I wish I knew how to fix this. I wish I knew what to do and this is one of if not the hardest thing to write for me. I want to just scream from the rooftops that I am broken beyond repair and every worst nightmare I ever thought could possibly ever happen has happened. But I can't. I won't. I am too... something.
I want to be able to not be broken. Since I was a kid I knew something was wrong with me and have always felt like I was damaged goods. And this suspicion has been confirmed in the worst way possible. I know you wouldn't leave me but it doesn't stop my mind from telling me you should. I know you won't but I still think you should. I wouldn't blame you. I mean it's like someone who has a communicable disease that doesn't tell their partner and gets them ill. How wrong is that? We would normally scoff at them and call them dirty names but yet we don't call people who didn't tell their partners about their inability to have kids any dirty names. Maybe we should. I should be called something. Or at least should allow you to leave the confines of a childless relationship and one that if we wanted to pursue it would cost tens of thousands no matter which road we choose.
I am sure that there are people who are going to say 'I know what to do' or 'this is what will work.' And who knows maybe it did for them or their friend or family but it's never the same twice. We know. We've tried. I couldn't make an egg if I wanted to. I couldn't do anything anymore to facilitate this process. And maybe that is what hurts more. I am broken, again, and can't fix it, again.
I can only speculate that what caused this issue other than the clear and obvious - your ovaries don't work and your thyroid is out of control. I can't help but think that I did something, or didn't do something that inadvertently causes this. Maybe I shouldn't have taken those pills to 'help' me feel better. Maybe I should have taken other ones. Maybe I should have started this sooner.
I feel so empty inside and so unfeminine and so just overexposed. The number of people who have seen under the sheet is slightly unsettling. Yes, they were doctors and nurses and techs but it just makes you feel a piece is missing. Something you can't get back. I suppose it's like when you have another partner and break up with them. They always hold a part of you something that you gave them and you never get it back. It's the same here. I can't make them unsee it or make me unknow they saw it.
I wish I could just make people understand the feelings of grief that I know I went through. I am even worse off for this though. I feel like a total tool for not only taking the one dream you have had away but for also not allowing you to even feel in this. You have been so unable to express yourself and explain how you feel because we both can't fall apart. Right? Ever the more reason I am just the worst. I know, to you I am not. But these, these are the things that float around in my head like snakes in the water waiting to just attack when I least expect it. Waiting to just let me think that maybe, just maybe I can be okay for a minute so that you can have your moment to meltdown, then they rush in like a flood and swarm me. Attacking and reminding me of who I am and what I am not.
After the first appointment of our final treatment week - the beginning of our end - I wanted you to do something to show me that you still liked me, I didn't even want to ask for 'love me.' I knew that it wasn't fair to ask right then. I wanted those flowers I said I never would want or the edible arrangement I said would forever be too expensive for some cut fruit. I wanted to know that you still were 'into' me. Even though I would cost you at least ten thousand to give you a child - even one that isn't ours genetically.
I know that adoption is an option. But it's never what I wanted. Never wanted to not see our blue eyed, curly haired child. We would never see our child look like us when they were little and grow up with the names we picked so many years ago. The baby stuff that we have hoarded in the basement will never be put to use in a way that we thought. We would not feel the baby kick at night and have the hiccups when we drive to the cabin. I would never need to be reassured that I wasn't fat, just round. I would never let you feel the kick or hear the heartbeat of our love the way we thought. Someone else's stomach will get bigger and get kicked and bounced around. Not mine. Not how we thought.
I never mean to hurt anyone or offend them with this statement or sentiment. I know the loss and grief that comes from it. We both do. It just is so fresh and so new and hurts so much in ways we never thought possible.
I want to be able to be okay. I want you to be okay. I want to not feel like a dozen broken eggs. I want to feel like a woman. I want to feel like a lady. I want to feel not like a little girl who can't do what is supposed to happen. No matter how many times someone says 'you're not doing anything wrong' I can't help but think that I am. I did. I continue to and I think I always will.
