My Elephant

Our infertility is like an elephant. A huge grey invisible elephant in a world where no one has ever seen an elephant. It follows me everywhere I go, I cannot escape it. It is everywhere that I am, yet no one else sees it. Sometime I try to tell them about the elephant and they say things like, oh yeah I have a cat, thats the same as your pet elephant. But they don’t know. Other people don’t know that my elephant is in the room with us. I try so hard to hide the elephant and fear that they will notice it and ask about it. I’ve never had a pet elephant before and it is to find the right words to describe it to other people. I am afraid that I’ll use the wrong words and it will keep them from understanding how big and grey and unbearable it is to carry this elephant around with me. Sometimes I am afraid that I will tell them too much and want to take something back later because the elephant forces me to consider things that I never would have imagined possible before. And it takes up so much space that at times I can barely breath. Sometime it feels like the elephant is sitting on my chest it is so hard to breath. This elephant lives off of my energy and consumes so much of it that I feel like I barely have anything left for the other things in my life. The grey of this elephant is the deepest grey I’ve ever seen. I hate grey. I try over and over to paint the elephant either black or white, but the grey is so thick that it washes my clean colors away everytime. Sometime the elephant sits quietly, ever present and consuming, but still. Other times the elephant throws a fit and wails its trunk and stamps it huge feet and tosses me around leaving me weak and wounded and ever more fearful of the beast. I can’t get my arms around this elephant. I fear that even if the elephant wants to leave that it will just get smaller but never disappear. 

I actually wrote this a while back, but it seems appropriate to post it here. There is something so empowering about being able to describe my feelings like this. This was a start, and now I want to start building the picture of the future that I want, a future that I love, a future someday. 

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I spent the evening volunteering at a local parent education program my mom works at. It is an amazing program for new parents to attend with their little ones. I was really involved for a long time because I think it is such an important cause, then took a year off. I recommitted to volunteering last year, around the time that we got our Azoos diagnosis. It was really hard to be in the facility surrounded by moms, and toys, and little ones, and I was just so exhausted, but I'd made a commitment so I kept going. Tonight it felt so easy, so easy to sit on the floor in the classroom and talk with the other volunteers. I want to recognize these and be grateful for these good days and my strength to continue doing the things that I love regardless.