There's Gotta be More to Life

I just keep getting this “there’s gotta be more to life” kinda feeling. I want so much more than what I have right now. And I don’t mean material things. Last week I read an article in the local paper about a couple in my area, who have been married for 41 years. They have visited every state park in PA three times. All 120 of them. The article mentions how they planned to go see some of the beautiful fall foliage in northern PA this past weekend. And it made me think how I would like to have someone to go on a three-day weekend excursion to tap maple syrup in Vermont, take a spontaneous trip to Niagara Falls, or make plans to visit every state in the US or take a cross-country trip together. Sure, I can do these things by myself or with a friend, but some things are just more fun if you are with that special someone. I think one of the things that helps me to disconnect from Flaco is that he was no more willing to do those things with me than I am willing to go do them alone. Taking a vacation by myself is not something I would relish doing. Experiences are so much better when you can reminisce about them with someone else. I am living a life of suspended animation. I am alive and breathing, but I am not able to do the kinds of things I would like to do for a host of reasons. And my short foray into the dating world has not encouraged me to believe that the kind of life I dream of will ever come true. There are more friends-with-benefits guys out there than there are decent, kind, honest guys (I’m sure if I were a man, I could be saying the same thing about women). The kind of husband I would want to have probably only exists in my mind and in the 1950’s. Probably only in my mind. How did society get so completely screwed up? Men my age are like little children – they play games all day and live with their parents. No, not all men, I agree, but, a great many.

 

Meanwhile, I hang on to the very last shred of hope I have left. It’s glimmering promise always dances just out of reach and some days the oppressive malice of the world seems sure to crush me and grind me under. Flaco has gotten himself in trouble with the law and in an attempt to manipulate me into helping him he told me he wanted to get back together. In the beginning, right after he left, this is all I wanted to hear him say. And I warned him, all those months ago, that he had a short window of time to make an attempt to reconcile our differences and issues. But this was a very small window and once it closed it would remain closed. Very recently, I have emotionally gotten to the point where I refuse to let him hurt me anymore. As if his leaving wasn’t enough, over the past eight months he has said cruel things like, “If we had had a baby together I would not have left,” “How would you feel if I had a baby with someone else?” “How would you feel if I got married to someone else?” This, in addition to other humiliating comments and situations, has shown me a side of the man I loved with all I had, that I absolutely despise. And this latest blatant attempt to manipulate me has only solidified my “we are never, ever, ever getting back together” stance. Oh, but it still hurts like a mother! How could someone be so selfish? He actually told me he was furious with me when a few weeks ago, right after he got in trouble, he called me at midnight to ask me to go with him to City Hall the next morning at 8 am to help him figure this whole situation out. I refused and I had good reason to refuse. Not only am I no longer his loving wife (at least not in the real sense, legally we are still married, but as soon as I have the dinero that will no longer be the case), but I still had a child living with me at that time. Plus, I start work at 8:30 am and I am not about to lose my job for him and his problems. I suppose he thought that if I would say “yes” and take him back, that I would then take care of his problem. My response was simple. If he was sincere in his desire to rekindle the waning connection between us, we would attend couples therapy and work on the issues together and slowly progress. I let him know that I was still really hurt and I quite simply do not trust him, so it would take time for those wounds to heal and it would not be easy. But, I also let him know without a doubt, I was not going to help him with his legal issue. It was something he did on his own and something he would have to deal with on his own. He ended the conversation by saying, “Fine, then you do your thing and I will do my thing and we’ll see how it goes.” In other words, “I don’t want you if you won’t do this for me.” And I wonder, did he ever really love me?

