Family Day

Here is rainy BC today it was Family Day--thank you, Christy Clark.

You know how crummy it is when you're single on Valentine's Day? That's how today felt for me. The positive side of the stat-holiday fence was that the salon closed an hour earlier than usual, meaning that I went in and then finished my work-day an hour earlier than my usual Mondays, and I made time-and-a-half alongside my commissions (which were decent, not amazing, but decent). However, I really felt a bit all-over-the-map emotionally: tired, determined, hangry, cynical, sugar-buzzed elated, then upset enough that I really just felt like crawling into bed and crying--all basically in that order. Now that I'm in on the edge of crying-blob-mode I'm really feeling that emptiness and the possibility that this might be what Family Day feels like for more than just this year and/or the next.

My single-mom co-worker doesn't get it. I shouldn't really expect her to, not because she is or isn't an empathetic/compassionate person but because she's really young, accidentally got pregnant in high school ("accidental pregnancy" completely baffles me these days, I'm sorry), is dating an equally young guy, and infertility isn't something she's ever had to consider. Never has she had to wonder "what if I can't have children?" She has a wonderful, kindhearted, curious, bright, healthy boy that she's able to kiss goodnight. So when she announced, while we were quietly grooming our dogs, that she "just want[ed] to be home with her boys on Family Day, actually being a family" I made a comment about how she was lucky to at least have a family on Family Day.

"That's not true, you have G and Zoe-dog," she said.

"It's not the same," was all I could say. I don't remember if she made an additional optimistic comment.

That's my point though: even though I love G and Zoe-dog very much, I don't think the two of us and our dog equate to being "a family" in the eyes of most people. G and I are a couple with a dog, and currently Family Day is not a stat holiday for us. I can't tell you how much I'm hoping and praying and wishing that this is only temporarily true, but with every passing cycle of TTC the fear that maybe this is it for us gets a little bit bigger, just a little bit louder and a little less foggy.

Underneath all the optimism  there's this growing anxiety, and on days like today it's pretty terrifying.