Cyst update: it’s bigger-again. Surprise, surprise. SO the new question is: surgery again or wait? I’m choosing to wait. It isn’t significantly bigger so it isn’t a huge risk but there is still a risk. Since it’s big it could twist the ovary and block blood flow then it will be an emergency surgery. I wish I just didn’t have to deal with it at all. Why did it have to come back?? I’m so frustrated with the whole thing. I’m convinced if I didn’t have this issue I’d be able to get pregnant. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking. I don’t know at this point.

Some days I want to be a mother so bad it’s all I can think of. I imagine the scenarios in my head; first word, first steps, the first day of school. Sometimes my heart is heavy with it. It physically aches in my chest. It feels like an empty void.

Other days I am okay with being just me. I am not sad. I am resolute and happy with my life as it is. I enjoy sleeping in, having my own time, doing what I want when I want. I often think maybe I am childless because of my illness. Maybe God did not want me to pass this to a child. This sickness that consumes my mind most days. That makes everything black. I would not wish it on my worst enemy, and I certainly would never want my child to carry it.

Sometimes I dream of her, my daughter that I don’t have. Her brown wavy hair curling around her round, pale face. I feel her tiny hand in mine and I hold it tight. I look into her face that is like mine, into her green, green eyes like her fathers and I try to remember every detail. Etch it into my mind like stained glass, and when I wake up, I am always surprised that she isn’t real. I expect her to be looking back into my eyes, waiting for me to wake up and make her breakfast.

It is always heartbreaking, but not in the sense you would think. It isn’t a fresh heartbreak. It doesn’t cut like a knife. It is a deep wound, one that aches and one that has become known to me as much as hunger is known to a human. Or thirst, or warmth. I carry it always, like a well-worn sweater. In many ways that pain is my child. I have been trying to conceive for five years now. Five very long years. While I know it has taken others even longer than this, I truly believe my body is incapable of it and slowly, I am trying to learn to be okay with that.

Categories: Anxiety, bipolar disorder, Depression, Infertility, Love, Mania, Mental Health, OCD, Parenting, PCOS, Pregnancy, PTSD, Self Esteem, self-care

Tags: #infertility #fertility #PCOS #pregnancy #PCOSawareness, #mentalhealth #depression #anxiety #ocd #medication #life #struggles