No, really, I'm happy for you

Everyone is pregnant.

Everyone. If you are reading this, please run to the bathroom and take an HPT and I promise you it will be positive. Even if you are a man. Hell, even if you are a houseplant. I believe my cat, Jezebel, is currently pregnant and she doesn't even have a uterus anymore.

Here's the thing - I am happy for people. Really. Everyone has a journey and some people have the infertility (until now) one and others have this part easy and other parts hard. If the universe is abundant, there is no reason to begrudge anyone for what they have gestating in their uterus. This is not really about other people.

However, I am tired. Tired of being constantly reminded about my infertility by walking around this fertile and gestating city. Tired of being happy for others and not myself. Tired of having to tell myself it will be our turn soon (which we have no fucking clue about, one way or another - our birthmother is probably out there but we have NO CONTROL as to when she finds us). And mostly tired of the unending dull pain that is our infertility.

And you know what, adoption isn't the same. It isn't. I have wonderful people in my life who count me among the expecting and that makes me feel so, soo good and so accepted. I love it. And i lull myself into thinking I am. Sometimes my fingers lazily drift to my (semi) flat belly. I have moments of feeling normal again.

But at the end of our journey to become parents will be lawyers and social workers and potentially a badly upset, scared birthmother and a potentially fought-over and genetically unknown child. It is not the same. It is not bad, it is just not the same.

Our social worker tells us this often, that adoption is not the same, and we nod because we will say anything to get her to give us a baby, but you know what, she is right. That doesn't make it worse, it just makes it different. And we already feel different.

I compare it to a cut you get. And then while you are reaching for the car door or opening a can of soda it opens again, only this time worse. I feel like not being fertile is the deepest, grossest, nastiest cut I have ever gotten and I can't seem to get that band aid to stay on. I will be walking down the street, happy as can be, sun is shining, and someone walks by me with a giant belly, their fingers lazily stroking it, and I am thrust back into the pain a bit. But after all day of reopening the cut the pain is a bit worse and I want to go home and hide.

And you know what, I am not mad at "her" anymore. Others' fertility has no impact on my own. It just seems that we are the only people in the world who just couldn't make it work. The IVF never worked. The pregnancies never stuck. The rabbit never really died, but my two children did.

I know, rationally, that we are not alone. But it sure as shit feels that way sometimes.