struck out, cycle 3, day 25

When I got home from work, I said to C, “if I’m not pregnant, I just want to know now – it’s the uncertainty that I can’t handle.” It turns out, I’m no better with disappointment. Just a couple hours later, the universe heeded my (dubious) call[1]: I got my period.

Because I am the smartest, I think I knew it was coming – the moodiness, the lower back pain that could not alone be attributed to my tendency to type while sitting in bed rather than at a desk, like a proper adult, the absence of searing gas pains… Or not. Seeing as approximately 45 seconds before it happened, I could be found Googling early signs of pregnancy and how early can I take a pregnancy test and how much is a ferry ride to the Channel Islands[2] – because let me tell you, infertility-amnesia (which is something I made up but is totally a thing) is wonderful. (Like I haven’t memorized just how early I can safely take a pregnancy test before a missed period? Pshaw.)

But I still think I knew. So much so that this morning I briefly daydreamed about throwing a surprise party for Aunt Flo. You know, ovary-shaped-piñata[3], cake, kazoos, the whole deal. C and I – and Luna, much to her consternation – would put on party hats and blow out candles and surprise her, beat her[4] at her own game (or something). By the time I realized I was on THE-CRAZY-TRAIN-TO-INSANE-VILLE, I was already buying crepe paper (blue, if you must know, because red would be too obvious).

Which is why I was left so unhinged by the kind of catastrophic emotion that overwhelmed me as I emerged from the throes of hell where hope goes to die bathroom. I was clobbered by it; left completely unprepared in my vow of pessimism. I spent the last few days telling myself on the regular that hope was something for other people, meanwhile I was hanging on to it with abandon.

I feel unmoored and adrift (because apparently I am a boat - and a rock and an island <please excuse me while I break into song>). I digress. 

Anyway. I know where we go next – I know how to put one foot in front of the other and soldier on. I know that really, really, it hasn’t been that long that we’ve been trying, that I respond well to the barrels of hormones charging through my veins, that it’s a long way until we’re out of options, [insert other well meaning bullshit that might work for other people but hrmph]. But I am also ready for this to be over; to feel like myself again, instead of the hormone-addled-though-slightly-bigger-boobed-version-of-me. And also to be holding a baby. Preferably mine.

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[1] This could not make less sense here. But tell me it’s not fantastic?

[2] I’m nothing if not a linear thinker.

[3] Surriously. The interwebs do NOT disappoint. Also, I am totally making this.

[4] I just anthropomorphized my menstrual period. There’s no turning back now; you’re trapped.