I wish I could tell this to your face. Explain the fears and drama. Explain that the loss of a dream home or the loss of a dream to you. Rationalize it away saying it'll be okay or that I can just always hope for the better.
But the reality is the plans we had and the dreams we dreamt are not only irreparably changed but our lives have irreparably changed forever when we first realized that this issue I had was way worse than we thought.
I want to be able to wake up in the morning and not feel tired, not have a sore throat and a headache. Not come home and feel the tension and stress in my neck so much that simple movement can hurt. I want to just be able to be okay, to be myself and to be sick and tired and not have to power through.
I always have just kept going. Get your ass up and move. Stop whining and deal with it. You're not a baby don't act like one. Until now. Until this past year. I have never wanted to fall apart, stay stuck and act like a baby more. I have never desired to be home with nowhere to go more than I have in the past 100 days or so. I have never felt like this in my life.
I know this just complicates that process more. Where the hell do you get $20,000+ for a child and $40,000+ for the lost salary? It doesn't add up and it never will. You can't have it both ways. Well, I can't, that is.
So why write this? Why tell the world the innermost thoughts about this 'situation' we find ourselves in? Because it's not fair. I didn't ask for this - and Lord knows you sure as hell didn't either. It's not fair to you, I suppose, to read this and have your wife share these ideas and feelings with everyone and not just you. But the thing is, there are wives everywhere who are going through this. And not only wives but women.
Women who no longer feel they have a role or purpose in this life. Women who can't stand to look themselves in the eye and think about the decisions they made and the things they did or didn't do that maybe, possibly, surely didn't, couldn't have led them here (or did it - the inner mind tries to trick us, yet again). It's not fair to be expected to keep silent about this. I know you don't expect me nor ever did. But the inner shame, the inner guilt and hatred, the inner anger and frustration tells me I need to be quiet. It tells me to keep this in so I can live in the same of 'knowing' I did something to cause this.
I can't do this anymore. I can't sit there with a smile plastered on my face and lie to everyone who asks how's it going. I don't need to tell the cashier at Target that my life is a mess and oh woah is me.. No, not saying that.
What I am saying is I need to tell my friends and those people whose 'how's it going' refers more to the current state of my life and mind. Those who ask in the deeper sense of 'I know what is happening and I want to know about how your treatment is going.' I need to be heard and understood. I need you - and our friends - what the challenges of our lives are right now. The feelings that I hold inside me and deal with when we are together. The shame and unnerving sense of 'I don't belong' these people are 'whole' and I am far from.
I think that the hardest thing is going out or going somewhere. There is no safe place to hide when I melt down from the realization that yet again I am just not 'normal' or 'whole' or 'okay.' The fact that a physically or mentally exerting day requires a day following for recoup. The fact that I am too tired sometimes to even get out of bed no matter how bad I want to I just physically can't. I know you have witnessed it. A four hour 'natural nap.' Because yet again, not whole. I can't even sleep on my own. I need help sleeping. The exhaustion is more than just laziness being combatted. It yet again boils down to a body that doesn't work quite right.
I love you. I am sorry I can't be the whole wife you want. You can say I am all you want but in the deepest corners of my mind and the darkest parts of my heart I doubt it. I don't want to be your sick wife or your infertile wife or your less than there wife or the less than whole wife. I want to be whole. I want to be well. I want to be yours forever without a shadow of a doubt that you want me today, tomorrow and for all the days of your life until death shall part us. But I can't be.
I will always love you and despite your vow to always love me I would never blame you if you left for someone. I can only imagine the feelings you have inside of you, bottled up and unable to express them. I can only imagine the resentment you feel and the hurt, the anger, the disappointment. I wish I could fix it. I can't.
I can't thank you enough for standing by me. For staying with me. For taking me to appointments. Holding me as I fall apart in your arms. Listening to me as I tear through you with hurtful words driven from a fake hormonally charged rant. Picking up the endless prescriptions and never flinching at the thousands of dollars I piddle away in medications that don't work each month. Rubbing me when I can't sleep from the pain. I will never be able to repay you or thank you for all you have done for me and all you still do.
I love you with all of the broken pieces of my heart.
