New Year's Blues

Normally I don't find myself introspective at the start of a new year. I've pretty much always seen it as just another day, and the fact that the calendar flipped over, well, it just means I'll be dating my checks wrong for a month or so. This year, however, it's as if I am a little kid again, going to bed the night before my birthday and waking up feeling slightly let down that things aren't suddenly newer, brighter, and shinier because I'm another year older.

It surprises me. And if I'm completely truthful, it irritates me. Because it just seems silly to have had whatever hidden expectations I had in the first place. And, well, it irritates me because I know exactly what is setting it off and frankly, I'm tired of hitting this wall every time I think that I'm finally off the obstacle course.

See, the first email of my New Year was from Tim's aunt letting me know that his cousin and his wife had their baby. The second baby of 2007 (I think localized to their hospital, not nationwide or anything.) The 5th great-grandchild. And while I knew they were expecting. And I knew their due date was sometime in early January, it completely blindsided me. And as I looked at the pictures of this adorable little boy - the namesake of the namesake - I wanted to weep.

And then I wanted to try and find fault with this precious little child in a pathetic attempt to make it somehow less painful that this cousin who was 11 years old when Tim and I got married 11 and a half years ago has a child, and we have nothing. And then I felt ashamed. Ashamed that I am still bothered by this after 9 years. Ashamed that I feel such incredible depths of envy.

And then the worst part of it all settled in, the feelings that take so much effort to dispel that I wonder if I even have it in me to try one more time. The feelings of utter failure. Because my body can't do what women's bodies were designed to do. Because as the oldest grandchild, surely Tim should have had the honor of producing the first great-grandchild. Or at least the second. Or third. Because I've let Tim down. And his parents. And my parents. Because the side effects of infertility have stolen my beauty. After all, what's one more indignity. Not only barren, but fat. Fat in a family of the tall and thin who can no more understand a weight problem than giraffes can do calculus. Failure.

So I find myself staring down the barrel of a 2007 calendar and all I can think is it's another impending year of failure. I'm tired of grieving. I want to heal. I keep thinking that I have. That surely 9 years is enough to come to terms with the fact that I will never do the only thing I ever truly wanted to do. Surely 9 years is enough time to find a career that I love that can substitute for the 9 year old I'd trade it all for. And yet here I am again, at the bottom of the pit digging down deeper because I'm tired of breaking my fingernails trying to climb out.