The Holiday Funk

{Disclaimer: If we are friends in real life, please know that I in no way, shape or form, mean for this post to offend you or target you. This is simply how it is for me, how it feels to be infertile, to want a child so badly and to be denied time and time again. And it hurts more over the holidays, because the holidays are family time. You know that I love your kids, I just wish that we had some children of our own to love.}

It's started early this year. The inevitable, made worse by our miscarriage, infertility holiday funk. The babies and the children - they are everywhere. And they look precious and adorable and they aren't ours. None of them are ours.

The Halloween costumes, the pumpkin patch photos, the family portraits. We don't have a child to dress up for Halloween. We go to the pumpkin patch because I love it, and this year is was painful because of all the babies, kids and pregnant women. Family portraits still consist of Jason and me...and sometimes our furry babies. For the first time ever, I'm actually dreading Christmas a little bit, and that hurts for me to admit because Christmas is by far my favorite holiday.

Facebook has made this whole IF thing exponentially harder. Every time someone posts a picture of their adorable child or pregnant belly or makes a pregnancy announcement or talks about something to do with their child or being a parent, it's right there. And it hurts.

Overall, I'm doing better. I'm really focusing on taking it one day at a time. I've felt like crying several times over the last few days and yet the tears won't come. Mainly because I won't let them. I keep holding them back because I'm afraid to allow them to flow - like if I let one go, it'll be the beginning of a downpour that won't ever stop. It's where I am right now. The hardest part? Knowing that I'm trying to not be so sad for other people's benefit. Because I know that my being sad is uncomfortable for them. Many of the people in our life don't even know that I was ever pregnant, so they don't know about the loss. What's to account for my sadness around those people? And I figure that the ones who do know don't want to hear about how sad I am all the time, how angry I am, how much it hurts and sucks that I'm no longer pregnant. Frankly, that gets old, I know that, and they don't know what to say or do, and my sadness worries them. So I work hard to sound/seem fine. And mostly, I am. Better, at least. But there is a still a large part of me that wants to scream, pout, punch, wallow. And really, perhaps it is better that I try to seem fine - maybe putting forth all that effort will eventually translate into reality. I don't want to be that person: the one who spoils it all because she's sad. I don't want to drag a black cloud around with me wherever I go. But I do need to grieve. I guess I just haven't figured out exactly how to go about doing that yet...and I fear the holidays aren't going to make it any easier for me.