My therapist thinks I am not taking care of myself emotionally. He thinks I have too many unmet emotional needs. I don’t know what he expects me to do with this information. I can’t manufacture an intimate relationship with someone. I am feeling a little more lonely now that the house is empty, but I tell myself this is temporary, since I have already been called for one placement and one respite (neither panned out). Most days I can still believe that something good is just around the corner, just waiting to pop up into my life. But, last week (it doesn’t help that I was PMS-ing with mega cramps and whatnot) it wasn’t so easy to sell myself on the whole sunshine-after-the-storm line. I feel that prick of bitterness beginning to take hold deep inside of me. Tuesday, before Flaco’s latest shenanigans, I was visiting with my pastor and his wife. Another church member was there with her little girl and she gleefully showed me three ultrasound pictures – she is pregnant again. I oo-ed and ahh-ed appropriately. Most of the time I’m better about stuff like that. But, it still burns, it still pricks and hurts. I try to stamp it out as quickly as possible, but I have never been very good a lying to myself. It effing sucks. I’m supposed to be better at this, I’m supposed to realize that God works in mysterious ways. Why He gives a baby to a 17 year old who then shakes, throws, and pushes the baby down a ramp in a stroller for it to fall out on the sidewalk (this happened this past week at Reading High school – the baby was 4 months old) but denies someone like me a baby, is beyond my comprehension. I don’t let myself go down that very slippery slope. For a long time, I was so angry at God for my inability to conceive and I know that is not healthy, but sometimes that feeling just springs back up in me. And I feel the bitterness and rage eating me from the inside out. It’s fire burns me and it’s acerbic acid consumes my heart and soul. I don’t want to live that way. I want to live in a land full of sunshine and rainbows and kittens – but right now my reality is one of pain and disappointment. Last week I am just really feeling like my life has been chewed up by a shredding machine and what pieces are left to me are not enough to make a whole person. The same night Flaco tried to use getting back together as a reason for me to handle his problem, another blast for the recent past popped up. I knew him through my neighbors and we had been starting a little friendship this past spring. Almost as soon as it began, it was over. He text me and told me I had the wrong idea, he wasn’t interested in anything serious because he just got out of a bad relationship. He basically was only interested in a friends-with-benefits kind of situation. So, I quickly wrote him off and pretty much ignored him. Well, Tuesday night he came back. He basically thought he would give it one more shot and wanted to know if I wanted to give it a try. Really?! This is the “better” thing I have been waiting for? Uh….. No. I told him I respect myself and I demand respect from someone else. A friends-with-benefits situation is not respectful and I am unequivocally not interested at all ever. It curdles my insides to think that not once, but twice, he took me for “that” kind of woman. As I told a friend of mine, I feel just about ready to start ripping off the balls of any man I meet. My therapist doesn’t think I should let it bother me. I’m about ready to tell him where to get off too. His malarkey only makes me feel worse about things. My last appointment, I went in there in pretty good spirits, only to have them dashed all to hell because he thinks I’m more screwed up than I am. Let me tell you something pal, anyone who has been through the kinds of things I have in the short time that they have occurred, would be a little on edge. The fact that I can keep my shit in order, that I am still a productive member of society and not a total basket case, is a testament to my faith and sheer stubborn endurance. So, if I get a little touchy when some douchebag thinks I’m gonna just roll over and be their fuck buddy, I think I earned that right a little bit here. I didn’t punch him in the face like I wanted to, so give me some credit!

I was all set to send an email to my family caseworker telling her I wanted to be considered for a placement for legal risk or adoption. I wrote the email and had a friend proofread it and everything. Then, something held me back from sending it. I don’t know what it was, but I just got the feeling I should let some dust settle before I send that email. Maybe it’s God trying to get me to do things His way. Good luck Charlie, I’m always more like a bull in a china shop when it comes to acting on a decision I have made. The second most dangerous thought process for me to engage in, after the “why” questions, is what is the meaning of all of this? It is similar to the why question. Why is this happening? But, it’s also me trying to rationalize the irrational. There might not be a grand scheme to this year of hell. I guess to make myself feel better, I try to find a reason why this is happening – like a lesson hidden in the chapters of a child’s book, there must be something I am meant to learn and understand through all of this. Certainly, just hunkering down and enduring it all with teeth gritted and fists clenched can’t be the meaning of it all. So, right now I plan on waiting until my family caseworker comes out to my house the end of November for my annual review and then we can discuss the decision I have made. In the mean time, I am hoping to get a placement for a younger child sooner rather than later. I just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other; keep getting up no matter how many times I get knocked down…….

