Survivors Guilt

I think I am experiencing a level of survivor's guilt.

Though I am not pregnant nor on the other side of the infertility madness, I find myself at peace with how my life is. This is a far cry from how I was the year I lost Sprout and followed by a chemical pregnancy. I was in the deepest, darkest depression known to man, or rather woman. I had no support, no one that I knew at the time had gone through IVF or fertility treatments. I was an outcast from my friends, as they had all had their babies (some second) and their way of comforting me was by telling me that "well at least you know you can get pregnant, that should give you some comfort!" Oh yes, comfort, that's exactly what I felt after jabbing my stomach and ass cheeks with needles for 4 weeks, gaining 20 pounds from meds and having to say good-bye to a much wanted pregnancy. Comfort? No, tortured is more like it.

I am coming up on 3 years since I was pregnant with Sprout. T-h-r-e-e years. Where, oh where, did that time go? It's all a blur. I have done 4 IVFs and 4 IUIs since I lost Sprout. I call it "my attempt to get pregnant by going backwards." Yes backwards. I was one of those lucky ones that got pregnant on our first IVF try. I remember thinking, "Wow, that was easy!" Did I piss off the Gods by thinking I could have been so lucky? Was there a lesson to be taught, to be learned from having something I wanted so badly ripped away from my womb? What lesson could possibly be good enough to have had to let go of a beloved pregnancy, a life-long dream?

In those three years since our good-bye, I have carried a deep, dark, festering secret about how Sprout went from being in my womb one day to being only a memory the next. I have tried to "cleanse" my soul, my conscience many times - seeing psychics, getting Reiki, meditating, doing therapy, you name it, I have tried it. It wasn't until my weekend seminar that I talked about here, that I finally, and fully, let go of the guilt I felt around my pregnancy and loss of Sprout. I literally felt that the seminar was like taking a roto-rooter to my psyche, my mind, my emotions, my being and clearing out all the shit that has constipated me for three years. I am clean, clear and free from all the sadness, frustration and guilt that has been building up and building up and building up. I feel that I finally have room for a baby to be in my womb. The path has been cleared away and I feel good.

There seems to come a time while on this journey when, after as many blows as I have taken, that many of you have taken, we either call "uncle," throw in the towel, choose another path to motherhood or living child-free, or continue to be smashed down over and over again by the monsterous waves of "the infertile's plight to fight the odds," or we get pregnant and are able leave the land of infertile and fumble their way through "pregnant-after-infertility-but-I-am-still-scared-and-not-out-of-the-woods-yet-until-I-give-birth-then-I-will-relax-and-believe-THIS-is-real." Something shifts at some point, for most of us. I think it's a moment when we see that we have a choice. We have a choice of how to deal with what life keeps firing at us. This is what it comes down to - choice and feeling empowered again. Choice, what a concept. I have been given the biggest gift I could imagine in life - the ability to see that I have a choice in how I handle infertility (or anything). I have chosen to live my life as a fertile, knowing that it's only a matter of time before I have a baby in my womb again.

This has been percolating in my posts for awhile now. My last IVF was August of 2010. I have done 2 IUIs since then, but for the most part, I have been concentrating on other ways of being in the world. I wrote a post about filling my pie hole. Infertility robs us of a full life. It effects all, and I mean all areas of our life. If we were to take those pieces of our life (our pie) out, we'd be left with an empty, vacant hole. Which is what I have been walking around with for many years. I have been working extremely hard on filling that pie-hole, filling my life back up with things, people, experiences, moments and thoughts that make me feel good.

I will say it again, I feel good.

This brings me to why I feel like I have survivors guilt.

I have noticed that when someone who blogs or is in an online group get's pregnant (or choses adoption), they either have less readers, less posts or has to move into a new online group - Leaving behind those that are still TTC, leaving behind all of those supporters that were by her side at one time. They enter into an in-between land, hoping and praying that indeed they have left the land of barren and are on the blissful pregnancy path. However, they feel alone and they don't quite fit in. How many times do you read posts about pregnant-after-infertility women feeling guilty? How many times do you hear them say that they still wear the badge of "(in)Fertile warrior" while in Dr's waiting rooms, surrounded by fertile pregnant women who just don't get it? These "survivors" who use to get all that amazing support and sisterhood are suddenly out on their own. A group of women who were once bonded by super-glue now become separated by a pregnancy or adoption announcement.

Or in my case, I feel that I have lost readers because I am no longer drowning. I feel as if I have survived the torture and no one wants to hear about how happy I am while I still fight this battle. I think this community of bloggers is amazing - the support is unparalleled, but it also seems to be click-ish and it makes me sad and feel like I am back in high school. I feel like if I don't write about how painful infertility is, I won't get any readers or comments. I see other bloggers comments rise when they pour their heart's out about their darkness, but when I share that "I've seen the light," my blog goes dead. Am I an outcast...again?

I have been hoping that my posts have been encouraging and not irritating. I am not drinking some "happy-juice kool-aid" that has made me think that dealing with infertility is really fun. Quite the contrary, I have been trying to find a way to keep myself from drowning in this sea of sadness, trying not to go mad from the emotional blows and working my way back out of a hole that stretched as far as the earth's core. Life happens, regardless of how good or deserving we think we are. I have lived my life for the past 5 years wondering what I had done wrong to have this kind of shit luck and it's only when I started having compassion for myself that I realized that I can get through this journey in one piece. But I don't want to do this alone - I don't want to leave anyone behind. I try consciously to write posts of encouragement, rather than how sad I am in hopes of helping just one other woman through this labyrinth of a journey. We don't have to be swallowed whole. Yes I still have my bad days, I am still human, I haven't become an alien pod that lacks emotions. I just want more out of life than sadness and defeat.

Am I alone on this journey?

Am I the only one that thinks that life can still be fun even when our hearts are broken, our breath is shallow and our friends are all pregnant?