Just call me Victoria!

When you're reading a book just for relaxation and enjoyment, you don't expect any sentence to grab and hold you for longer than the time it takes to read. You don't expect any paragraph to make an impact on you, so much so that you want to describe it as a lightbulb moment or any other clichéd phrase that might explain the force it struck you with.

One of my favorite authors is Nora Roberts, and I'm busy reading her "Angels Fall". It's a book for reading right before you go to sleep - relaxing but engaging (don't read it if you want to go to sleep quickly or of you're not all that tired!) and just as enjoyable as all her other books. I can't sleep if I read at least 2 pages of anything, especially after a busy day, and I had a whole week of those.

There I was the other night, already half asleep, thinking of finishing just one more page, when I came across a paragraph that literally made me sit upright and wide awake in my bed. I was more than suprised!

'I don't know what I want.' But she did, and as they walked through the cool forest, she decided just to say it. 'I want to be normal again, to stop being afraid. I want to be who I was two years ago, and I never will be. So I'm trying to find out who I'm going to be for the rest of my life.'

At first I thought: at least I'm not afraid. And I wouldn't say just two years; make that 20 years at least. Except that I wasn't normal when I was 20. I was young and naive and thought you could just dream about something and it would happen the way you wanted. We all know how silly that way of thinking is, now that we got to meet the harsh reality of Infertility face to face.

I'm still afraid though: growing old alone with no husband (some days that isn't too bad a thought! *grin*) and no kids is not quite how I want my life story to read. The "no kids" are in a way easier to get around than the other issue right now, but seeing that I haven't quite gotten my mind around that quite yet, let's leave it for another post and another day.

"So I'm trying to find out who I'm going to be for the rest of my life."

That was the sentence that actually gripped me and shook me awake. This is what this blog is all about, the bottom line. The line just below: "Coming to terms with the reality of the effects of Infertility on my life."

And you know what? It's scary and sad and exhilirating all at once.

Here I am: a 40 year young woman with the world at her feet. OK, the world without children of her own, but seeing that that option has been scratched from the itinerary, there are quite a few others that suddenly opens up!

Reading that paragraph again I will totally understand if you think I've gone totally bonkers and that it sounds just a little bit too optimistic to be true. You all know that no matter who you are, the pain of Infertility does not hide in your pockets or the holes in your buttons so that you can discard it as easily as you can throw a dirty shirt in the laundry bin at the end of the day.

But then you'd understand too that there comes a time when you have to say: "Enough." Enough of the wanting, the yearning, the crying, the wishing it was different. I'm there now. I've had enough of banging my head and my heart against a closed door, crying for something I'm obviously not going to get in this lifetime.

How long will it take for me to go on to the next step and actually do something constructive to change my life? I don't know. I'm not going to worry about that. Not now.

I've wanted to be a mother since forever. I'll always want to be one. But it's time to close that book and start plotting the next one. I can imagine it: a fresh, clean book with bright, blank pages just begging to be written! It won't do to start writing without doing enough research, to find out exactly what I want on these sparkling new pages. So today I'll start dreaming up my new itinerary. That new mental map needs some plotting too!

I can choose to view it as being defeated, or as changing my strategy. Either choose to be a victim, or to be victorious. Right now, it's a very easy choice!

All my love

Victoria