Hopeful

There's a fine line between obsessing over something that may be unhealthy, and allowing yourself to think about that something. I went a long time in my life assuming that any negative feelings I may have had were automatically bad and should be ignored. This was all me, by the way, it's not something my family does that has scarred me for life. My mom is so great at saying, "hey, I noticed you don't seem like yourself. Is something going on?" It's one of her greatest traits, in my opinion. But I still always had an overpowering urge to stifle any hurt or sadness. Turns out, that's not always healthy. Who'd have thought? I'm still learning this, slowly but surely.

One of those things that I still have an urge to totally ignore is my infertility. I'm trying to find the balance between obsessing day and night over the fact or ignoring it completely, letting it fall to the back of my mind. I like not being reminded of it at every moment. I really like hanging out with the wonderful neighbor kids without thinking, "why can't I have sweet kids like this?" And I like feeling... normal (in my mind there exists this magical thing of 'normal' that I don't quite understand, but it really seems exciting) most of the time.

And then I have moments where I think, "as soon as I get pregnant, I'm going to throw a huge party and I'm going to decorate it like this, and have this type of cake, and we're going to announce it like this..." and my mind goes to a really exciting and hopeful place, if I'm doing the thinking right. If I'm not doing it right, I watch a movie about a woman who has a baby and I'm in a funk for three days because it just hasn't happened yet and that makes me really sad. So what's the difference? I've got no clue.

So, in the excited and hopeful stage I'm in right now, I am mentally planning the big announcement party that I throw when Dave and I find out we're going to have a baby. This could be four years from now, but I'm still excited. And I really feel like that's an ok place for me to be. I could be wrong, of course. I've been wrong about my own mental health many times before. That's surprising isn't it?!

I'm excited that I might someday be able to sit down with a friend and say, "hey guess what. I'm going to have a baby." And I'm excited that someday I'll be able to sit with a friend going through something as painful as infertility and say, "I know exactly how you feel. I'm here for you." And I'm excited that I can someday sit with my child, whether natural birth or adoption take place, and say, "do you know what? I wanted you SO much. More that you will ever understand, and I waited and waited for you to get here because I already had a heart filled up with love for you before you were even born."

And if that's not the healthy kind of thinking, I'm not sure what is.