Looking To 2011

I’m loving the quietness of work this week. Most of my team is out, I have my music on, and occasionally work friends pop their head into my area for a refreshing holiday tete-a-tete. We whisper because it’s so quiet.

The holidays were festive and fanciful, but I felt not all there. This sense of sadness and loss (over one measly failed IVF cycle – I know) has left me shaken. One down, one to go. On the verge of tears is my perpetual state and I cannot say enough about Matt. Poor Matt, who is going through this too, and who holds me at night and lets me have my “And you know who I saw on Facebook who is pregnant now too?!” moments, has taken this – all of it – in stride. We are perfectly matched because I am brash and high-strung and can tumble from happiness to tears in .2 seconds and he is, simply, the most even-keeled, pleasant, and optimistic person I know. Nary in a bad mood, his goodness (to me, to others) doesn’t surprise me anymore. He says I color his life…and I suppose that is one way to put it. How very fortunate I am.

So it’s interesting to see this happy-go-lucky guy upset too. When we found out this cycle wasn’t going to work I cried and cried and later exclaimed, “Aren’t you going to cry too? Aren’t you upset?!!” and he informed he did cry – I guess I was too weepy to notice. He still says everything is going to work out, and still talks about us having children, but now adoption references sprinkle these conversations more and more. I say I’m scared because that process if far from easy, and so long, and expensive, and what if we aren’t chosen, and what if it always falls through for us, and …and…and. With resoluteness he holds my hand and says it will happen, and he makes me believe it.

They say this process and all its ugliness (the emotions, the money, the stress, the hormones) deepens the cracks in any marriage, but I have not experienced that. With Crohn’s, I feel wholly alone. Yes, he chides me when I eat something on the “no” list, or asks if I took my medication, but the pains that make me question if I’m leaving this blissful period of “remission” are only felt by me. Heck, it’s nice not to be alone in your misery. We both want children so badly so there is nothing but tenderness when anything baby is mentioned. (And the occasional groan as he submits eyebrow-raising baby names, from the likes of “Willard” to “Samson” – I kid you not. He has since lost his naming rights.)

It’s with this mishmash of emotions I look forward to 2011. I know we have it good (or at least that's what I tell myself every day to ward off the tears), but I’m hoping for resolution. And for greatness.