Cocktails, carnival and finding the point again

Well, that might be a bit of an exaggeration; it's not really like I ceased to see the point altogether, more that it was momentarily dislodged by a particularly emotional week, culminating in an otherwise innocuous email exchange which tipped me over the edge and set me to raging reflecting on the general obliviousness of people who seem to walk around in their entitled little always-shiny-happy-forward-moving! bubbles of good fortune. I have to keep reminding myself, in my own moments of self-absorption, that while some lives may look pristine, and those living them may seem to be a tad too comfortable in a take-things-for-granted way that is anything but comfortable for some of us, well...we really never know what anyone is facing behind closed doors, or why they feel the need to reject any minute possibility that Bad Things can and do happen. It may not be my coping strategy of choice, (I may not even think it's particularly helpful), but you do what you gotta do to keep going, and far be it from me to offer up judgement on any of it. All the more reason I am particularly grateful for this space, where I can let the ugly out and not feel like a social pariah as a consequence. Once again, thank you.

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But maybe a little background is in order. In recent months, I've stopped the weekly blow-by-blow updates on my cycles (I know, you really miss those) because it has seemed to become so laughably, peremptorily obvious that Nothing Was Ever Happening other than my monthly bloodletting, that, well, it was kinda boring even me. It just seemed safer as well: as soon as I articulate the very desire that we all know full well is the core reason for my rantings here, it seems all the more fragile, tenuous.

Which is why I was particularly angry with myself for the feelings and thoughts I allowed myself to have during this last failed cycle.

I took a pregnancy test last Monday. Yes, my fourth anniversary. A full two days before my period was due to arrive (and did). No sooner had the pee dried and I regretted the moments of insane optimism that had brought me to that point, because now I would associate the day with yet another failure rather than the amazing triumph of love that it should actually represent. 

I lost my composure and peed on the stick last Monday because I thought it would make an amazing, prefect anniversary gift. Because there were just too many good omens for this cycle, and because it just felt different.

I ovulated on the day we left Saint Petersburg, which would have meant that we conceived a child, a little water baby, on the gentle waves of the Baltic Sea, where we had enjoyed so many happy days, as we slowly and gently sailed our way from Russia to Helsinki to catch our departure flight. It would have been the cherry on top of an incredible three weeks. It would have defied all that ttc advice we often chain ourselves to.

We would have found out on our anniversary, and spent the day in the warm, romantic glow of the knowledge that our love has survived some terrible hardship in its fledgling years, but that our luck just might be turning.

My dream-child-water-baby would have been due just weeks before my birthday, an early, unimaginably perfect birthday present. (In fact, my last chance to have a baby before turning 39 has now come and gone.)

It was all too good to be true. Of course it was. Unimaginable, but imagine I did, as though I was your average, garden variety fertile with nothing but excitement and gleeful anticipation of what is to come.

And with all those lovely little omens I managed to convince myself that yes, I felt different. Then the pee stick; it's empty white expanse laughed at me mockingly. It screeched at my foolishness, as if to say Ha! Got you! Sucker!! Did you really think you were in for such a perfect, wonderful surprise? Your life doesn't work like that anymore, and you know it! For my part, I have wavered between being angry with myself for my brazen hopefulness and proud that somewhere in the recesses of my bruised psyche I still can conjure that much hope. That my spirit can still write itself fairy tales.

But by the time Thursday rolled around and I had put myself through the emotional wringer, and this whole cycle had felt like a deeper level of failure and I knew I had nobody but myself to blame for it, it all kind of feel apart.

I wrote that ranting post, and I resolved to drown my sorrows with stiff drinks and fiery chilis.

And then, something happened. Somewhere between me angrily pounding the limes and mint for my Dark and Stormy  - no, I wasn't kidding about the stiff drinks and yes, that particular concoction seemed perfect for my mood, though it was actually prompted by the discovery of an old bottle of gingerbeer in the back of the cupboard - and my dinner preparations, the drinks ceased to be bitter-infertile-raging-at-the-fucking-unfair-fertile-world-around-her-through-inappropriate-consumption-of-booze drinks and instead became bona fide celebration cocktails. It was sunny outside, and all the windows were open. H came home and we danced salsa in the kitchen while preparing fresh mango salsa for our pulled pork nachos (and let me tell ya, those nachos are reason for celebration in themselves).

And he reminded me that regardless of timing or circumstances, when we do finally see that second line, it will be perfect, the stuff that fairy tales are made of.

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And the weekend came and it was uncharacteristically bright and sunny and hot. There was an arts festival at our local park, with live music and spoken word acts and painting and sculpture and everyone lazed on the lawn all afternoon.

But my favourite tent was from an arts group that run workshops in local schools on making carnival costumes. They had all these amazing masks and dress up stuff and it was very hands on.

And who says that stuff's just for kids?

Me as a garden gnome

H as a friendly troll

And so we lay there on the grass and basked in the sun and watched the kids gleefully whirling their homemade suncatchers and listening to the music and just generally thought, Yeah...life's not so bad after all.

Each time I have one of my meltdowns, I know it'll be fleeting, that something else will grab me by the wrist and pull me forward, reminding me what's good regardless. Last week it was cocktails, a kitchen dance party and carnival masks that helped me see the point again.