can sometimes get out of hand. An "emotional ketchup burst" is the bottling up of emotions inside oneself that they explosively burst forth all at once, shocking & confusing everyone around, most of whom thought things were fine.*

And you need to bottle up all the mixed emotions when you hear a friend getting pregnant for the 3rd time & they say it took them "quite a long time" for this one. Or when you hear other people's miracles that make you feel you're probably doing everything wrong since miracles don't come your way. Or when they tell you it's just because "they let go & relaxed" & it just surprisingly happened. Or when you see the pure joy a child brings to the eyes of their parents & grandparents, sharing with you their never ending stories of this little human being.

After just watching 5 years go by, I've been from hopeful, to a hypochondriac, to a researcher, to hopeful again, to despair, to frustration, to anger & now bitterness. I'm bitter how I am reminded everyday how it is to be a mother. On how this world is made for children. On how infertility touches more & more women but nobody really talks about it. Like it's something so unnatural for a woman that nobody really understands how monumentally difficult it is to just let go, relax & it will come. How difficult it is to hope until you're finally menopaused. The cycle of emotions from hopefulness, despair & back to hopefulness again is just sometimes so exhausting. But the road to acceptance most of the time seems even more impossible.

It is not a bitterness to those fertile women who can get pregnant with a kiss (yeah, yeah, that's an exaggeration on how some women are uber fertile), or at 40 & can still conceive naturally & easily. Nor it's to mothers & fathers & grandparents who overwhelm you with baby stories. Nor to those women who were once with explained infertility becomes fertile. It's simple: it's just because we are not all totally equal. The frustration of finally having something in front of you that can never be in your hands. One of the things that you have no control over.

It is true that both sides being together in one room is quite a pickle. I think there is finally a "how to" to give support to infertiles. The thing is I still want to be shared that happiness when a friend gets pregnant. I still want to hear all their baby stories, their hardwork in raising their children, or the funny anecdotes they pop up in their everyday lives. It reminds me how I am ready to have all those. I just need a little sensitivity of balance from both sides. There's a fine line between sharing happiness & in rubbing it in as expressions like "You know how it is being a mother," or "everything is different with kids." As true as they are facts, sometimes it's just a request of empathy, as I am as sensitive to the happiness of others. A mother cannot even dare to imagine her life without her children. An aspiring mother can always imagine a life with children. But nobody can ever know how it feels until you are living without one.

It took me some time to decide on making a blog about my infertility. But I have to have a place where I can have my emotional ketchup bursts instead of exhausting the ears off of everybody around me. A place to come into terms. A place to probably share awareness. A place where a flicker of hope in my sourness can illuminate to something wonderful. Whatever that may be.

Having said all that, the story of my infertily continues.

*On Douglas Coupland's book, Generation X