Closing Chapter

The house is empty again – well, minus me the two cats and the dog (actually, Canela the dog has been at the farm all week since I went away to DC last weekend). The foster child was moved yesterday morning. Moved to another foster home in another county, not a residential facility as I and the psychiatrist believe she would be the best option for her. Quite a contrast in this morning’s move than the past termination of my foster mother relationship with a child – no tears, no regrets, no feeling of loss. I feel relived. And I am anxious for the next placement.

I am positively preparing for the baby I so desire. I have been looking at getting some more cloth diapers (although, at our last group training, I think I heard someone say we are not permitted to use cloth diapers for our foster children. I was kind of reading something and only half-listening, so I’m not sure if I heard this correctly – I also think one of the foster mothers who runs a state licensed daycare from her home said the state does not permit cloth diapers in licensed facilities. I wish I was paying closer attention, but it does not change my mind. I’m using cloth diapers). I have also looked at baby clothes, but for whatever reason, it is harder for me to stay emotionally balanced looking at the clothes. So, diapers it is. I have a half-decent collection thanks to my previous placement (and the kindness of a friend in turning me on to cloth diapers), but to lessen my laundry duty, having more diapers would be great. Plus, if I do get an infant, I won’t have to run out to the store and get some disposable diapers, I will be prepared. I have been daydreaming about my next placement and I have been praying that this next child will be mine to adopt. I don’t mean to sound callous about the child who is leaving, I am sad that we will never be able to do some of the fun stuff I had planned. But, it has been a tough 5 months with her and the last month was especially trying. I wish nothing but the best for her and hope the new foster mother will be able to better help her manage her anger and other behavioral issues. But, when I put in my 30 day notice, I was already done. I was disengaging and disentangling myself from this child. I am ready for a new story to begin. I am believing the third time will be the charm!

In other news, I am about to unfriend two new mom friends on Facebook. All they do is bitch about how hard it is being a new mom with a newborn – no sleep, can’t get ready to leave the house without a vomit issue, hard being home and in baby world all day, hard learning how to understand how to care for their baby. I mean, they are just being real and sharing with friends and family how they are doing and looking for advice and to connect to the outside world. But, it makes me want to scream. Every minute you can’t sleep, I pray that I will be able to become a mother through adoption because not only has my body failed me, but my husband left making procreation impossible at the current time. Every messy diaper or vomit-ruined outfit, I wish I had a baby to hold and cuddle. Every moment they feel like they can’t stand baby world one more second, I desire to hear the sounds of a precious little one in my home, laughing, cooing, crying, screaming. I have come a long way in my internal struggle and issues with infertility and my hostility towards the fertile world, so this is just one more hurdle, but at the same time I wonder just how much more I will have to endure. And, since I don’t necessarily share with the entire world that my womb is barren, these women are not posting the comments to be cruel, it is simply where they are in their lives. But, I do need to remind myself of this from time to time. Really, it’s just not all about me……

So, one more chapter closes and soon a new chapter will begin. I will have some down time, some time to rearrange myself and my life and my house. I don’t know how soon or how long I will be waiting for a new foster child to be placed with me. It is a little bit exciting, waiting for that phone call to ask me for a new placement. You can wake up one morning, buzzing along with your daily routine, and bamm-ooh! You get a call that changes that routine and the course of things in your life. So, I am now waiting for that call. I’m not sure if CHOR will give me some time to recuperate, given the difficulty of this last placement, but I’m hoping they don’t wait a long time and that if they get a placement they think would be a good match for me, I hope they don’t count me out. I’m putting positive happy vibes out there, I think the Lord has some good things in store for me! J

