Starting Fresh

You never know what impact your words will have on someone. You don't even know if anyone will ever read them. But you write. Cathartic exercise to soothe your own soul. And then you find out that you've become the voice of many. That you are soothing more souls than you will ever meet. And you become a beacon. And how odd that must be.That's how it started for me. An infertility survivor who was dealing with lots and lots of survivor guilt. It started by reading the usual suspect. Grrl, Julie, Tertia, Julia, et al. They gave words to what I had felt when I was going through it all. The isolation. The hope. All the crap that goes along with it. And I started to feel better. Their successes started to feel like mine. When their kids were born, it felt like I had won all over again. Bizarre, psycho, stalking behavior completely unbecoming of someone who really shouldn't care less. They have the eloquent words I could never come up with on my own. And that kinda freaks me out a little bit.

I have always been sufficient all on my own. I have lived on my own since I was 16 years old. I followed the Grateful Dead. I was a street kid in Seattle. I hitchiked all over the West coast. I was a door to door salesperson for cleaner, for pete's sake! I have lived more in my 29 (30 on Saturday) years than most people ever will. And then I met my love. The first guy to ever hold my attention for very long. I thought long term relationships were 3 months or less. But Joe came along and all that changed. He rocked my socks. He was cocky and sure of himself and how cute he really was. And that drove me nutso. To add to the attraction, he had the cutest 2 year old boy with him. His son. I didn't even think that I wanted kids until I met that little blonde boy. Who turns 13 tomorrow. Wow, how time flies. I became a cliche at that point.

Girl meets boy. They fall in love. They move in together. They play house for 1 1/2 years until they decide to get married. They get married. They start looking around at their child and decide that they might, maybe want one more. They start trying. That's when my cliche took a decidedly different turn than most. It became very much not an easy thing. What is supposed to be the most natural, beautiful thing in the world turned out to completely suck. Really suck. I saw more of the dildo-cam (i named him george) than I did of my husband. Shots and pills and tests and blood and vampires and and and and and and. The list just goes on. Throughout this time we decided that I should adopt that little blonde boy. And so I did. And I thought that that might be it. That maybe that was the child that was intended for me. It didn't matter to me that he wasn't biologically related to me. He was MINE. And the funny thing was, he even kinda looks like me. We kept trying though. For 5 years. FIVE years. That is a long ass time for my ass to take the abuse it took. And we got pregnant. And the baby died. And that sucked too.

I gave up then. Hope had officially left the building. Hope was a bitch. But then (and I hate this part because it just doesn't usually happen like this, regardless of what other people say), we were pregnant. And at the end of a very sucky pregnancy filled with the joys of high blood pressure, toxemia and fetal distress, we had another little blonde boy. Who is now 4. And boy, has my life changed.

This is me, Jessie. This is my life. Sit down, strap yourself in and hold on. It gets quite bumpy occasionally. Welcome to it.