More than Words

I have been thinking about words, lately. Not just any word but the word that effects my life the most right now:

Infertility.

I can't count how many times I've said this word, thought it or written it. Even on a weekly basis it's probably more than I can count.

I remember the first time I read it as it pertains to me and my life. The first time it really hit home what this word means and the effect it could have on my life.

It was over a year ago and I had just moved to Phoenix and my PCP had told me that he suspected I had PCOS and had printed out some information on it for me to take home and read. I had heard of PCOS because a friend of mine had been diagnosed but I still did not know much about it.

I went home and I was reading this information and all of a sudden one word jumped out at me and made my stomach drop. Infertility. We had already been trying for almost 6 months at that point. I called my husband in a panic at work and he told me I needed to calm down (I hear those words a lot) because we didn't even know if I had PCOS or not.

But somewhere, deep down I knew that this word was about to impact me in a very big way and it scared me. A lot.

Since I got my official diagnosis (last December at a mid-cycle follicle check during my first round of Clomid) I have not spent too much time thinking about the actual word.

Obviously, it effects my life in huge ways but when I think of myself I never think of myself as infertile. Logically, I know that I am indeed, infertile, I just don't think of myself that way. I think that I have PCOS and it sucks but it doesn't represent me as a person. It is an aspect of my life. An aspect that I hate and one that has tears streaming down my face right this minute.

But it is not WHO I am. I am so many things and infertile is one of them. Maybe I am in serious denial because I don't think of myself that way... I don't know. I just think of so many other things when I really think of myself. Ridiculous, stubborn and determined to name a few.

I've had friends tell me over the course of the last year that they don't know how I do this. How I keep forging on ahead with all the heartbreak I face each month. And I tell them that they would, too, if face with the same situation. I'm not strong. There isn't much of a choice in it, at all. When you yearn for something so important and so precious it's actually, in many ways, harder to stop trying than it is to keep on going.

Because when you keep going there is a tiny voice in the back of you head that says "Maybe this next cycle is the one." And it is really hard to drown out that voice.

So I am not STRONG.  But I am stubborn and unwilling to take no for an answer.

And yes, I am Infertile. But I am also so much more than that.