Scrooge

Thanksgiving has come and gone and now the rush of Christmas is in full force.  Indoor and outdoor decorating has begun and the parking lots at the mall are packed to the max morning, noon and night (sadly for me, I work in a building whose bottom level is a mall, so it's rather difficult to escape the holiday craziness!  On the other hand, it's great working above a mall to get all of my shopping done during lunch breaks... along with the rest of the residents in the city of Boston and all of the tourists!).  I realized this weekend that Christmas is just not the joyous holiday season that I had so hoped and wished it'd be this year.  Nope, as a matter of fact, I actually turned into quite the Scrooge this weekend as holiday preparations began all around me.

You see, ON Thanksgiving night, I learned that yet again I'm not pregnant.  Not that I had thought otherwise, truthfully, but I did have visions and daydreams of possibly learning that I was pregnant on Thanksgiving.  That my husband and I would begin this holiday season more thankful than we've ever been before.  That we'd for sure have so much to be thankful for, to celebrate, to truly be happy about this holiday season.  That.... well, it doesn't matter... Because it didn't happen.  I'm not pregnant.  Again.

So, now you may have a better understanding as to why "Scrooge-like" feelings, thoughts and even actions have overtaken my body.  For example, this weekend as I decorated my mantle (what little I could do to try to get into the "holiday spirit"), I declared that there would be no Christmas tree in our house this year!  I know I certainly can't be bothered with that this year (my poor husband (!!)... who didn't argue with me about this and just (er....happily) agreed).

Anyway, the truth is that the holiday season is just a difficult time of year to endure the heartaches of infertility.  Last year at this time, we were just starting our first IUI.  We had so much hope and faith.  We were happy this time last year because we truly thought it'd work.  We never, ever imagined that we'd still be in the very same spot ONE.YEAR.LATER.  Sigh.  A year has passed - a year of sadness, anger, jealousy, envy and worry.  A year of enduring others' announcements about their pregnancies, a year of watching others' bellys grow (and only having a bloated, swollen stomach myself from all of the IF pills and injections) and a year of watching others' miracle babies be brought into the world. 

My.heart.aches. 

So this Christmas season (you know, the season that people say "the children are what make it fun"), if you want to steer clear of me, then by all means, I understand.  I'm not much fun to be around these days and I surely don't have many happy thoughts to express here on my Blog.  The Christmas season has already exhausted me.  But hey, at least I won't have a tree to take down at the end of it all....

Bah humbug.