Birthday Ramblings

Today is my sister's daughter's 2nd birthday party.  I remember all too clearly her birthday two years ago, which I spent 600 miles away, crying on the couch, alone as I so often was.  Things looked so much more promising for her first birthday, early last spring, when Mo and I had just returned "home."  Today, like so many other days, is another day in limbo, another day spent wondering if this is really what I want, or if the grass really is greener on the other side.

Mo is, you guessed it, out of town.  He will miss this party, a fact that neither he nor my sister seem to care too much about.  I am the only one left wondering if things will always be like this, if I will live in a continual state of disappointment and wishing that things were different.

We had a good week, Mo and I, the first spring break I can recall where I knew exactly where he was and what he was doing.  We slept in, ate out, and drove around exploring the Big City near where we live.  I had fun, and I thought he did, too.  But, apparently, it's not the right kind of fun, because he felt the need to travel to another town and meet up with his friend, Mr. Bad Influence, for a boys' weekend of gambling and binge drinking.  Because, at age 40, Mo still believes that he is 21.  Or something like that.

I am so done fighting about this.  The man is 40 years old.  He is a master at manipulating my feelings and justifying his actions, to himself and to me.  If he wants to leave town, so be it.  I'm not going to ask him to stay.  I told him I was disappointed he would miss the birthday party, and then I watched him leave.  No tears, no evidence that this matters one bit.  But, oh, it does.

Beneath the surface I am filled with rage, with frustration and desperation.  Not all of it is directed at Mo -- there is a fair amount of fury for general circumstances and things beyond our control -- wonky insurance, crappy doctors, infertility, loss, financial barriers to building a family.  But, mixed into that, so intertwined I couldn't tell you where one began and the other ended, is a bitterness that rests squarely on his shoulders.

I don't want to mislead you -- things are better now, as a whole, than they ever were before the move.  Mo is 100 times the man he was.  It takes being out of a situation for some time for you to realize how bad it really was...and that's how I feel about my life until about a year ago.  There is no way that I would tolerate the behaviors I put up with for so long now.  Things ARE different, in many tangible, wonderful, ways.

And yet, as they tend to do, the more things change, the more they stay the same.  I am still left wondering whenever he leaves if this is really what I want.  Do I want a husband who feels the need to go out of town and gamble and drink every few months?  Does it matter as much as I make it matter?  Lots of women have husbands who go out hunting, or fishing, or what-have-you for many weekends out of the year.  Is what Mo is doing all that different?  He has made so many life-altering changes this past year -- should I focus on that, or on the aspects that I still wish were different?  No one is perfect, least of all me.  Mo tolerates my insecurities and my meltdowns and my foibles and accepts me as is.  Don't I owe him the same?

And then there's the biggest question, the one that keeps me from making any real decisions: would I really be any happier without him?

I know that may seem ridiculous to many of you.  You've seen the worst Mo has to offer, and I tend to keep quiet about the good.  But there IS good there.  I wouldn't still be here if there wasn't.  I was trying to explain it to my sister at lunch a few weeks ago: 90% of the time, Mo is great.  While she qualified it as maybe 80%, my point is still that the majority of the time things work.  But when they don't -- well, they don't in a major way.

Coloring all of this is, of course, my own impending birthday.  I will be 30 in just over a month.  While I know that many of you have already survived this milestone, I am having a really hard time with it.  I just never thought I would spend 10 years of my life -- my entire 20's -- chasing a dream and still come up empty-handed.  Walking out on my life now, and trying to start again, is so daunting to me.  I spent 10 years building this -- to give up now?  When the finish line is staring me in the face?  How could I possibly?

My sister (who is wiser than her years) tells me that Mo is simply dangling the carrot he knows I so desperately want in front of me, as he has for years.  I don't know if it is that simple, though at times I wonder.  We are, currently, on the same page for Plan Baby.  As in, we are both okay with waiting until August to start any treatments, and we will pursue another IVF with my eggs and his sperm.  Beyond that, we have no plan -- though I suspect that at that point, should it not work, our plans will diverge again.* But, yes, as terrible as it sounds, I keep thinking about August and how much I'm willing to endure to get there.   I'VE BEEN THROUGH SO MUCH WORSE.  This, this is nothing in the grand scheme of things.

I know that many of you read this, and while you try not to, you pity me.  Or judge me.  But its all so much more complicated than I am ever able to put into words.  That's one thing that my marriage has taught me -- things are so rarely what they seem.  And that in itself seems an argument to stay -- for who knows if marriage to anyone else would be any better?  Or if marriage would ever even be in the cards again?  How many seemingly happy couples have demons I never would guess at?

This post is jumpy, and rambling, and a bit incoherent because that's how my thoughts are these days.  I've avoided blogging because I can't make sense of my own head.  The truth of the matter is that I don't know what I want.  No, that's not true.  I know exactly what I want -- what I don't know is the best way to go about getting it.  One of the horrible side effects of infertility and codependency is that you lose all ability to trust yourself -- your body, your judgment, your decisions.

I am so afraid of making the wrong decision, that I just don't make any at all. And yet, in the back of my head, I'm formulating Plan B**.  And Plan C.

I just wonder what I will take for me to put those into action.  Because, really, I'm not all that sure that I can take much more.

When is enough, enough?




  


* I've started a savings account that can be utilized in a variety of ways -- including pursing SMBC if the need arose, or adoption if Mo ever came around to it.

**In an ideal world, no one would have kids in a less-than-stable relationship.  Everyone would be happily monogamous, and remain so for the life of their offspring.  This isn't an ideal world, and so many people make less-than-ideal situations work every day.  My stepbrother and his wife are just one example -- poor, living with their parents, about to have a baby while living on welfare.  I teach kids from every type of home you can imagine -- single mothers, two-parent homes, stepfamilies, grandparents, even aunts and uncles.  I refuse to put off my dream of being a mother until I find "Mr. Perfect."  No matter what happens with Mo and I, I will be a fantastic mother.  Period.