Stronger?

So in my current struggle with trying to sort things out in my head,

I keep reading my positive affirmations

and there is one that I am currently choking on:

 Infertility made me/us stronger

 

 

I understand that The Barreness wants me to be bitter, and mean and spiteful and vengeful

and as I struggle to not be any of those things, I wonder about the above concept.

Am I really stronger because of it?

Is our relationship really better off, more steady, or more solid?

I read almost daily about couples struggling with IF and how they have parted ways.

The stress, the heartbreak was simply too much to bear.

Does that mean that those couples are failures because they chose to part ways when things got so deep, so thick and so much that they were wedged apart and not able to come back together anymore?

I don't think so.

 

I had a similar conversation with my therapist, when I told her

I didn't believe the phrases:

"whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger"

or

" you are never given more than you can carry"

 

She said she could understand; as there are a lot of shells of people walking this earth.

Although you are not killed by overwhelming circumstances it doesn't mean you are ever really alright after that. Sometimes just functional.

Is that really OK?!

 

Infertility, has been like a cluster bomb; so many projectiles flying from it's central source.

Sometimes I don't discover how far reaching the pieces have flown until years later when I pick a scrap up to remember oh yeah, that is from that bomb.

 

Just this last week I asked my SIL if she was wanting to have a shower for this third child,

and she mentioned that a friend was going to give it for her.

I was hoping for that and was relieved it would not fall on me

I have been looking at baby gifts for her.

It hasn't hurt, it is like a dull more then a pain.

It seems strange, and distant to me...it has been 5years since there was a baby to think about.

My nephews start kindergarten this fall...

So a little someone is an alien concept, but one I am almost looking forward to.

A cathartic element in a way.

A way to literally kiss goodbye all my daydreams, every time I kiss this new person.

 

Does that make me stronger?

Less bitter?

Better? because I am living with a life long sentence of infertility.

I want to try and break free of this quicksand.

I think of it more like a fight or flight kind of thing.

The fight is all gone, there is no point to fight any more....

 

I think what has been handed to us,

well more like, shoved into our faces and lives,

is too much.

 

I can't really remember my life before all this sadness,

I have to look at photos of myself to try and prompt those memories. 

 

I can't see commericals, movies or television with children in them,

 without thinking of the ones we will never have

 

I can't go to any doctor without thinking that something horrible is going to be discovered,

even the dentist

 

I can't go to a park, zoo, store, or even out my front door without

feeling like I am being assaulted with everyone elses fertility.

 

It is nearly impossible to be in conversations with family or friends about children, because I really don't understand their point. I can only imagine what it is like, and then not well at that.

 

Does this make me stronger?

Does this mean I was handed just what I could handle or carry?

 

I am still trying to figure this all out.

Strangely I am not angry or really sad...

I am just sort of here

staring at the sky