"I detest the fragile, morose person I've become. Even as I inhabit the skin of this humorless women, I never lose sight of the fact that this is not a person I want to be around. I resent her unfailingly dark mood. Her brooding. Her tentativeness, indecisiveness, her lack of resilience. I not only find her self absorption exhausting, but feel no sympathy for her, with her constant thoughts of me, me, me."

-An Empty Lap by Jill Smolowe

I could have written these exact words myself time and time over so I find it somewhat comforting to find them, exactly as they have crossed through my brain, spilling out of the pages of someone else's despair. At least I'm normal.....at least I'm normal.....at least I'm normal.........it is my only comforting mantra as of late.

Besides the jealousy I think the change brought about by infertility that cuts the deepest is my feeling of overall incompetence. I've always had my insecurities just like everyone else - maybe more than average at times but certainly nothing abnormal. In many areas I felt quite confident and competent, secure in my attributes and abilities. But that precious confidence is dissolving, bubbling up and vanishing layer by layer.

My anxiety creates in me a timidness, a bumbling unsteadiness which then serves to make me question my competence, thereby undermining my confidence. I am anxious because I never know what will send me over the edge - an innocent comment from a pregnant friend, a question like "when are you going to have kids?" from an unsuspecting acquaintance, a chance reunion at the grocery store with a former high school classmate, her darling toddlers in tow, still looking as thin and vibrant as she did the day we graduated.

I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirrored walls of the elevator I rode up to the fertility clinic's fourth floor offices yesterday. Dressed for work in what I used to think were at least semi-flattering khakis and and a decidedly unflattering Girl Scouts t-shirt, I shuddered as I took in the woman staring back at me. Overweight, droopy, lifeless......and worst of all, childless. When recounting this event to Randy he wondered what a childless person looks like and how that could factor into my physical image of myself. The key is that I would give myself more leeway if I had a child. Maybe I am overweight, droopy, tired - but at least I have a child. I'd be fulfilling my dream/purpose/responsibility - and that can go a long way in making up for a host of outward deficiencies in the quest for self esteem.

I never expected my self esteem to be so intertwined with my ability to become a mother. In fact, I remember reading about the "I'm less of a woman" woes of infertile women and thinking they were being silly. Now I understand - and I think its innate and chemical - a useful trait for a species that hinges their continued existence on procreation. And for me at least, its not about being less of a physical woman - I'm realistic about medical problems and don't attribute any mystical or magical qualities to the process of a sperm fertilizing an egg. For me the shame and self deprecation lie more in the realm of my (so far) failure to actually be a mother, through whatever means.

Not being a mother or even a potential mother at this point excludes me from a club I desperately want to belong to. Well meaning friends and family have told me that no club exists and I shouldn't worry about it. And while I am bright enough to understand the basic obviousness that there is no overarching organization with membership dues and monthly meetings, I also know that there is, indeed, a club of sorts, and that I don't qualify for it. Women who have children (much like co-members of a club) naturally gravitate to each other and easily become embroiled in conversations that inadvertently exclude me. Mothers and new mothers especially are cherished and given special privileges such as a holiday to celebrate their existence, a premium designated parking spot at the mall, and special concessions because they deserve it - they are working so hard. Women who are or have ever been pregnant share a camaraderie that calls to mind the friendships of old combat buddies - and you wouldn't understand because you haven't been there - is the unspoken (or sometimes spoken loudly) message that any infertile woman feels written upon her soul.

And like the awkward 13-year-old I imagine has crawled into my skin and invaded my consciousness, I don't hate this elusive club of cool kids - I covet it, I sensationalize it, and more than anything I just want to be accepted into it. All of my pain and feelings of rejection can be erased if I can just get in. I don't even care about the other rejects back at the infertility lunch table. I'll abandon them in a heartbeat if it means admittance to the club. That is how fragile my self esteem has become.

Green

I've never considered myself a particularly jealous person. I struggled with the same minor pangs of envy that everyone experiences from time to time but in the big picture I was always able to put the blinders on and focus on my life as its own entity - what others had was largely irrelevant to me. But that was the old, pre-infertile Kim and now everything has changed.

Of all my personal changes I think it is the intense jealousy that has really knocked the wind out of me. Nobody is fully prepared for what infertility will do to them but I still have trouble believing that I could ever be as jealous as I frequently am these days. I have never felt such intense feelings of envy - and maybe never such intensity in any of my emotions to date. The jealousy - in my case a dangerous coctail of envy and a keen sense of injustice- cripples my ability to maintain a gap between my emotions and my actions (something I used to think I was pretty decent at).

The crippling jealousy invades many aspects of my life - first and foremost my friendships. Of course, as fate would have it, I have many friends who are pregnant or are new parents. My best friend is due next month. She is the prime recipient of most of my jealousy, a victim of circumstances often mired up in my misery. As many young and naive women do, when we were relative newlyweds we fantasized about getting pregnant at roughly the same time, quitting our jobs on the same day, supporting each other through midnight feedings, and taking our babies on walks together to pour the foundation of their inevitable life-long friendship.

