Why Don't I Listen?

It's a Monday night. I have a love/hate relationship with Monday nights. On one hand, the optimist in me, loves the quiet that our house is on Monday. R. teaches on Monday night and I love, love, love the stillness here...which is odd, because it's not like R. is some wild and crazy guy, not like he fills up space in a room, in fact he's inclined to hide-out in his cave, I mean, office. But, there's something about the utter stillness of an uninhabited home. I putter. I read. I knit. I journal. I light candles. I take a bath. Mostly, it's just all about me.

But, Monday night can also be a lonely night. As Anne Lamott says about her own mind, "it's a dangerous neighborhood that no one can go in alone." And tonight I did the worst thing one can do with "bad mind." I...get ready for this...are you braced?...got on the frickin' internet.

Now, I had the best of intentions. I recently learned that one of the weblogs I read regularly (see www.amalah.com) had some links to other weblogs and found that, lo and behold, they were women who had struggled with infertility and were, at long last, bringing to birth new life (be that through biological parenting, or adoption, or finding new outlets for their parental urges). It was filled with light and hope and joy and I thought, "Ah, yes. I need me some of that."

And so, when one of the inferility blogs I check posted her list of links I thought, "Ah, more women who have fought the good fight, who have found hope. Let me refresh myself with these good words." And, well...no. No, not so much. Instead I read, "Yea, though I walk through the valley of infertility I will not be afraid...and yet I am afraid...and I will never get pregnant forever and ever, Amen." And I got, well, how shall I say? Freaked out.

And so let me say this, and let us put it aside and pretend that it doesn't exist. Oh My God. I am afraid that I will not get pregnant. And, that by not getting pregnant I will have missed out on something HUGE.

When R. and I started this fertility odyssey (isn't that a nice literary analogy? Sort of makes it feel like a grand adventure?) Dr. B. the ferility-guru of the midwest said (without even knowing my hypochondriacal tendencies), "Christen, whatever you do, don't get on the internet. It'll just make you crazy." And R. looked at me with a stern look, and I all but took the boy scout oath that no, I would never, under any circumstances google the words, "Infertility women blog."

Drat. Damn me and my inquisitive mind.