Colouring/Reading Between The Lines

Lying in bed last night at about midnight, I finally caught up on some of your blogs via my little iPhone. My prayers go out to Linus and family - if you haven't already got your Linus button, please do by going here. My heart breaks for them right now and they need all the positive thoughts you can muster.

I haven't been able to blog, or even write for my own damn self, in a while and I'm really missing it. Our house is upside-down with renos. My parents just left after coming over to help for two days, and we went away for my birthday last week. Work is also busy.

I've had three quick waves of panic since my panic attack a few weeks ago, which come on strong but don't last. No full-blown panic attacks, which I'm grateful for. Devon and I are sleeping apart right now, for numerous reasons which all have to do with the fact that I can't sleep. We've never done this, and I hate it. But I also know how important sleep is to my health, and I know (hope) this is a short-term solution to a short-term problem. Sucks for her too. 

Our first appointment at the fertility clinic is on Thursday. I want to be ridiculously giddy and excited for it, but I honestly don't really feel like I can be. Not out loud. Devon and I haven't even brought up babies in weeks. We had a good chuckle when the fertility clinic sent us a questionnaire in the mail and we both had to fill out forms. They usually send one for male partners, but they had just photocopied the second page of mine for Dev to fill out - I guess just to make her feel involved or something. Maybe because some couples switch carriers when one can't conceive. But that ain't gonna happen with us. It's me or nothing.

Other than that, the topic has kind of been pushed away. Devon admitted that she's focused on other things and her priorities are elsewhere, which is valid and okay but really hurt to hear. In this moment right now, there is just so much shit going on with us that I can honestly say that I don't really feel like we're going into this as equals or even with the same hopes. I know we have to talk about it, obviously, but there is so much tension that instantly seeps in when babies come up in conversation. I don't know if she regrets making the decision to go through with it. It feels like it sometimes. I know she's really excited at the possibility of going back to school and I think she feels that it's either-or. I think we can make things work. Plus, who knows, we may be TTCing for months and months (and years? hopefully not).

So we're not really in this together right now. We haven't filled out the questionnaires yet. We haven't talked about sperm banks. We haven't talked about cost, timing, meds, or anything. I feel like our communication is breaking down big time around this - which is something we agreed a while back that can't afford to happen. 

I need an equal partner in this. I need someone who will actually be excited to start TTCing, or if not, at least able to tell me why she's not. I almost feel like I hit the rewind button to return to late 2010, where Devon and I weren't allowed to talk about babies (therapist approved). There is so much weight around this issue and quite frankly, I don't want to be the one that is always poking for a response, for comments, for emotions, for answers... 

Devon is hoping to going back to school in January. It's a dream of hers. She's really excited and I'm pretty stoked about the whole idea too. I don't know if she feels like having a baby will ruin her dreams. I don't know whether she feels like we have to decide on one dream - either "mine" or "hers" (they are in quotations for a reason). Whenever I mention something like "Let's see how school/work will look in our overall plan," I feel like she thinks all that I have on my mind is baby and I'm making everything about me. And I'm not. I'm a planner. I just want to fucking know what our lives are going to look like - in every respect - over the next couple of years, because there is so much change going on right now that I'm floundering a little bit. And I feel as though we're already being bad mothers if we can't even talk about what we want.

And as I write this, I realize how angry I am at our inability to address something that should be easy to at least WANT to talk about. Even if it's hard to talk about. We both deserve a partner who is open and willing to look at this big-picture. Right now it seems like there is just a little sketch in front of us. And it has no colour. Time to get some pencil crayons out, it looks like.