Nine Years

            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?