The Black Hole and Worlds Unknown

I ran a 5k a few weeks ago, hosted by my alma mater (and now workplace) for Homecoming. At the beginning, before the race began, they held a kids fun run. At the behest of the upbeat DJ and the prodding of their watchful parents, all the little kids came forward and joined the school mascot, Screech the Eagle, to run around the campus green.

I'm not going to lie. I teared up. While everyone smiled and laughed at how adorable all the kids were, and how the littlest of them lagged behind the rest, but ran so, so hard anyway, and how the big ones outpaced Screech, beaming with pride, and how the whole hoard of them passed by the finish line opting instead for a second lap - I stood there and fought tears.

It hurts. It hurts every time and it hurts in ways that are never new and somehow always fresh.

I watched as the girl with bouncy curls sprinted back to her dad for a high-five, her joy and his pride meeting in a sudden clash. I watched as the girl's little brother came to receive a high-five, just as exuberant, just as proud. I watched as they took a photo together at the finish line, all their smiles almost too big for their faces - a genetic trait that makes those kids look just like dad. I watched mom, taking photos and cooing to baby whose smile will morph to match his family's so everyone can take one look at him someday and say, "You must be so-and-so's kid."

I pulled myself together just before the actual race began, swallowing the tightness in my throat because I need to breathe now and fighting the ache in my chest because starting a race with pain is never a good way to go. The pain's not supposed to come until after mile two when you're already so close to finishing that last mile you can fight through anything.

There's a metaphor there, if you can find it.

A little over a week later, Zack and I are sitting in a room with a chart of the male reproductive system on the wall and an IV stand on wheels and a tiny examination table that makes me wonder what they do when largely overweight patients have appointments.

The doctor is in the room too, sitting in the computer chair, but spun to face us, leaning one elbow against the top of the silver trash can and using the other to gesture as he explains our infinitesimal probability of conception, with intervention of course. And there was a moment, sitting in that doctor's office, where I stared at this man's face and thought, This isn't real. This isn't really my life. This is what doctors say to people on TV shows where it turns out okay in two episodes, or those cheesy Christian movies where everyone forgives each other without lingering heaviness and has clean homes all the time and well-groomed pets who come when they're called except that one time when they run off barking to introduce you to a stranger who will change your life. While I should have been paying attention, I instead studied the doctor's little rimless glasses and his swoopy gray speckled hair and thought of how the first thing he said when he walked in the room was that the cooler weather was "good for sperm."

And I had to shake myself out of it and focus. Because this wasn't a surreal out of body experience, much as it feels that way some times, this was my life. This is my life. And I needed to be paying attention instead of wondering if the leather almost-fanny pack the doctor wore was, in fact, a fanny pack, or if it was instead some crazy cell phone case that he wore in an awkward location because this man has a medical degree, after all, and deals with men's special places all day everyday, and he probably wears black dress pants with white socks to fancy dinners and he's got to be just a little off the edge of normal for all that.

And here I am listening to this maybe-fanny-packing man tell us that it would cost us nearly $20,000 for a 20% chance that we might get pregnant. That it would require surgery and hormone injections and both of us to be in operating rooms at the same time because if they have to use frozen sperm there's maybe a 10% chance of success. Of course, he says, we could pay that $20,000 only to have the first part of the procedure fail and then we're just screwed out of every penny we don't have anyway.

And who is this guy? I never imagined anyone but my husband would look at me and tell me exactly what he's going to do to get me pregnant. But here it is, happening. Like, dude...at least buy me a cup of coffee first. And who is this man who hands us a pamphlet at the end of all this with a picture of a chubby cheeked baby on the front? And what well-intentioned idiot made the pamphlet in the first place? Are you TRYING to rub it in? Because the front of the pamphlet says something quippy about giving you "every conceivable chance" and the picture on the pamphlet shows you something you'll never obtain, and isn't it all so hilarious and cute?

When we got home, it took everything I had in me to not toss that pamphlet straight in the trash. I think the only reason I didn't is because I didn't want my husband to know how much getting that stupid, useless information bothered me. Because there's no way that's even remotely a possibility for us. Not only financially, but just considering the risk factors and long term effects given our unique medical circumstances. The stress of doing that and knowing we would have literally ONE shot at it (maybe two, if we're lucky and want to go through surgery twice and want to cough up $40,000, which for us to do, would mean selling the soul of our firstborn...which would really defeat the purpose anyway). Because of the medical complications we have, we can't do round after round of IVF, even if we wanted to. We can't get one sample to freeze for all of eternity, even if we wanted to. And even if we wanted to, we'd still be left wrestling with moral questions and ethical questions and every other "what if..." that exists when you're talking about some pretty serious medical interventions to create life.

This appointment - this news - is in fact just what we were expecting to hear. It's what we'd read about. It's what the doctor had indicated over the phone. But regardless, there's still that small part of you that goes in hoping for a miracle. And when that small part dies, it suddenly becomes not so small. As if piercing that bead of hope leads to an inky mess that spills out and out  and out, creating an endlessly hungry black hole in its place.

Sometimes the black hole is quiet. You don't even know it's there. It is so dark, so much a void, that it seemingly ceases to exist. Life carries on.

And sometimes the black hole is dragging you toward it, stretching your bones as it sucks at your feet, pulling you deeper into something you could not escape, and maybe wouldn't even want to if you could.

Sometimes the black hole feels manageable, ignorable, leaveable. There are other galaxies out there, after all. A whole world of something else.

Sometimes that other world of something else feels exciting. It has so much potential and so much good - different good than this world - but still good.

And sometimes that other world feels like a pale shadow. A knock off of the brand name. Sometimes it feels second best, and I don't want it to. I want that world to feel like everyone says this world should: "Best thing that ever happened to me."

But I'm not sure that other world will, and I'm scared it won't ever, and I'm scared I'll wake up one day living in that world and realize that I'm not really living in it so much as existing and that I'm still gazing with longing at that first, vibrant world getting slowly eaten by the black hole and wishing that there were someway I could have lived there instead.

And as much as I know in my head that everyone says that won't happen, convincing my heart and preparing my soul for that change is a process, and it's not one I feel should be rushed. I don't need it encouraged out of me. I don't need emotional liposuction. I need to work out. I need to adjust my diet. I need a new lifestyle, and I need all the pain that comes with making those changes.

So rather than hiding these doubts and fears, rather than smothering them in the frosting that people tend to smear over the bits of burnt cake we wish didn't exist, instead I'm sitting in it. Wrestling with it. Waiting for my heart to grow, and my soul to find peace, and my mind to recognize that the unknown is a beautiful thing and something that will be even more beautiful when I know it. And for now, in this time of unknown, I am learning to stretch new muscles and find new dreams and give grace to my own unrest until it's quieted for the next step.