Men are from Mars and Women are from....

some other solar system. The way we deal with emotions is so incredibly different I sometimes wonder how we can even be the same species. Nothing has made me realize this more so than our struggle with infertility. Females have a biological urge to reproduce and rear children. Men have the biological urge... well to spread their seed. They were not biologically programmed for child rearing, and although some do an exceptional job, it is not their biological clocks ticking away.

Last night, however, changed my opinion. I was feeling particularly emotional. Could be from a host of different things, but it is probably a combination of the hormones I am on and the unusually large number of pregnant women I know right now. I read a status message of a friend of mine's on facebook and was soo happy for her, but so sad for myself. I told my husband how I was feeling and he really didn't have anything to say. I mean what can you say? But I needed him to say something... anything.

The same old "you don't know how this feels" fight started, but for once I saw a glimpse of someone that perhaps isn't so different from me. He finally opened up to me. He said he tries to be the strong one, the positive one, but it's not how he feels. He said he feels hopeless and helpless. He says it kills him to see me so depressed that I don't want to get out of bed in the morning. He hates that no one understands what we are going through. He hates it even more when they pretend to. He hates their perfect happy ignorant lives. He hates that he can't remember what our lives were like before infertility. He hates that he is jealous of his sister for having our niece. He hates that we keep throwing money at "it" because the doctor says here try this one more thing, but we can't stop because stopping is giving up hope. He hates how it constantly feels like someone is dying. Like this infertility is cancer, but instead of killing us physically it is killing us emotionally and eating away at us until we are nothing but empty shells of people. He hates getting up in the morning and pretending everything is okay to everyone around him when he'd rather just not do anything.

I have wanted to hear that he felt something and now that I know how he feels I don't know what to say. I've been so caught up in my own grief and pain that I don't know how to comfort someone else. I feel like a cracked piece of glass just waiting to break into a million pieces under the slightest pressure. I just keep telling myself you don't have time to break down because when and if you do you'll be in the hospital for quite some time and there is no way you can afford to take that much time away from your life. You have appointments with doctors, and you do have to work.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have a normal life. To come home to a house that isn't empty, to trip over toys in the floor, to hear a baby coo in their sleep in the middle of the night, to not feel so empty.

Hope is waning. We have our frozen embryo transfer on Monday, and one more IVF left. After that we can't afford to do anything else. We're flat broke and for all intents and purposes I am jobless. I am only per diem and physically/emotionally I can not work that job more than 3 days a week. I went from having a stellar work record to being afraid I'll never get another job because of the time I missed. I feel like I can not breathe, but at least I'm not alone.