CD 3: Imperfect

Imperfect.  It really describes how I feel about myself at the moment.  Not that I've ever actually thought I was perfect, but with all of my recent infertility related medical revelations, it seems like such a fitting word.  Perfect makes a much better match with the way I envisioned my life looking at this point.  I think everyone imagines potential timelines for significant life events.  At least, I know I did.  You know how it goes... finished with college by age 22, married by age 23, and a baby to call my own by age 25.  Well, at least I met one of those goals.  J and I were married in 2009, when I was 23 years old.  It sounds young, but at that point we had been together for almost 6 years, so it was time.  Just as it feels like it's time now for us to be parents.  I'm almost 27 now and have clearly missed my so called deadline for having our first baby.

Technically, I guess I actually met 2 of the 3 goals, as I finished my undergraduate degree in elementary education in 2004, when I was 22.  Last year at this time I had finalized everything for my enrollment in graduate school to become certified as a reading specialist.  My plan, though quite lofty, was to complete the program in one year's time.  Despite the many, many long hours of reading various articles and chapters in textbooks and writing numerous 20+ page papers (while also teaching full-time at a new school and in a new grade level), I was able to accomplish this task with flying colors, ending up with a 4.0.  Heck, I think I only missed one point on an assignment the entire time.

I couldn't wait for graduate school to be done, because I just knew this feeling of relief would wash over me, gently lifting the heavy burden from my shoulders and freeing me from the stress of its weight.  A funny thing happened, though.  I don't think I ever felt that sense of relief.  Ever since I've finished, it's like I have this incessant need to always be doing something... anything and everything I can think of to fill up the time so that I don't have to think about the imperfections and lack of child inside me or in my arms that now constantly invade my thoughts.  My most recent mind filler has been reading... maybe because when I read the words revealing the stories of the characters, I am able to get so lost in their lives - their problems and devastation - that  I am finally capable of forgetting my own.

Sometimes I wonder why this is so incredibly difficult for me.  So many people suffer because of infertility.  I ask myself all the time why I can't be stronger.  Why can't I move past this? Why does it make me feel so hopeless?  Then it hits me.  Maybe it's because I am a perfectionist, and I'm so used to setting goals and achieving them - even blowing past them at full speed, wondering why I didn't challenge myself more.  But this is different.  It's something I can't control, no matter how hard I try.  I feel as though I'm a passenger being held prisoner on a ship in the middle of the ocean during the most tumultuous storm imaginable, and it's being steered by someone else other than me.  People always say my plans aren't my own, to have faith in God, and it will happen when it's time.  I believe this, I really do.  But in the mean time, while I'm still battling the rain, that belief doesn't make this any easier.  It doesn't make it hurt any less.  Most of all, it doesn't make me feel any less imperfect.