Country Mouse visits City Mouse

I think of myself as someone who respects the decisions other adults make for their own lives. Unless it is something detrimental to family/friends or society at large, I celebrate the differences between us all because that is what makes life interesting and it’s what makes this world go ‘round. If we all wanted to be bakers, drive a Chevy, and live in the Adirondacks, think what a mess things would be! Yet, I find that if a person knows you and has ideas for themselves and their lives that are diametrically opposed to a decision you have made, well then it’s like you just grew two heads and one has a big green boogie hanging out of its nose. My birthday was yesterday – 29 again! I thought I would be more okay with this birthday given my distress about last year’s milestone – I am not. I decided to stay busy this birthday to lessen the blow. I went to visit a college roommate and my sister in Virginia and DC. I cyber stalk my former college roommate on Facebook and so have a Cliff’s Notes version of what is going on, but it was nice to catch up and reminisce at the same time. This friend has almost completed the divorce process – she would be totally finished if her attorney had not dropped the ball in a legal epic fail. She had been married just as long as I had (they got married a few days after us) but she had been with her ex since freshman year in college. That’s 12 years, if you believe my math. So, we are kind of dealing with the same thing, but she was the leave-er and I am the leave-ee in our given situations. Call it small potatoes, but to me it means a lot. Making the decision yourself is hard, very hard. But, still you made the decision. The decision was made for me. The loss of control over an integral part of your own life is quite disturbing, as if your left arm suddenly decided to operate of its own accord without input from your brain. It’s jolting, sickening, and I don’t recommend it. Regardless of the minuscule differences, we are both uncomfortably sitting in the “newly single and 30” boat. Trust me, there are not hoards of people clamoring to join our ranks. The topic of my odd arrangement of living with a foster child came up. Having endured an especially hard week with the child, I vented a little and explained the situation in gory detail. My friend had been up to visit me when I still had the baby, so she knew of the outcome of my first round in foster mothering. Given the second, grueling round, she seemed to assume I was done and would happily slip back into the land of singleness and throw myself into my work/career. Perhaps I should do that….. I have daydreamed about signing up to get certified to teach English as a Second Language overseas – heading to Asia and starting a new life. But, I don’t really want that anymore than I want to be the ex-Mrs. I would feel even more alone, more lost and without an anchor. I have never been terribly career-oriented. I want a decent job, but I also want a job that does not rob me of a life outside of work. Having a family is more important to me. Being connected to people I love and who are important to me is what I value. Work is work. Just like doing laundry or washing dishes – it must be done as a part of life.

I spent Saturday and Sunday morning with my friend, then I went to spend time with my sister. She had an itinerary planned for my visit, which included a brief boat tour/cruise on the Potomac, a birthday party (with her friends), and a trip to a museum or two. She asked about the foster child and I explained that the child would be leaving next week, that I had asked to have her placed somewhere else. My sister applauded the decision and wondered what would be next for me – a boyfriend? Move to a new city? Find a new job? I explained I planned to take in another child and she questioned my sanity. Two failures are not enough? After facing my friends incredulous “Really?!” response to the announcement that I planned to adopt, I simply didn’t have the energy to tell my sister the same. I changed the subject and she never brought it up again.

I am secure in my decision. I know what I want. But, when someone close to you questions a decision – one so fraught with personal strife no less – it stings a bit. It seems, in the wake of the feminine movement, the desire to be a mother has been relegated to the dark ages of a woman’s worth being based on her ability to procreate. A newly single woman of my age should be out living the dream – meeting exciting Dos XX’s men, traveling around the world, getting in touch with herself, and forgetting all about the barrenness of her womb. Adopting? Ludicrous! Why on earth would you want to take care of another human being if you don’t have to? Babies? They bog you down! Being unprepared to expound on my decision, I feebly expressed my desire to be a mother. In the end of December 2008, when we threw away the birth control pills and began our descension into infertility hell, it was the beginning of a journey which could only end in me becoming a mother. I don’t know how to turn around on this path, I have not found a u-turn. The alternative of giving up, dating until I find someone else, and starting infertility treatments again gives me vertigo. It’s unfathomable and would be the final crushing blow to my already fragile psyche. I need this scrap, this shadowy glimmer, this infinitesimal speck of hope. I realize it is non-traditional. I know it seems crazy from the outside looking in. As much as I enjoy tradition, it sometimes doesn’t work for me. And crazy? Crazy is walking away from a 6 year relationship because you don’t like having someone tell you what to do. Crazy is ripping a baby away from a healthy, loving home. Crazy is watching your world crumble and being utterly powerless to stop it. Crazy, I can do.

