Spring will be a little late this year

Been wracking my brain to come up with something fun, pithy, and entertaining to write about today, but I think it’s best to just be honest, because (hopefully) honesty is something you come to this blog for.  So here it is.  I feel like crap.

Again, nothing new has happened to make me feel this way.  No new information has come to light to suddenly knock me down.  I’ve just had a couple of scary thoughts that have really gotten into the core of my being and I can’t seem to shake them.  So here they are, in all their ugliness:

Read a fellow blogger who wrote about having a “Plan C” if this Plan B (single motherhood) doesn’t work out.  Her Plan C is to go back to school.  This is a good Plan C.  However, this is not an option for me.  For me really Plan C is adoption, but like most women struggling with fertility, even thinking about adoption right now makes me incredibly depressed, because it assumes I’ll fail at even this most basic function of having my own baby, after having failed in my other function, which is to find a mate.  So, I love you, adoption, I think you’re great and I’m so glad you exist, but I need to pretend you don’t right now.  I know you’ll understand.

For some reason I’ve had this thought a lot lately – if I weren’t doing this right now, what would I be doing?  Let’s say it’s spring of 2011 and for whatever reason I was not considering having a baby on my own, or having kids at all.  What would I be planning for myself?  What would I be looking forward to?  The answer to all this is such a big fat blank that it scares me.  One thing I know in life is everyone needs something to look forward to.  Whether it’s a vacation, Christmas, seeing an old friend, a trip to the beach, whatever – you need to have landmarks to base your hopes on.  And I hate to say it, but without a child in my life I kind of feel like I have nothing to look forward to.  I’m broke now (after losing a consulting job that at first was back on but is now back off) so I can’t travel anymore.  Ditto doing the many home repairs I still need (just discovered my porch is being eaten away by termites.  Wondering how much more damage they’ll do until I can afford to fix it) which historically has kept me busy (last spring was spent entirely with contractors at the house doing something nearly every day).  There are no more event planning opportunities – I can barely drag people out of their houses by their fingernails to get them to come to my one event that’s been going fourteen years; I have no intention of trying to get people to come out to some new thing (and I tried this last fall and lost a ton of money).  The band hardly ever plays locally anymore – after years of four to eight gigs a month, now we’re lucky if we play even once a month (which also means my income from the band, which used to be thousands, is now practically nonexistent).   So a lot of things have stopped, mellowed out, and folded in on themselves.  A lot of my former activities have dried up.  Which is much of the reason now is a great time to have a baby.  And yet.

I have no idea about a Plan C.  Oh, I’m sure if forced I could come up with something – we humans are adaptable that way.  I’d create some new business or come up with some new hobby or start working on the house myself or travel to do volunteer work or something.  I know this is a big wide world and there’s lots for single childless people to do.  But honestly, I’m exhausted.  I’ve spent decades entertaining myself and constantly having to come up with new activities to keep myself from being bored.  I’m sick of it. 

So one issue is the lack of a Plan C, and the other is a bit more disturbing to me, which is the unpleasant reality that even if I get my heart’s desire – a real, live, healthy baby – which at this moment seems so wonderful I can hardly stand it – this doesn’t take away the fact that no man ever chose me.  In fact, that child’s very existence proves the fact that hey, no one ever wanted to have a baby with me, so I “had to” take this route to motherhood.  It all seems so second rate.  I know this is a terrible thought, but I’m being honest.  Again, memories of my friend’s picture perfect wedding comes to mind – that’s what every woman wants; nobody wants this.  We’re just forced into it by circumstances.  Having to be a partner-less parent.  And I know marriages are no piece of cake, and I know parenting with a partner has its disadvantages.  But the simple fact that very few women go out and make this choice until they’ve had to tells me that this is nobody’s first choice.  It’s something we’re forced to do, at the last minute, after a lifetime of heartbreak and disappointment.  And right now I find that all incredibly depressing. 

So depressing that I am seriously considering getting into some therapy.  The only thing preventing me is the money.  If it were free I would do it in a second.  But I am completely broke at the moment until the event money starts coming in, which it won’t for about two more months, and hopefully by then I’ll at least be trying or treating something and be on some kind of path, which at the moment I’m not.  I will look into it, though.  I know I need it now because I’m finding I can no longer lift this veil of depression on my own, and with things going the way they’re going with all this fertility stuff, I really may need someone who’s paid to listen to me complain.  Or who can at least tell me to look at things in a different way, which I seemed able to about a week ago until all of this started crashing down on me.

This song showed up on my Ipod while shuffling through songs the other day and it seems to match my mood lately:

Spring will be a little late this year
A little late arriving, in my lonely world over here
For you have left me and where is our April love old
Yes you have left me and winter continues cold
As if to say that spring will be a little slow to start
A little slow reviving that music it made in my heart
Cause time heals all things, so I needn't cling to this fear
It's merely that spring will be a little late this year
Yes time heals all things so I needn't cling to this fear
It's merely that spring will be a little late this year