Holiday Cheer

picture from: photospapersfromthepast.blogspot.com

It is that time of year!

Waiting in long lines to buy groceries, snide comments from customer service people, rude people driving cars, temper tantrums, and holiday music looped in an endless cycle on speakers of shops.

I do love this time of year, but it also carries the daily reminders of a family not made.

So I was sitting watching my company-keeper(TV) last night. I was watching "how I met your mother" and one of the characters finds out she was not only not-pregnant (pregnancy scare, in a woman who says thru the series that she doesn't want kids) but that she CAN'T have kids. 

This information has her sliding into an abyss of reality of a life faced without children. 

Her doctor asks if she can talk to a friend about it, but she knows how they all will react. Currently her best friend is pregnant and would be an emotional mess and needing comfort instead of comforting. That friends hubby would shower her with questions and possible fixes. then the remaining friends would try and fix her sadness with comfort food or hi jinks. So instead, when pushed by them to find out what is wrong, she says she is too tall to be a pole vaulter. He friends of course, all break into her described reactions.

She is telling this story to what appears to be her future kids, but in the end, they are actually imaginary. 

She is left sitting on a bench in a park on Christmas crying at the fact that her choice has been taken from her. That although she never saw kids in her future, it was a choice she was making not one that was made for her.

She ends her monologue with although she was never a mother, she was:

a successful journalist, world traveler, business woman and aunt.

Telling the audience that she indeed was still a whole person even without being a mother.

It was a well played/written reality of our sisterhood.

I personally have been meandering around a lot of this everyday emotion. 

The Barreness is knocking at the door into me as of late; she is dead set to get in...she might even shimmy open a window if need be. I am trying to hold her back with wit and a sunny disposition. 

I don't know how long it will hold....

I have made a new friend and she is now pregnant, I am thrilled for her (deeply and truly) but now can barely contact her anymore. 

I have another friend who just picked up the ashes of her son, a man the same age as me, who lost his battle to addiction.

I have another friend who just had to have a hysterectomy because of the same issues I live with. 

I have another who has now gone into early menopause because her ovaries shut down and has lost her sex drive completely!

I watch my hubby struggle daily with witnessing others parent. He often looks at me when his eyes are welled up with tears. Like the mere sight of me will make the tears go away.

We met family last week, a trip that meant us driving 1300miles in
four days. It was a lot of driving and a little visiting. 

We did this last year too...we have promised each other that next year we are staying put. 

Because we are a family of two, we are often looked over, invited last, told we can drive farther, and expected to be overly flexible because we don't "have to deal with kids".... *sigh*

it hurts too much to ignore any longer.

There has been a lot of wonderful happening too...

but for today I needed to unload the heavy emotion I have been bathing in.

I am feeling very very mortal and it scares me.