If nothing else I am stubborn. It has been by sheer power of will that I have not melted under the inferno of pain this past year. I haven’t fallen to total pieces because I refuse to. If you don’t know me, you will not see even the slightest chink in my armor. The morning after the end of my world as I know it, I was at work, taking care of business. Not once have my co-workers been privy to my inner pain. And they will not. Only my parents have witnessed the completely brokenness of my heart and soul, that dangerous dip into insanity. Only the closest friends have seen the mask slip slightly. By my determination to NOT let “this” destroy me, it has not. The searing pain corrodes my insides, but most of the time I look like the same bubbly, happy, lovin-life gal on the outside. I guess, I find comfort in the supportive comments on this blog because, for the most part, those who stumble upon this blog have or are dealing with infertility issues and they can understand that burning desire to be a mother. Perhaps it is not fair to expect someone who does not have that desire to understand. My roommate from college always declared she never wanted children. She is still not sure she does, although she has admitted (after 12 years of denial) she was mostly so adamantly opposed because her ex had pretty significant genetic health issues and she was too terrified to spin the wheel of genetics to see if their genes would result in a healthy or unhealthy child. My sister is 5 years younger than me and she is very dedicated to her job and the career path she has chosen. She is not yet willing to allow motherhood to derail or even slow her progression. When I was a child I had said I wanted to be a mother when I grew up. It was only when I truly understood the question meant what occupation did I want, that my answer changed (it was veterinarian btw – until I interned in high school and hated it).

I guess I wrote this entire entry as a justification, but really it is just to solidify my decision. My decision. My own decision. My only fear is that God, having declared my ability to have a biological child null and void, will determine motherhood is never to be an option for me and for whatever reason I will be denied a child forevermore. But, I pray this is not the case. Surely, if this desire lives inside my heart and the loss and pain I have experienced this year has not quenched it, then it must be something God too desires for me. I try not to get my mind too tangled up in this thought process. I met with the pastor of my church and his wife last week because I have become the de facto Sunday school teacher/leader. They expressed their desire for me to take on more of the roll of leader. During our meeting, I had the realization that I have always worked with children one way or another. I baby-sat extensively in high school, helping develop and direct the children’s program for a MOPS (mothers of preschoolers) program, taking my turn as childcare volunteer in the church, and helping younger kids in 4-H. In college I volunteered at several programs working with children in a day care and after school program, and became a Big Sister (I wasn’t very good at it since I didn’t really have enough time to dedicate to the girl and we really didn’t mesh well). In the Peace Corps my house was always loaded with neighborhood children. A day did not go by that the children didn’t come over to play or learn about baking or just hang out on my hammock. Even when I came back from the Peace Corps, I took a job as the assistant director for the children’s ministry at Motivated Moms, a non-profit that taught ESL to local women and men and provided childcare while the parents were in class. I love all the little kids in my Sunday school class and I am excited to be able to help teach them and move into my new position as leader of Sunday school teachers. But, I digress…….

I guess, what I can say in closing, is that I don’t owe anyone an explanation. I am of sound mind, I am only the good kind of crazy, and I am willing to accept that this is not a simple thing that I am about to do. As per my first paragraph, my decision has no negative ramifications to those who love me. If anything, it is something that will help me heal. Finally becoming a mother, after such an epic struggle, will be a balm to soothe my aching soul. I am not delusional, I know that being a single mother is not easy. I have been living with an incredibly difficult child for 5 months now and by all accounts, I have done quite well despite the insurmountable behavioral issues. So, my choice is not one generally made. But, sometimes you just gotta dance to your own music, even if no one but you can hear it.