Fuck it.

I've hit a definite lull. Perhaps unemployment has something to do with it; perhaps I'm just tired. Whatever it is, I just don't have the energy to care much this cycle. I've heard some women call it the "fuck it" stage.

We've been trying for more than a year. I've done everything I was supposed to do. It hasn't worked.

My G.P. says to wait till November before getting a referral, as I didn't start charting till that time last year. She doesn't much care that I'm a couple of weeks from thirty-five, or that my health insurance will only last for a set time, or that thoughts of getting pregnant, staying pregnant and having a baby in my arms have left me distracted and incoherent for fourteen cycles.

My husband also doesn't seem to care much, though he wants me "to be happy" (such a trite, overused husband phrase, no?). Though he no longer says it, I know that he would be just as happy to go through life exactly as it is. He sees no reason for change.

My one friend that I talked to about trying to conceive said, quite breezily, "Well, if it's meant to be, it will happen." Nice. So supportive.

So, I think I'll join the party. Fuck it.

Land of Enchantment

I spent the last few days as a paid visitor to Fertility Wonderland. This is the land where five-month-old girl babies burble and giggle and smell like honey, smiling on cue and throwing silken webs of perfection from their tiny, tiny fingers, spreading them over all and sundry. Where babies have transformed the lives of their beaming parents--happily, happily!--and un-selfconsciously promote themselves as the reason for all life to exist around them.

This was my family reunion.

The Right to Privacy

As of July 1st, I no longer have a private life. While this puts me in good company--say, with the governor of New Jersey--it does not put me in a good mood.

Today, I was trying to update my chart and check in with the lovely ladies on an infertility board when I found my sainted husband, the upright Eagle Scout, reading over my shoulder. Not just glancing, mind you, but full-on reading, brow furrowed, eyes asquint. Two days ago, when writing my last entry, I had to insist that he not come down to the basement office--his office--till I'd given him the signal (three raps with a broom handle on the ceiling). Oh, and I have been clearing the browser's history whenever I log off, just in case he's typing in a website for, say, Fernando Valenzuela and IE pops up Fertility Friend instead.

I never thought of my work life as private, but I see now that, in many respects, it was: a private computer on a private desk with a private phone in a private office with my very own door to close. I may have been surrounded by people, but I had my inviolate space, as gray and faux-mahogany as it was. And the funny thing about that remote, hermit-like office was that it allowed me to reach out and be touched by strangers, women around the world with problems and fears and thoughts and ideas and humor that I could understand and take comfort in.

With that space gone, my time and access are greatly constrained, and I feel more disconnected than I could have expected. So now I have to figure out a way to tell J that, while I have a preposterous amount of love for him and love to be with him every minute of the day, I also need time alone, every day. With his computer.

My own personal Hayley Mills

There's a small but persistent Pollyanna inside me, smiling brightly but forcefully and shaking preposterous blond pigtails in my face whenever I wade too far into the pond. (The pond is filled with brackish self-pity and ennui. I dug it out myself.)

Pollyanna has caused me much grief over the years: I can't remember the last time she let me wallow, hippo-esque, in my melodramatic pain for longer than a few days--she always butts in with how I shouldn't be miserable because, look on the bright side, I'm not underfed or suffering from malaria or being forced to listen to Kenny G. And then I feel really bad, and selfish, and force myself to buck up.

For the last month, I was on vacation (an epic event highlighted by J--J!--cracking 90 MPH down I-80 in Utah; a sight for the ages). For the most part, I was full of bliss at the release of being in a new city every night or two, distracted by new sights, sounds, smells and tastes, which, if nothing else, were novel (even horribly novel, like the roadside restaurants in Eastern Wyoming).

Ah, yes. I should have been more careful. I let Pollyanna run the show: optimism, good cheer, smiling through the minor adversities like 96 degree heat and that salad dressed with Worcestershire sauce on the Olympic Peninsula. And then the optimism ran wild: Cramping at 7 DPO--I must be pregnant! Sore breasts for a full week--I must be pregnant! Nausea on the Alpine Slide--I must be pregnant!

And then, apparently, Pollyanna fell asleep--or perhaps it was a slide-induced coma--because just at the moment when I needed her most, she was nowhere to be found: Out of what seemed to be the blue, I was suddenly bleeding, beset by cramps and gutted. And all I could do was feel the loss, the pain, the emptiness of another failed month; there was no staunch voice telling me to get over it, it's not so bad, find that silver lining.

I have a feeling that she in fact rushed home early and put all of her perky energy into making our tomatoes huge and luscious, as fertile as I am barren.