As Long as My Heart Beats...

 I have been trying to type this post for weeks.  I am still unsure if I can get what I think and feel on black and white. I have been trying to decide where to go from here on my blog. Believe it or not, it is just as difficult to express this to humans standing next to me as it is to type it out.  A lot has happened in the last few years.  I've moved and have had numerous things go on...some good, some bad.  I have grown in a lot of ways....came to terms, so to speak, about a lot of things I wanted in life, but my body or God (or both) have decided to rebel against me and want other things.  This time of year, though, brings out the grief in me, moreso than the other times during the year.  Most of the deaths that have affected me to my core have happened around (and on) Christmas, Thanksgiving, and New Years.

I am content.  Content in the aspect that I know my time with some family members are limited and I have a golden opportunity to bask in the love before life completely falls apart.  I am content in the fact that there is no way that I can afford to medically enhance the chances of becoming a mommy. There is no way...not enough money in the bank and no insurance. It makes me sad that it looks like I will never join the ranks of having a living child on this Earth.  It grieves me in actuality, but it is something that I have had to come to terms with as my body changes with time and the effects of illnesses.

I cannot change the fact that there is little I can do to make myself become pregnant and deliver a full-term healthy baby. I cannot change the journey that God has given my body.  I cannot change that I have always and will always desire a child...a family.  It is out of my control and out of my reach.

I know you are questioning just how content I am...even when my desires are not, and possibly will never be, fulfilled.

It was unhealthy for me to be where I was...to try to will and wish my precious time away for the life that I desired so badly.  It literally paralyzed me in so many ways.  I stopped writing. I stopped playing music.  I stopped composing music.  I stopped listening to music.  I stopped being around friends and family that had children or were expecting.  I stopped laughing and basking in the joy that is life.  I stopped. My world stopped. I could see the Earth spinning as I was paralyzed with grief and an unhealthy fear. My soul was dead while my body played the cruel joke and continued to live.

I couldn't tell you what it was that made me realize that I was wasting my life on something I cannot change alone.  I can't tell you the day or the moment that I realized that I am still alive, in spite of everything that was happening to me and that I was wasting so much precious time on the hope that I would be a mommy.  In some ways, that desire still brands me and makes me so raw that I have to fight back to reality.

Whether I like it or not, the reality is that short of a miracle, there will be no children that I can call my own.

I can embrace what is my life...what my love and passions are.  I can embrace the children that are in my life and deserve my love and attention.  I can embrace my loved ones before our time together is cut way too short.  I can and will embrace the memory of the babies I carried and lost...They would not want me to stop living.  They would want me to embrace and live life...in a way they couldn't.

There are times the grief and sadness hits me.  Today is one of them.  It comes out of nowhere, like a train barreling full speed around a corner with no whistle.  It knocks me down to my knees and takes my breath away.  I can be in the bathroom or I can be in store with crazy Christmas shoppers around me.  I don't have time to prepare for it.  It comes to me whether I like it or not.  It visits me in my dreams.  In those moments, I can't look or think about anything children.  I can't even look in the mirror to see the grief-stricken woman with tears down her face. 

Instead, I picture my children.  How they would be if they were on this Earth.  How my life would be with them running around. What they would look like and what their personality would be like.Then, the guilt and anger hit me.  I go to deep, .dark places.  Places I could curl up in and just drift away in hopes of being with my babies. I dream of the day I can hold them again....meet most of them for the first time and tell them, ensure to them, that I love them and have always loved them. I have never forgotten about them or went a day without thanking them for being in my life for their brief moments.

I fight my way back, though,  to a place where I can survive without putting my mental and physical self at risk.  I fight my way back because it is all I know how to do.  I fight my way back because the other options are not good enough.

I have only a select few in my life that know about my losses or anything about this.  I do not talk about it.  I do not open the subject up to others around me because I know where it will lead.  I have friends that desire to be closer to me and a possible relationship on the horizon...yet, I have no words to tell them how I feel.  I have no way to communicate that I am broken in ways they don't understand and that the slightest uncaring meanness can rip me open even worse.

It is a never-ending battle with grief and infertility as long as my heart still beats.Some days it is so much easier than others. Today is not one of those days.