For a few months now, I have been introducing myself on here as someone who is pursuing egg donation. I've been frequenting egg donor forums and have spent countless hours in my head picturing my life as a mom via egg donation, so, at least for a short time, that began to work its way into my identity. But then, something happened. It wasn't an epiphany, just a slow, gradual building of wanting to no longer be consumed over how and when we would get the money to make this happen. I guess I just longed to set it aside and not actually be pursuing anything but living. And in the midst of that living, I found myself relishing a freedom I hadn't felt in a long while.
Don't get me wrong. I am absolutely still grief stricken and I still think about becoming a Mother again many times a day, but I'm not sick with worry over it. I'm not hyper-focused on getting to that place. In the back of my mind, I am always wanting, always scheming, always feeling the ache of absence, but it is more or less background noise rather than a blaring theme song to my every step. I am not letting myself live solely in that space and it's everything I've needed. As much as one can take a break from being drug around by their dreams, that's what I'm doing.
Perhaps it's just that I am getting to another phase of grieving. That's the thing about infertility-you are always grieving. It is never done, but where you are in the grief is the key. Acceptance for me? Not yet, but the intensely present misery is not directly in my face. It still visits, but it's more of a weekly visitor than daily.
I suppose this all comes about, too, out of necessity. I can't obsess about where I will get my next child because I'm not in the position to do so. My only options are out of financial reach at this point, so I have two choices: to worry about something I can do nothing about or to put it on the back burner. I chose the latter.
I've also been toying around in my head with other ideas beyond egg donation. I've revisited adoption, embryo donation and having an only child and my once strong opposition to all of the above is softening. This might be naive, but in some ways, I feel like one day it will become clear to me, that my destiny will show itself and instead of being completely frustrated by the unknown, part of me is excited to learn how it will all play out. The usually very proactive me is confused by this stance I'm taking because, especially in the land of family building, things don't 'just happen', you have to make them happen, and with great effort. But somehow I feel like it will just be realized. I don't believe I'll stumble into another child ("here, have this free IVF donor cycle!"), but that it will be made possible to either embrace parenting an only child or pursue adding to our family again (whether financially or otherwise). I don't know how, but I have the belief that it will happen.
I'm still not in a zen place with this IF business, though, despite what it seems above. The unknown of timing is what I'm having the hardest time with. Seriously. My kid's gonna be 30 before he gets a sibling (if he ever does). While it's getting easier to withstand the onslaught of pregnancies and babies being thrown my way, I still find time to be a little envious, snarky bee-yotch about it. But at least I'm able to live and breathe and enjoy the here and the now and that's better than I could say a few months ago.
