It’s strange, how …overwhelming it becomes.
It’s all consuming.
Not in the way that I expected, though. There’s the obvious. The appointments, the paperwork, the payments. The pills, the injections, the procedures. Beyond that, it infiltrates every aspect of our lives, influencing the boring and the mundane. We’ve spent years delaying, years hoping, years aching, longing, fearing, and hurting. It weaves its way into the way I think, the way we talk to eachother, the way we love eachother, the way we fight with eachother.
It’s strange how overwhelming it becomes. Perhaps I should have expected it.
We found each other late. Well, not so late as all that, we were in our thirties. Maybe that’s not late anymore? We both grew up in religious families, and our parents married in their twenties, so we were breaking tradition at the least. I’d moved across the world for a job, thrown into a new reality, both personally and professionally. In actuality, it was a job I never wanted (effectively a glorified sales role), but the opportunities it presented were compelling. The chance to move to another country, travel, see new things and meet new people. I think I’d only been on an airplane twice in the ten years prior when I packed up my life and left the country. After years of university pursuing two degrees in engineering, I couldn’t wait to get on with life.
By contrast, she was coming home. Two years living in London, travelling and becoming her own woman. She’d moved abroad with friends from university, spent her days working in schools, and her holidays travelling Europe.
Covid meant our first date was a socially distanced meet-up in the park, small-talking, walking with coffees in hand (collected from the local patisserie). She was every cliche superlative come to life. Beautiful, funny, smart, self-deprecating in the cutest way. A little bit nerdy, although she tried to hide it. I was dazzled by her, just trying to keep pace. After our date I was buzzing with happiness. I thought, “Man, I had a great time, but she’s so out of my league. No way she’s going to want to see me again.”
Three years later we were married.
The questions start almost immediately. Only one question, really. Everyone always wants to know when you’re having kids. We knew we were likely to have difficulties. Maybe that’s why we delayed. The other, quiet reason, not often spoken aloud, was that we weren’t sure if we wanted to have kids. Instead, it was, “Oh, maybe one day. We’re just enjoying being married!” We’d spent years dating long distance, and we really did want to be able to enjoy being together, just us. Maybe it was selfish. Maybe it was an excuse.
Whatever it was, we lived our lives to the fullest. We travelled - Mexico, Canada, Japan - we saved for a house, we trained for a 10k. We went to the theater, we went to the beach, we loved.
Eventually we decided we had waited long enough, waited as long as we could wait (“we’re not getting any younger after all”) and went to the doctor. Endomitriosis, low motility, blocked tube. Try, maybe it’ll work. Fifty percent of fifty percent chance, at best.
It didn’t work.