I recently
came to the realization that I started trying to get pregnant nine years ago
this month. It is hard not to feel
defeated when I realize that I have spent almost an entire decade putting time,
money, and effort into something and still completely failing at it. I hate the idea of having wasted my thirties
on something so stupid and disappointing, but I feel comforted by the knowledge
that at least I managed to rock my sexual prime in there somewhere, during the
short but super-slutty interval between separating from my first husband and
meeting my second. Thank heaven I had
some irresponsibility and wild abandon in there somewhere.
Coincidentally,
my husband has spent nine years at his company pursuing his own goal: producing a movie. Like me, he has put in endless time, effort,
and passion in the hopes that he, too, would be able to help create
something. And he hasn’t. There are many times when hopes are high,
numbers look good, a project is about to be greenlit…this is it. He is sure of it. And then the director has a conflict, someone
doesn’t like the script, the studio gets a new head who hates the project. Dream deferred, yet again.
As we both
look towards the imminent arrival of another decade, it’s impossible not to ask
ourselves the obvious questions. At what
point do you pack it all in? When do you
finally tell yourself that it’s time to try something else? How much and how long do you sacrifice before
you give up hope? You don’t want to be the
quitter who crawls away in failure, unable to stick it out. But at the same time, you don’t want to be
the sucker still standing at the door with a bouquet long after it’s clear you’ve
been stood up.
Living with
hope doesn’t make things better or easier. It’s awful, actually. To be filled with the hope, over and over
again, that this time feels different—that this time will be different—is exhausting.
Hope is supposed to comfort and sustain us, but hope unrealized fills us
with shame. It’s embarrassing to falsely
believe in something. It’s embarrassing
to admit that you were wrong all along.
It’s embarrassing, almost ten years into it, to scrap your life plan and
have to start imagining a different future.
I honestly
don’t know what this feels like for Eddie.
Admittedly, it is much harder to make a movie than it is to make a
baby. Being able to make a movie is
basically like winning the lottery. Any
asshole can make a baby. (Just, you know, not this asshole.) But in both
cases the factors that lead to success seem entirely beyond our control.
Our friends
are more optimistic. They tell us
stories about people who finally achieved success just as they were going to
pack it all in. “This is your year,”
they say, “I can feel it.” There are so
many years that are supposed to have been our year that I have begun to dread
New Year’s Eve. We spent the last one in
a Seattle hotel, eating pizza in bed and watching Breakfast at Tiffany’s like college students who had just been
dumped. I’m not saying it wasn’t
fun. But we weren’t exactly out there
preparing to build an empire.
And we’re
happy for you. Really we are. We’re thrilled that you’re pregnant. What a cute picture of your toddler. And that is super-awesome news about your
movie. We know, truly know to the depth
of our very bones what tremendous accomplishments these are. We could never take your joys and successes
for granted and we hope you don’t either.
You are right to see it as a miracle.
It is a miracle every single time.
And foolish
or not, we haven’t quite given up yet. Eddie
keeps hustling each day at his work. I
keep taking my prenatal vitamins, just in case.
And just this month we spontaneously decided to try a final round of
IUI. What are the chances of success? Worse than terrible. But stranger things have happened. Haven’t they?
