Believe it or not, in addition to being a half-Japanese Jew-by-choice, I’m also Irish (thanks Mom!) 🙂 It accounts for the freckles and ability to tan quickly, but the Japanese keeps me from getting sunburnt usually. I believe it also accounts for my new-found affinity for beer. While I’m still on the fence about cabbage, I love a good corned beef sandwich, which satiates both the Irish and the Jew in me.
Wednesday is St. Patrick’s Day. I’ve never been a big fan of it as an excuse to drink oneself stupid, b/c really, I don’t need an excuse to do that. I want to get wasted, don’t you worry- I’ll make it happen (which is perhaps a bimonthly occasion at best; I’ve lost the resolve of my college-aged youth). St. Patrick’s Day in Boston, much less on a college campus that’s still in session and looking at spring break just 2 days later… God help me. As far as I’m concerned, it’s just another day.
It’s Thursday I’m not looking forward to.
I can’t believe it… Thursday will be a year since I got my dx. I still remember reading the email from my doctor and feeling like I couldn’t hear anymore, like someone just quickly turned down the volume around me and the light faded at the corners of my vision. Perhaps I nearly passed out at my desk. I had always known that POF was a possibility, but I thought there’s no way it would be me.
I remember reading the email right before lunch, and then heading wordlessly out my office to my apartment. I called Larry in a panic. He didn’t totally understand, and I don’t think I did either. He had already received word that morning that layoffs would be hitting his company in the next week or so, and this news landed like a second ton of bricks for the day. When it rains, it pours.
I spent the rest of the day reading everything I could online, work be damned. I went home, I read some more, I cried some more. Larry came home from work, and I just broke down. He assured me he still loved me, thought me no less of a wife or woman, and promised me that we’d find a way to have a family. We went into Cambridge to pick up some compounded medicine for me, a scrip for prometrium to try and induce endometrial shedding since I was pushing almost 3 months of amenorrhea. We wandered around Harvard, Central, and Inman Squares- the streets became a blur. It was grey and damp out. We ended up at Bukowski’s. We ordered wings, and cried during dinner. It was awkward. I remember telling Larry that I felt like I was watching whole futures disappear: running out of the bathroom with a postive pg test and telling him he was going to be a Daddy…
In retrospect, I know this could still be a possibility.
I remember walking for what felt like hours with Larry, holding hands so tightly to the point of pain, trying to find the nearst T-stop so we could just go home. Really, we walked for probably 40 minutes or so after dinner. I called my parents and my sister. Larry called his parents. Everyone cried. Everyone was sorry, like they had gotten the news that someone has just died. And in a way, mourning seemed only appropriate.
I woke up feeling hungover from all the crying the next morning. I woke up a little darker the next day, a part of me that I don’t think I can ever recover, a little light taken out of my naturally small tank of optimism.
March 18th was the day everything changed. I approach this anniversary a very different woman than I was a year ago, with vastly different goals and dreams and hopes and fears. I’m making career decisions based on benefits and whether the employer’s healthcare is part of the Massachusetts mandate. I look at international adoption as a chance to get some world traveling done. I’ve stopped wondering what a half-Larry, half-Miri baby will look like. I’ve developed a more comfortable relationship with needles. I need to decide what’s more important in the short term: a downpayment on a house, or the expense to build a family. I’ve had to rethink what it means to be Jewish in the context of ART and adoption. I’ve nearly lost my faith.
So yeah, not really looking forward to Thursday. I need to do something nice for myeslf that day; I’m trying to see if I can get the day off (my boss is being… passive-aggressive, as usual, since I was out sick with food poisoning 2 days last week, so apparently it’s damn presumptious to ask for a day off this week). I need to certainly do something to feel feminine and womanly, to reclaim the day.
I need to mark this time, and then move on.
