all around you.

When you're infertile and want nothing more than to experience pregnancy and hold your baby in your arms, it seems as though everyone around you has the opportunity -- except for you.

I think any of us who have experienced infertility can relate to these experiences.  You're at the mall and every woman you pass seems to have a round tummy, is pushing a stroller, or is toting three kids through the crowds.  And you can't help but be jealous.  You can't help but envy what all of these women have because it's what you want and what, for some reason, you can't have.

Everyone around you announces their pregnancies.  And you have to react joyfully for them -- for each of them -- every time.  You say your  - Congratulations!  The - I'm so happy for you!  You ask the expected questions -- When are you due?  How are you feeling?  You compliment.  --You look beautiful!  You're truly glowing.

But inside you hurt.  Month after month you're faced with disappointment.  And month after month, they keep finding success despite your failure.  And each time, you're expected to be happy.  To be a good friend.

If you're like me, you want to be.  You want to feel joy for everyone who achieves what you cannot.  It is the most amazing thing one can experience in life, after all.  You want to be genuinely happy for these women who you consider to be your friends.  But it's harder than some might think.  After enough time passes, it's truly difficult to feel joy for others who achieve your biggest dream so easily.  While you're left further and further behind.  It's difficult to put on the expected show of happiness and excitement.  Because all you want is to feel that way for yourself.  Finally.  After so much waiting and heartache.  All you want is what all of these women are experiencing, and there seems to be no valid reason you can't.

Sometimes I'm afraid these building feelings of jealousy and envy and bitterness are harmful to me, too.  I fear that karma may get me (or is getting me) for my inability to always experience the kind of joy a good friend should.  I fear that the negativity finds a home inside me and burrows deep, and that's not the person I want to be.

I have yet to skip out on a baby shower due to my emotions.  I have yet to retreat from my friends because I'm not in the same place they are.  I have yet to hibernate and surround myself with my sorrow.  So I'm proud of these continued efforts.  But I just want to be normal again.  I want to be a kind, concerned, generous friend who feels true joy and excitement for the women who mean so much to her.  I want to join the club with them.  I want to feel included and back on the inside instead of the outside.  I want to experience everything that they are -- two years ago.  I want to be completely me again.

I hope my emptiness can be filled soon.  I hope my dark space can be brightened.  I hope my ability to truly be a good friend returns.  Because I don't like this.

blogs.

Sometimes I get online to work on something that has a pressing deadline or to check my e-mail or to look something up, and I quickly find myself on infertility blogs.   I seek them out because these blogs are written by people I can actually relate to.  They're infertile too!  They remind me that I'm not the only one, that my break-downs and my moodiness and my jealousy are all really normal for someone in my shoes.  And I need that.  Frequently.

Last night I should have been working on some statistics homework for a graduate class I'm in.  I should have been.  Instead I found myself on one of my favorite infertility blogs which then linked me to about seven new infertility blogs ... and I had to catch myself up on each of their stories.  I found blogs specifically by women who were undergoing IVF or who had been.  I found blogs by women in almost my exact same situation.  And I did feel that I'm not alone, and it was comforting.

But then I got sad.

I'm in this three-month waiting period to begin my first IVF cycle.  I'm taking a myriad of drugs to get my body ready before I start the actual IVF stim drugs.  But mostly it just feels like waiting.  It feels like prolonging the inevitable, and in many ways, I just want it to be here.  Because I'm excited and nervous and terrified.

I read these stories by women who had been there, who had been through the entire IVF process.  Some of them had been through it more than once.  And many of them weren't successful.

I've been working so hard to stay positive about what lies ahead.  I've been trying to stay out of my head and only think happy thoughts about this end result.  I've started acupuncture and meditations to relax.  I go running every morning to kind of physically rid myself of nerves.

But it's all still there.  This might not work.

I read the blog of a woman who was starting her second IVF cycle.  I went back and read through her first IVF journey, and it broke my heart.  She wrote about how hard she was working at staying positive, she wrote about feeling like it was really working after her transfer, and then she came crashing down.  And I could relate to every word in those entries, and I could see myself in her and my situation in hers.  It reminded me there are two sides to what's coming up -- a life-changing happiness and joy and an earth-shattering despair and depression.  Sounds dramatic, maybe, but I don't think it is. And I will only experience one or the other.

I'm sinking everything I've got -- emotionally, physically, spiritually, financially -- into this hopeful attempt.  I just don't want to be let down.

And so, while I know that reading these blogs has helped me tremendously in feeling less alone, and they've really educated me about my options and the different processes people pursue, sometimes they just make me sad.  I decided, in last night's funk, to go to bed early and hope that I would wake up this morning feeling a little more optimistic.

A night's sleep is magical.  But I wake up every morning acutely aware of all of the possibilities.  I suppose no blog will change that fact, so I will keep reading.  It's better to avoid the loneliness.