Challenge this in 2016

I’m getting back to a place where I am ready to open the box we hid away and pretended wasn’t there and think about what happens when you’re nearly 32 and you don’t ovulate. The choices you have to make and the sacrifices. It’s hard to look directly at it and it’s frightening. Jonathan seems indifferent. Ambivalent. Which he sort of did all along, apart from in flashes, and that was a bit confusing. He said something the other day though, and I get it now. It’s not ambivalence, it’s self preservation. He’s 42, he accepted that his life wouldn’t look the way he thought it would, and he dealt with it, so it’s pretty hard to let himself think it might be different and then have to do that all over again. So that makes sense.

I am quietly thinking about it. Not opening the box but dusting it off and making a space for it on the shelf again. That in itself feels like a gargantuan and emotional undertaking. So thank you Facebook for the “Motherhood Challenge,” that’s been a big help in making me feel inadequate and sad. I don’t expect people to not do it, or to think of who you might offend every time you post something, I don’t agree with that. It’s just hard.

Today the woman who got pregnant in the first month of coming off the pill whilst we struggled for a year and then used the name I wanted for a girl has text me to say she’s pregnant again. I know, obviously, that I am sensitive about it so I am noticing it more, and that it’s all coincidental and if it had happened last month or last year I wouldn’t have cared I suppose, at least not as much. I do care right now though, it makes me feel bitter and sad and like I have worked my butt off for the last 32 years and achieved nothing, whilst everyone else has everything. I know that is completely ridiculous, I know every life is full of challenges and I am sure there are people who look at my life and think I am blessed and ungrateful. I agree! I am! So why does it make me feel like I’ve been punched in the gut?

I don’t know where I’m going with this. I am not a special snowflake, and nor is she, and not are you. We are all struggling with something but I feel like I just want someone to acknowledge MY struggles for a change, and make allowances for me. I just want a little pity party.