What's it like for you?

So as often happens when I feel really overwhelmed and have a lot on my plate, my brain kicks into hyper drive and I start suddenly getting creative and wanting to start projects.  I was on the freeway today and one hit me like a thunderbolt (much like the “maybe you can still have children” notion, which also hit me while driving on the freeway).  It’s not original, won’t make me any money, and will never “go anywhere”.  But it’s just something I’m interested in.  In the spirit of Studs Terkel, one of my favorite people, who once wrote a book all about people talking about their jobs, I want to create a podcast with the same theme – interviewing people I know about their jobs, and how they feel about their jobs.  Technically it would be easy to do (you just need a computer, microphone, and headset) and I have a list of at least thirty friends who I’d love to interview and who I think would be interested and interesting – pharmacists, teachers, lawyers, musicians, floral designers, police officers, the list goes on and on.  I always want to know how people feel about their jobs – half the time when I used to go on these international tours, rather than soaking in the local culture, I’d be busy asking the tour director how they felt about their line of work, what challenges they face, what they wish was different, what they’d rather do if money weren’t an option, etc etc.  I wanted to call it The Empathy Project but of course this name is already taken; I’ll think of something else equally catchy.  I figured it would be best just loaded onto a free blog for now until I can think of something else to do with it.  And of course with a new baby who knows when, if ever, I’ll get to starting.  But I usually do the things I put on the back burner eventually – start a dance event, start a band.  Sometimes it just takes the right set of circumstances.  Something like this is definitely a passion of mine, though, so I know I’ll get to it eventually.

I think I thought of this today because of all the controversy swirling around the creation of PAIL, the new blog list (?) for people who have come out of infertility to parenting and want or need a place to connect with others in the same situation.  Now I wrote about this whole “being alienated by your blog community after your BFP” quite a bit way back when and don’t really want to get into it again, but just seeing this topic discussed on various blogs, with various reactions, made me think again how subjective this human experience is – how you really don’t know what it’s like to be in another’s shoes, no matter how much you think you know, or try to guess.  I was telling my Doula Friend today what I had written here some days ago, how the old me from my “trying” phase – the one that was full of fear and trepidation and couldn’t believe anything good could ever happen to me, the one wracked with jealousy and bitterness, is gone now, and I can’t relate to her anymore.  Much like I can’t relate to the teenaged me or the 30-year-old me.  I think for most of us who are given the chance to move on to the next phase, you just drop the old phase like a hot potato.  This isn’t to say you don’t still have echoes and ripples of the old you – certainly anyone who struggled with infertility never really “gets over” it, even after having a child, as many people have pointed out. But most people are just in the new phase and that new phase is consuming enough that there isn’t time to stay in the fear/bitterness/jealousy/sadness that once inhabited your entire being.  For me it wasn’t about struggling with infertility (I can’t say I think that word applies to my situation really), it was about dealing with a lifetime of watching everyone around me get married and start families while I didn’t, despite massive effort, and the layers of unhappiness and frustration this caused me.  It’s minor compared to infertility, I know, and I’m not even trying to compare the two.  But this was just my personal journey.  Going from this awful place of being 38 and never having been in anything resembling a long term relationship despite years of active dating, and, again, watching literally everyone I know get married, get pregnant, and have children, while I stood by asking the same question for decades, “what’s wrong with me?”  This is bound to mess you up a little.  But like so many single women I found a loophole, and it’s completely changed me.  I feel grateful.  I feel happy.  I feel excited about my future.  And these are emotions I haven’t felt in ages – maybe never.  And who do I thank for this?  A donor, a catheter, and a vial.  Crazy, huh?

My friend and I wondered today if my *occasional* pregnancy-related posts on FB cause the same kind of anger/sadness/jealousy that others’ used to cause in me.  I’m sure, somewhere out there in my huge list of “friends”, are people struggling who have hidden me from their news feed, or people who have an attitude about my methods and just don’t believe what I’m doing is right, or people who are just jealous of me in general and think I live this charmed life when they have no idea what I really experience on a day to day basis in my work, with the pregnancy, financial concerns, my bizarre family situation, etc etc.

In one of my favorite movies, Walking and Talking, the female friend who isn’t in a relationship finally breaks down and tells her best friend who is getting married, “you never ask what it’s like for me.”  And the engaged friend sits down and says, “ok, what is it like for you?” to which the single friend says, “it’s really hard.”  And they then have the first real, honest exchange in the movie, and it heals them.  Maybe someday my podcast can spread a little of this kind of exchange into the world – this is what it’s like, and it’s not what you think, and sometimes it’s really hard.  Spreading a little empathy around can’t hurt, can it?