Why Did I Get Married...

Why Did I Get Married….

I usually do my best thinking in the shower, well except for this week because all I can think about in the shower is that I am turning blue.

Wait, let me go back and give a little context. Every 6 weeks I go and get my hair done by my friend DeAnna at her salon. It’s a nice 3 hours, chatting with friends and getting some reading done.  I am not the kind of girl that does her hair in the morning, so the fact that I get an expensive cut and color every 6 weeks is surprising to most people. As a matter of fact, I walk in and say to either shave it all off or dye it purple every time (well there was that one time when I said I wanted it just like Taylor Swift’s hair and then I had to be blond for 6 weeks…). Usually she does something fascinating with it color wise and I bunch it back up in a messy knot as soon as I walk out (which drives her insane!!!).

Well, this last time she really did dye it purple, except that most of the purple has been washing out for over a week now, except for 2 vivid purple streaks on either side of my head.

Anyway, back to the shower…

So my best friend, A, has been dating this awesome guy for just over 8 months now (well, she calls it dating, I personally don’t count the first 5 months when they were just fucking as “dating”. If it is, then J and I have been “dating” way longer than I have been telling people). He is totally not what she would call her type, but he is nice, and treats her and her kid well and she has even told me that she may love this guy (again, I am counting their relationship as being 3 months old, but she is not the type to just jump into anything without totally over-thinking it first). As a result, she and I got into this discussion about why bother getting legally married when you know you are going to be together anyway.

Well, that got me thinking. Why did I get married? What was the point? Could J and I have just gone through our lives to date without that piece of paper in the fire-proof box along with our passports and social security cards? Does filing our taxes together make us love each other more? No, of course not. This has been my train of thought in the shower for several mornings already as I try to figure out exactly why I felt the need to get married.

Seriously, aren't we the cutest thing ever!!!

Needless to say, DeAnna came to my house for dinner with her man-friend (who is friends with J but was always too young for me to waste my time with in high school) and she and I decided over chicken picatta (which was fucking awesome!!!) that people get married because it is just one more level of commitment.

The next morning, while washing my blue hair I realized how right that was. I didn’t care about the piece of paper, I wanted J to stand in front of the people who were important to us and promise to be with me, for better or for worse, for the rest of our lives. And I wanted all those other people there to witness, incase he tries to weasel his way out of it when he realizes that I am really just a big bag of crazy disguised as a festive, knit cozy.

I called A, to tell her about this epiphany I just had, but she wasn’t biting. Perhaps because I was shrieking… (seriously, the woman has been my best friend for 18 years! She should know how I am by now!) She also probably caught on to the fact that I would really like to go on “couple vacations” in the future and though her daughter is the coolest 5 year old I know, I need her to have a baby closer in age to Delilah so they can keep each other busy while the Mommies drink…

This Week in Etsy...

I can't help it, as much as I try not to, I have to buy things on Etsy! I literally can't help it, it's like a compulsion, or raging addiction I just can't kick (not that I have tried that hard...). Of course I did have to find ways to make my buying a little harder to track after J saw that I spent $100 on a custom ordered, hand made, ceramic TARDIS cookie Jar and almost came unglued. I still say the resulting argument was totally worth it because that blue box looks great on my counter.

So lets see what the damage was this week...

I ordered these super cool stacking rings from an online friend, and though she told me I didn't need to pay for them, I love to support people that I like and I wouldn't dare assume that people will just give me things, although it's nice when they do.

I am also currently on the lookout for holiday presents for Delilah. I thought this cheese was cute, and would make excellent busy work for her, once she can figure out how to work it (which will probably be pretty fast, since she seems to grasp things easily. Well, most things, she still can't tell the difference between the cat's toys and her's...).

I got these silver candle sticks too, mainly because they were only $30 and seemed to be just like these candlesticks that my grandfather gave his mother in the 1940's. They turned out to be smaller than the "real" candlesticks, but I still like them.

The Worst Part...

In my opinion, the worst thing about infertility is how alone you feel. I mean, I get it, if you don’t have kids then you are probably alone more than people who do. That’s not what I am talking about. I mean, when you are infertile you can be in a room full of hundreds or thousands of people and still feel alone. It is amazing how every step of the journey towards a family sets you apart from the groups you had previously belonged to.

On November 2, eight days before my wedding, I received my infertility diagnosis. I was alone then too, because J didn’t think it was something he needed to go to. Over the next few years I slowly lost people I had been close to, because they had children and I was hurt and jealous. It was mostly my fault because I couldn’t stand hearing about being pregnant, or listen to their kids in the background during phone calls. To this day I haven’t even met most of those friend’s children. I had some friends dump me. One even told me she couldn’t be friends anymore because my inability to have children made her feel bad.

But, as time moved on, I made a new group of infertile friends. I met them online and at RESOLVE meetings and things were great. They were smart and funny and we never talked about kids, unless we were detailing our latest treatment cycle or commiserating over seeing pregnant women everywhere.  But then, the same thing started happening. One by one many of them got pregnant and began to drop away. At the time I just thought they were some strange version of Fair Weather Friend that used me for support when they needed it and then couldn’t or wouldn’t offer it back when their situation changed. But now that I am one of the lucky ones, I know that’s not the case either.

When I got pregnant with Delilah I wanted to talk to my friends desperately. I needed them still, but I didn’t dare utter a word because I knew how much it would hurt them. While spending days alone in my room on bed rest I wondered over and over “What the hell have I done? Do I even want this?”. But I literally had no one I could share this with, no one to talk to me and tell me that it would be alright besides one friend whom I texted constantly and then felt guilty about because she may never get to be pregnant, and even then I tried not to talk about it.

When I had Delilah I was just lost. What the hell was I supposed to do with this demanding little thing? It’s not like I had any friends to ask, because I either hadn’t talked to them for years because they had children without fertility treatments, or they were still infertile themselves and listening to me complain about how hard it was to be a mom was not high on their lists of things to do. It’s like I finally got to join the “Mom Club” but didn’t feel like I belonged there, because I was just masquerading as a mom.