I'm in my own way again.
This morning L&S called to see if we were willing to be references for their adoption application, which they're submitting this afternoon. Yes, folks, from unable to discuss adoption to putting in an application in two short months, and all because of us.
This is the part that really hurts. This is the part that makes me most sad, because we're staring at twelve long months of waiting before we can even begin the process of waiting.
And part of me wants to get really sarcastic and really mean, not just about them, but about a lot of things. About BIL and SIL not planning financially and getting all the family help, while we get punished for being responsible. About L&S applying to adopt when they've seemed on the verge of divorce repeatedly in the last six months. About J&N being bad at moving and bad at helping their kid go to sleep. About neither of our mothers being very interested in the fact that we're planning to adopt. About all of the people who are merrily going along on their family building way because we facilitated it somehow.
But it's not about them. It's about my being sad and angry that I've been actively planning to start a family since I was 28 and now I'm 34 and I'll be 35 when we apply and likely 36 or older when we actually get a kid. It's about being frustrated that we aren't in a position to do this responsibly yet, not when we've just gotten ourselves out of debt and have no desire to get back in. It's about feeling unseen and unattended to by the people who love us, people who don't seem to see past my attempts at centeredness to acknowledge the deep hurt that's behind it. It's about my fear that this will never happen for us, that we will always be the aunties and never the mommies. And when I get sarcastic and angry and mean, it's because I'm trying not to feel the feelings I really have: the fear, the despair, the sadness, the heartache.
The problem is that I'm making it worse, railing against what is. We have to wait another year, and there will be waiting after that, and this is not what we want. We envy our friends and family who have had it so easy, and we envy the friends who have all of the resources to throw at this adventure. We want a child desperately, but we can't have one right now. We're scared and sad and tired and feeling like this marathon will never, ever end. We want things to be different, and they aren't.
Our friends and family are not the problem, and they are not the enemy (except when making stupid comments about me, but that's another post for another time). But neither can they really understand where we are and what it feels like to be us right now. We need to take the time to grieve this process that isn't proceeding according to plan, and we need to find forums in which we can simply be present to our own experiences of it.
It's hard to make the space in our busy, people-filled lives to just sit with the pain of it. It's easy to put on the masks of being okay, of coping, of keeping on keeping on, but it's those masks that then turn around and come out as meanness and sarcasm. The flip side is that expressing the pain only makes people reassure us, and while I'm grateful for their love and concern, I don't want to be reassured. They don't know that everything will work out; none of us do. And that kind of sentiment glosses over what it's like to be right here, where we are: in the middle of a long stretch of desert, hoping that the oasis doesn't keep moving, that it's more than a mirage. What I want is a space to just lean in to, where the pain is acknowledged without being minimized. What I want is a witness. And maybe I have to be my own witness.
In the meantime we're painting the inside of our house a rainbow of colors. In the meantime we're making lists of the things we're doing in preparation. In the meantime we're having dates with each other. And in the meantime I need to keep going to the cushion, to my journal, to the trees, so that I can sit with myself in compassion and acknowledge what is really there.