Candace and I are feeling something that brings both joy and trepidation. Excited. For those that are veterans to the world of infertility, it is totally logical and understood to feel this hodgepodge of emotions. Those just starting your journey, or embarking on this quest as support for loved ones, here is a situation that Candace and I were in that everyone can relate to.
We were back to waiting in line for the roller coaster at our local theme park. We were pretty close to the front, but then again, most of the people that had waited in line before gave up. The ride had gone down … twice … and we were of the foolhardy group that decided to get back in line a third time. As the cars started to come and go, and the line in front of us started to get shorter and shorter, we started to get excited. We were finally going to get to ride this ride!
Then it happened.
The shuffling of people slowed, a series of cars came in and didn’t leave, and the dreaded announcement, “We are sorry folks. Due to a mechanical issue, this ride will be temporarily shut down.” Now what? How are we supposed to feel? What do we do with these feelings of excitement? They have to be transformed into something. More on that in a bit, back to our latest adventures in surrogacy.
So, Candace and I are starting to feel excited. We have tried to stifle it, lock it in a closet, but it keeps coming back into our lives. And with it, remembrances of when we had these feelings before and what the results were: in one instances, our beloved Jellybean; in numerous others though, devastation and heartache. We don’t have a crystal ball to predict how this latest instance of excitement will turn out, and that is where the fear comes in.
Our surrogacy with our Wondrous Wombmate and her family is progressing. It’s a process, a long, incredible one. Candace and I have been so blessed and, although the road is circuitous, things are moving forward without much complexity. We are finalizing contractual agreements and completing ground level checks to make sure all of the biologies (I made that word up I think) will play nicely together. So where are we? Tests, contracts, and working through the logistics. With everything going in a positive direction, how can I even entertain an “F” word such as fear? Well, it has to do with what our excitement was transformed into in the past. Or rather, how long it took to make the final transformation of that excitement.
EXCITEMENT.
When you are excited about something, you haven’t experienced it yet. Otherwise, you would say that you were fulfilled, satisfied, overjoyed, or simply happy. Excitement though, is a lot more precarious. Part of that optimistic energy is the anticipation of the outcome being what you anticipate. But with it though, there is the other side, that ravine right behind that optimism that threatens to engulf you if things don’t turn out like you anticipate. The bigger the well of optimism, i.e., the more likely you are to realize what you are anticipating, the greater the depths of that chasm if you don’t reach your goal. And, like in all things of life, you don’t always reach your goal. When you don’t, and you experience that emotional free-fall, that transformation of your excitement will determine how far you fall, how hard you land, and how long it will be until you are able to even begin to get out of the rift you fell in.
As a very tangible example, check this story out of a man that was the first paralyzed person to finish a marathon. This chap (because he is English) fell into a chasm as a result of a brain tumor. He had to transform the unspoken excitement of living a “normal” life into something. He could have transformed it into depression, addiction, self-loathing, or simple callousness. Instead though, he transformed his excitement into purpose. He found his wings when he fell and has used them to inspire others (and himself) that even the insurmountable is achievable.
HOPE.
Candace and I have fallen too. We were never able to find wings though and most certainly did not stop falling into we hit something, most of the time in a very hard fashion. Through our years of fighting infertility we have transformed our excitement about an IUI round, a frozen embryo transfer, even that a DNC would not show precancerous cells into different feelings. We have felt rage, depression, hopelessness, frustration, loneliness, and any other feeling in that grab bag of sorrow to varying degrees, especially right in the moment. Every time though, after time has passed and we have worked diligently to reflect on our lives holistically, we have ultimately been able to transform that unresolved excitement into hope. Hope that the next round is different, hope that another option will present itself, hope that we will be able to find “our” path in the murky and foreboding world of IF.
You know what though, it is exhausting. We have always managed to focus ourselves such that the end-result enables us to grow, to deepen our relationship, and to harness our experience so it can be used to support others. That takes something from us though and, as we are starting to see more and more of that “promised land” in the distance of the possibility of having a second child through surrogacy, and our excitement continues to grow, we are becoming fearful of looking behind us. How deep is the chasm becoming that we will inevitably fall into if something goes wrong.
GUILT.
One “new” emotion both Candace and I are feeling this round though, guilt. This is a strange one so bear with me. I am confident to say that we are out of the rift that we plummeted into when our last surrogacy fell through. We had to scrape out “tooth and nail” up the steep walls of that, all while showing nary a sign to our Jellybean. The onslaught of different emotions, confrontations, and how it impacted every facet of our lives was relentless. We did it though and, we are terrified of having to do it again. So, as an unconscious defense, we have deprived ourselves of many of the tinges of excitement and almost fairytale-like experiences that we felt during our first surrogacy. That unquenchable, “Could this really be happening,” demeanor isn’t completely gone. It is just restrained. It is a safety mechanism for us, but completely unfair to our surrogate and her family that are preparing to sacrifice so much to help us realize our dream of expanding our family. We have told her this, on a few occasions, but it just feels like lip service. Like some kind of conciliation prize or something. Who knows, maybe all this pent-up excitement will explode if this translates into a delivery day (it’s cool, we will have scrubs on so the mess will be containable) or after we bring a new child home. I don’t know. But I do know that it is troublesome to my heart to know that we are handicapping everyone’s experience due to our history, we just don’t know how to turn that around, yet.
So, novella of a post but, yeah, Candace and I are afraid to be excited. Getting back to our roller coaster story, Candace and I transformed our excitement into stubborn consternation and, even though the pretzel house was within sniff-distance, we stayed right where we were for another 15 minutes until the ride was opened again. Our butterflies waiting for the drop on that ride were all the sweeter because of it.
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