My mother told me I'm brave.
I don't feel brave.
Honestly, I don't know what I feel.
I feel like I'm putting on a face to get through this. I'm pushing down all of the real emotions that go along with this process. I'm being positive and rooting for my little team of eggs because I never want to have to do this again. Then again, I never wanted to have to do this in the first place.
I don't know that I'm brave.
Bravery is for people who go to war or who battle cancer, who stand up for what is right, or who willingly put themself in danger to protect someone else.
I don't feel brave. I feel backed into a corner.
I feel like I didn't have a choice, if I want to one day have a choice.
Which is why it kills me when my doctor tells me that freezing my eggs is "highly elective." I'm actually offended by that sentiment and have to hold my tongue every time he reminds me of this. I didn't elect to still be single at 37. I mean sure, I could have married the wrong person, had a kid or two and ended up divorced by now. Or I could have had a kid on my own, when I was financially unprepared, and made life a whole lot harder on both of us. But lawyers don't need anymore money and the government should be thanking me for not.
So, I guess, if you look at it that way, I did elect to be here. But, I don't think anyone would willingly elect to go through any kind of fertility treatment if they didn't need to. Men have no idea. And, if you are a man, and you have someone in your life going through this, don't take it for granted. Nothing about this is easy.
But, no, I don't think I'm brave.
Maybe I'm brave because I truly hate needles, but I don't even give myself the shots. If I was really brave I'd be able to do that.
Maybe I'm brave because I'm dumping my savings into freezing eggs without any guarantee that I will ever successfully have a child. Is that really brave? Maybe it's just stupid.
Unless maybe I'm brave because doing this means that I'm facing the potential reality of having kids on my own in a few years. Being a single parent is incredibly brave. But, I'm not a single parent, so I'm not really brave.
For now, I just feel a bit numb and I feel very alone.
I feel like this sucks. Nobody wants to be a human pin cushion. Nobody wants to have blood draws every few days and I feel terrible that my poor mother has to jab needles into my poor little stomach every night. But, it could be so much worse. I am so lucky, and so then I feel shitty saying that it sucks.
Believe me, I have immense gratitude for science and for the incredible doctors and nurses. I have immense gratitude that I have eggs to try to extract. I am grateful for my health and for the fact that I'm even able to do this. I know how lucky I am, but I'm also human.
And so, I try to stop thinking and stop feeling and simply focus on the job at hand: grow the eggs and get them safely on their way to the "ski house in Aspen" so that I have choices in the future. A future that I've stopped trying to predict or understand.
I'm not brave. I'm just incredibly bloated, filled with way too many hormones, and really hungry all the time.