Thinking About the Future

I'm at the end of my 2ww, for those of you counting, but no POAS here. Nuh uh. I don't do that. IF (and that's a rather HUGE "if") I make it to Saturday, I MAY indulge, but there are no guarantees I can actually bring myself to do that. I'm just trying to take one day at a time. H*ll, right now, one hour at a time is quite enough. It's touch and go.

I'm much of the mind of Serenity when she describes her AF. My AF used to be cool. She used to be easygoing and if not fun, at least she wasn't a drag. She hung out for a few days, talked about makeup and boys, got me to try on outrageous makeup and have poofy 80s hair. These days though, she's a haggard old bag. I picture her in tatters, disheveled grey hair, a lopsided hat with a broken flower bent in the rim, wrinkled skin and yellowed nails as she stands at my door and scratches her sagging breasts, cigarette hanging from her mouth with a haze of blue smoke round her head, and in a scratchy voice she bellows in a drawn-out "New Yawk" accent (no offense to the New Yorkers who may read), "Yeah, whaddya want? I'm here, I'm here. Move over, move over. Comin' through."

I dread her arrival as I know many of us do. Yet I do my best to put on a happy face and just endure her visit, hoping each month that that is the last I see of her for awhile. I hope her sorry ass doesn't see my front door for months on end. I hope she loses her torn and battered carpet bag on her travels. I hope that she stops for cigs next time and misses a bus. Better yet, that she gets on the wrong bus and ends up on the other end of the country. I hope for all of these things. But somehow I'm never surprised when I open my door and whammo! There she is.

Anyway, yesterday between fortune cookies (see previous post) and doing our taxes (yay for refunds!), hubby and I discussed a few things with regard to this miserably long and bumpy road we're on. Screw the bumpy. Let's call it h*llish. That's what it is right? Just h*llish. Our discussions began with the "what ifs" that we all go through from time to time. If, at the end of all of this, we are not lucky; if we do not have the opportunity to have children, what then? Where do we pour our energy, our time, our emotions and our money? Will we travel? Will we invest? Will we do nothing but upgrade our current home and go about our daily grind? Will we find other hobbies or activities? Cause, yanno, we're gamers but we can't game forever. Will we find a way to be happy without children? Is that a possibility? Can we imagine our lives like that? So many questions. I've recently started to ponder the answers to them and the thing is, when I do, fear grips me. I've never imagined that I would NOT have children. When I envisaged my life, I never pictured life as part of a couple forever. I always pictured children. I've had dreams for many years in fact in which I clearly see myself with children; twins to be exact. I've seen that in my life for so many years I'd accepted that as normal. Something that I was destined to have. It's all very surreal actually. So how do I reframe my life and be happy with it? There's something to mull over I suppose.

After we finished the taxes, we'd agreed to go looking at the two companies my RE works with for donor sperm samples again. Cause, you know, we'd only purchased three vials and we've only got one vial left if this month is a no-go. We'd better line up our options. Wouldn't you know it? Our donor isn't available at the moment. *sigh* So we have to go through the process again and find another one, just in case. I'm narrowing down the list. This time, I think we're going to choose someone with more of my characteristics than my husband's.

There's often two camps of thought on that: either you choose someone who is CLOSE to your partner's characteristics, and thus hope that the children are a relatively good physical representative of what would have been your biological children; or you choose someone who is close to the mother's characteristics, thereby hopefully ensuring that the children are a good representative of the mother's physical characteristics. Last time we chose someone with hubby's characteristics (hair colour, eye colour, skin tone, height, weight, interests, background, etc.) but hubby encouraged me to look for someone that is more like me this time. There's no rush. We just want to keep that option open if we need to order more samples.

For now, we wait and hope. And we keep the box of tissues handy.