Hurry Up and Wait

Six week scan is Thursday.

Today is Tuesday.

There is an eternity, yawning open between today and Thursday. I cannot entirely imagine how that Expanse of time, that chasm, can possibly be bridged. I know that some of the time will be filled tonight, as I go with a friend to a potentially important professional event. I will be distracted by nerves and networking and the foundation garment that I have to wear under my restrictive, but very flattering, cocktail dress. That's six hours, give or take.

I'll spend another seven or eight sleeping tonight.

Then maybe another seven or eight on top of that, sleeping Wednesday night.

But even so, even with all those hours accounted for, I struggle not to try to force Thursday to arrive sooner, simply as an act of will.

I read my body for clues that everything is all right. I have had no spotting. I have had pretty consistent nausea that seems to worsen later in the day. My breasts are starting to feel slightly sore. All of these are good signs. They point to good things.

But I won't be reassured until I'm told to be reassured, and probably - if I'm honest - not even then. Then I will just have another new benchmark over which to fret. New impossible chasms of time to cross on a ferry of my own fear.

I hope you're okay in there, Succotash. Feeling warm and safe. Growing. Drinking up those vitamins and chia seeds ad whatever else filters its way in there. I hope you aren't afraid. There's nothing for you to be afraid of. I'll be afraid for both of us, okay?

Worrying

Anxiety is the future stealing from the present, somebody told me not long ago, and even though he has a point, knowing that isn't quite enough to make me stop worrying today. I have no concrete reason for concern. Everything is the same. Mild cramping, which I am treating with rest. I ordered Chinese food. My appetite isn't great, as it hasn't been so far.

Maybe I'm worried because I've told a couple of people and I am worried about jinxing myself. That could be it, even though I am an intelligent, highly educated woman who by all rights out not believe in jinxes.

I would rather be at the library.

I would rather be deep in my work.

Instead, I'm on the couch, with a heating pad, simmering in sexual frustration and preoccupied with forces wholly and completely out of my control. I am in the present, fully, because my body is trapping me in it, and yet the present is being stolen from me by my fears about the future.

The mind can be a duplicitous thing. Or place in which to dwell.

Second Beta

"I have a couple of embarrassing questions."

"It's okay. I'm a nurse."

"Well, just one."

"Uh huh?"

"So. I know I'm not supposed to [drops voice] have sex. But can I [drops to whisper] orgasm?"

"You mean...."

"You know. Orgasm."

"Like, outside, not inside?"

"Yeah."

"Um. I don't see why not. But let me check with the more senior nurse."

"Great. Thanks. Cause I was all set to make myself feel better for this cycle failing by getting high and having sex with my husband, and then it was positive."

[Laughs]

I Wanted to See Them

Two lines.

That's really two lines, I'm seeing there, tonight, as my husband and I celebrate the twentieth anniversary of the night we met by retracing our steps on February 12-13, 1999.

"Poor Succotash," I said. "There's a lot of history here. He's getting in really late in the game."

"Yeah, she is," he said.

Shock

Succotash.....?

Is that you.....?

Beta Day

Yesterday was a big grief day. Big, big grief. "Big feelings," as an irritating self-actualized person I know would put it. There was weeping. There was lying in bed immobile. Outside, the sleet turned to rain, and it was cold inside my heart, too.

Today, the weather has broken. The sun came out. I walked the puppy over to get a coffee. I took my last PIO shot. I made the puppy is breakfast. I washed and dressed and went for my blood test. I went to the post office. I hoofed it over to First Avenue to drop off my full container of sharps. Then I hoofed it back to Fifth and stopped in to the small weird antique jewelry store that fixes my grandmother's watch for me and dropped off a ring to be sized. They said it would be ready at the end of the day.

Now I'm at the library.

The phone is ringing on silent next to me with the results of my beta.

I am about to be set free.

Panic Attack

I woke up at 3:20 in the morning with a racing heartbeat and thoughts all over the place. Thinking about smells, and my body, and did it work, and did it not work, and what do I do, over and over and over again.

I finally had to take a slug of Nyquil to knock myself back into sleep.

This morning I feel shaky and anxious, and unclear what to do with myself, or about it, or even if there is anything to be done.

I guess I could go buy a test and take it and start the grieving process today instead of working. But what good is that?

What good is any of it.