Cranky Wednesday

So on Friday, I got my test results. Negative. I stopped the shots, the pills and the suppositories -- all hormones cut off, and I expected that I would get my period on Sunday or Monday.

I cried a little over the weekend, had my usual mourning period, and then started to think about the next steps. It's a comfortable pattern I've established. And then Monday came and no period. By Tuesday morning, I started to have hopeful thoughts.

What if the test was wrong? What if it was a false negative? What if I'm really pregnant? I will wait to tell my parents at Thanksgiving. I can tell my brother, sister-in-law and niece in person. I can tell my close friends in Baltimore in person.

And so it went, the fantasy of being pregnant. The fantasy of being able to hug my friends and family who are far away, but who I will be seeing in just a little over a week, when I tell them that I'm having a baby.

Wednesday morning...this morning, my body decided it was time to bitch slap me back into reality. And so, even though I thought I had moved beyond the mourning, even though I had decided it was time to think about next steps and be positive for December, I've taken a step backward.

I got my period, and all of the feelings I had on Friday and Saturday, the sadness, the grief, the feeling like my body is failing me -- they all came back. Five days after getting my test result. I have to deal with these emotions all over again.

And I will. And the good part about having so many failed attempts, the good part about having so many disappointments, is that I know I can move on, I know that the sadness lessens, and that I won't always feel like this. I'll feel hopeful again, I'll feel like I can do this, that at some point it will work.

Someday I'll feel like that again. But not today.