Cleaning House

I know that many people wouldn't have done this so quickly, but I like things in order. I like things I can control (probably why the past three years have been so fucking hard). And so Friday afternoon, after I got plowed out from the 18 inches of snow that fell the previous evening and that morning, I went to Wal-Mart and bought a shredder.

I stood at my kitchen counter and threw away all open medicine, packing up whatever was unopened to be donated. And then I pulled out my binder and shredded every piece of paperwork from the doctor and related to prescriptions. I did save my ultrasound pictures and every picture of my embryos.

I pulled the two bins of maternity clothes out of the extra bedroom and put them in garbage bags, ready to bring back to my niece the next day. And the books I pulled from the shelf on Thursday got put into a bag and dropped off at the library book sale. Jill's fertility statue that has sat on my bedroom television since the summer of 2007 is wrapped in paper, in a bag, and ready to go back to her house. And this morning, I handed Heather a $50 gift card for Motherhood Maternity.

"Are you sure?"

"I'm not getting pregnant. I don't need it."

"Are you sure?" she repeated.

I'm sure. It's all gone. Any reminder of trying to get pregnant. Any planning that I did -- premature or otherwise -- is undone. My kitchen counter is void of needles, syringes, bottles of pills, and vials of progesterone in oil. My bathroom sink no longer holds my daily allotment of progesterone suppositories and the applicators.

I pulled my adoption paperwork out and immediately was over whelmed. Jill promised to come over early next week and help me sort through it.

And last night as I was laying in bed, trying to fall back asleep, I finally figured out what has perhaps been bugging me about international adoption. And "bugging" might be the wrong word. But I have been hesitant. And I've wondered if it's because of the race thing, but that's not it.

If someone handed me an African-American baby tomorrow, I would be thrilled. So why am I hesitant about adopting from Ethiopia? I think it's because if I'm going to spend all this money, if I'm going to take out a loan and drain my savings to the grand total of more than $25,000, I want a choice. I don't want to be told where I have to adopt from.

Just because I'm single, does that make me any less of a person? Will that make me any less of a parent? Apparently, in the eyes of almost every country in the world, it does.

And so just as I couldn't control what my body would and wouldn't do over the past few years, I can't control this. And the sooner I accept that part of it, and worry about what I can control -- saving money, raising money, getting all my paperwork in, continuing to work on me, getting back to the gym and wanting to do good things for my body -- the better off I will be, both physically and mentally.