Now she has everything I want and I feel as though I am left in the dust with nothing. It was easier to ignore when she didn't look pregnant and I got pretty adept at pretending nothing was different. But now, with her cute basketball bulge I am forced to confront the subject along with every painful insecurity it brings up every time I see her. There are darker days when I feel as though I can't even look at her below the shoulders because the jealousy and rage swirl up like a tornado - I can almost feel them in the pit of my stomach - in my empty uterus. I have been brutally honest with her about my feelings, and once I even humorously suggested that she pretend to be a sitcom actress who has to hide her pregnancy on camera by carying large objects in front of her at all times.

Though my sitcom actress idea was meant to be absurd there are plenty of examples of my jealousy induced behavior reaching absurd levels. I sometimes feel angry when my friend makes the tiniest complaint or observation about her pregnancy or some days even when she mentions the pregnancy or baby at all - to me or anyone else we might encounter. Though our friendship has always centered around a playful banter that outsiders have often mistaken for mean-spiritedness I often find myself taking the banter too far and even voicing venomous critiques of her opinions. Many times I realize mid-sentance that I'm crossing the line but fail at my brain's attempts to censor myself. And at the end of the day when I replay the shameful conversations over in my mind I know that they were about my infertility even if we were talking about something completely unrelated.

My shameful jealousy continues even on days when I have a brighter and more productive attitude that assures me I will become a parent one way or another, through fertility treatments or adoption. The envy shifts then from being about actual pregnancies and babies into the realm of finacial injustice. I feel supremely bitter, forgotten, and picked over when I think of how much I will ultimately have to spend on getting my baby while others get theirs for free. I sometimes feel what I feer is genuine hatred toward anyone who just took a couple rolls in the hay and wound up conceiving without a needing even a thought as to how to pay for it. My hatred grows when I imagine these Fertile People as ungrateful and unaware of how lucky they are (which I often do).

My hatred/jealousy of the fertile world has affected so many aspects of my life. I'm not as good a friend as I used to be. I have a victim mentality. I think about myself all the time. I don't enjoy social situations like I used to. I think that many of the other changes I have noticed in myself stem in some way from the jealousy and all are intertwined, sometimes hard to differentiate. The jealousy has had the principle role in changing me, my personality, and my outlook. I don't want to be this person and yet I have become this person. So I am turning to the advice of others who have been there - others who can assure me that I am normal - that many go down this road and make it to the other end.

"Infertility changes you. It is a time when you find yourself disconnecting from those you love the most, your family and friends. A time when you pull back from the world and focus inward becasuse isolating youself can actually feel better than remaining a part of the fertile world.

Its not that you want to separate from those around you: in fact, you want to be right there with them, a part of the fertility club that includes your mother, your sister, friends, even the next-door neighbor's fifteen-year-old daughter. But you have no choice. The gap between you and the fertile world widens, and it becomes harder to be around those who now seem to disappoint you at every turn...

.....Luckily we have found that most of the time the people you moved away from will 'stay on the line' and wait for your return after the crisis of infertility is over. It is an amazing phenomenon which we have seen happen over and over again. With the arrival of resolution there comes a peace to relationships that at one time seemed damaged beyond repair."

-What to Expect When You're Experiencing Infertility

by Debby Peoples and Harriette Rovner Ferguson

Recognition

This morning it hit me how much infertility has changed me as a person. I sometimes think back to the pre-fertility battle me and I barely recognize that person. In my fervent reading on the subject I am consistently reminded that this is quite a normal phenomenon and that I will, ultimately return to some kind of "normal" state. But now, mired in the cave-like mess of it all, its hard to see a way back to to the entrance or even a tiny path leading to a new patch of sunlight.

Part of this changed life-course, my path through the cave, is visible to those around me. It involves the surface changes - the added activities in my date-book, the e-mails to my employer asking to find coverage for me during yet another doctor's appointment, the time and date of which are determined jointly by nature and the office staff, my needs not considered. I had a moment of pause when I found myself bent over my dining room table last night wating nervously for Randy to give me an injection of medicine which will prompt my ovaries to release their egg(s). How did I get here? I consider myself unlucky for having to endure these hassles but hassles can be dealt with as a part of everyone's life - everyone has their own unique circumstances which present them, from time to time, with a disproportionate to-do list full of inconveniences and these are not much different.

Its the changed parts of me that are not as obvious to outsiders that really make me feel like I have lost my way - lost my old identity. The next few posts will each highlight a deeper aspect of myself that has been transformed by infertility. Maybe it is my way of grieving for the me that used to be, maybe it is my attempt to piece together a sort of blueprint of my old self to serve as a guide in case I ever get to rebuild. Maybe it is my desperate quest to get others to understand that this is a big deal and that I have a good reason for becoming so messed up.