I mentioned in my last entry that I had a dream that things were okay and it was hard to wake up from. What I didn’t mention is that this has been a recurring dream my entire adult life. Sometimes I get it once every week or two, sometimes it’s basically every night. Right now, it’s basically every night. The degree of misery when I wake up is dependent upon how messed up my real life is at the time, and also upon age. So the average intensity of emotional pain upon awakening obviously goes in only one direction, which is up. I’m 35 now and will be 36 in November, so emotional pain at this point is at the higher end of excruciating.
The dream always goes the same way. I’m about to start IUI or whatever, and I’m thinking, “No way this is really happening, it must be a dream.” I promise myself over and over that no, this time it’s really real!! Then I wake up 😭 Then it takes a long time to kind of bounce back, because I’m pleading with any divine being that will listen to please, please let me try before it’s too late.
The primary barriers right now are social supports, mental health (PTSD), and money. Honestly I don’t know the right path forward. Everything is totally up in the air especially with switching to per diem. I got the expensive private health insurance because government health insurance doesn’t cover fertility. So then I found out that private insurance also doesn’t cover fertility until you’ve been trying for six months. I don’t know if you have to have been on private insurance for those six months. I do know it’s supposed to be roughly $500 for IUI and $1,000 for a vial of sperm, so $1,500 x 6 months = $9,000. Which, obviously, that’s a lot of money to have to come up with, let alone while paying over $300 every two weeks for private insurance that covers essentially nothing.
Social supports are tricky because I don’t have a car, so it’s tough to get out and meet people. Every trip costs money for the train or a rideshare or whatever. Sometimes the bus is an option, but usually not because the bus where I live stops running pretty early in the evening. Friends who are already in my life are wonderful, amazing people, but mostly live in other towns besides where I live and they have lives and responsibilities of their own. And with all of this, I’m scared to mention the thing that’s on my mind 24/7 because what if whoever I’m talking to says it will never happen?
So, what I need is just reassurance that it will happen, that I’m not crazy, and I’ll be a good mom. Or at the very least, I can’t keep being alone with this, talking about everything except the one thing in life that’s more important to me than anything else. I’m constantly strategizing… like for example, maybe I could save money by buying the Mosie Baby rather than going through the doctor? And I’m always posting step-by-step plans but then I’m afraid to share them. What if the other person thinks that I’d be a bad mom, or that I’m crazy to think I’ll ever even get to the point of being able to try?
So, even if it doesn’t come up directly, I just need people in my life to operate with the assumption that I will be a mom in the next few years. That it will really happen, and I won’t wake up and have it vanish. And it helps if people quietly know that, at age 35, I’m under intense time pressure and having to continue to wait to try is the most excruciating source of emotional pain in my life, past and present.
