Crabby, Tired, and Sad

I know, such a lovely title for a blog post. But it's not like anyone else is reading this, anyway, and this functions more like a journal for me than for anyone else's enjoyment. And if anyone is reading (most likely, my husband, although I doubt even that!) he or she already probably knows that I've been in a crabby mood the last few days.

You know it's bad when you get frustrated with the dog...the sweet, loving, lazy dog. That's how my day started, when he wouldn't willingly come downstairs. Then, he had the gall to get up while I was exercising downstairs (I know!...also, I do know I was totally overreacting) and I had to move him to the couch. Really - it sounds ridiculous as I type it, but this morning, it was sending me over the edge. I capped the morning by not only dropping the butter container, cracking the bottom, but also getting my period.

Ahhh...PMS. I don't get headaches or cramps or anything, I just get totally crabby and completely klutzy. More so than usual. And, this is the first of many months where we're not actively doing anything to try for a pregnancy...and so it's very sad, too. Isn't it bad enough that we haven't been successful in the pregnancy department? I mean, do I have to have nasty cramps, the crabbiness, and the klutziness, too? I hope that this gets better as time goes by...I thought I was okay with stepping off the infertility treatment train, but if I get like this every month it is going to get very old, very very fast. As in, it's already old already.

Is it that I haven't given myself enough time to deal with our decision? I don't know. We just decided not to pursue other options a few weeks ago...it really hasn't been that long. Maybe I'm still in the mourning process, for lack of another description. It certainly doesn't help when I am confronted with pregnant people literally everywhere we go...from good friends, to neighbors, to friends-of-friends. And I'm still having a hard time with the sad thoughts when I do encounter someone who's pregnant.

Work has been busy - for both of us - which is good. But in the back of my mind, there is always the thought that I'm going to become what I never wanted to become - someone like my first "real" boss, who was bitter and angry and self-centered, and who hated women who had children because they decided to put family first and not their careers. I always thought I'd show her, by having a family AND a great career. So much for that. So while it's been busy - and a bit mentally draining - recently, it's also difficult to realize that I'll never have to balance work and young children, or maternity leave, or any of that. Even the fun stuff, like showing pictures of my kids to colleagues at meetings.

So maybe it is that I'm just going through the mourning process. Maybe it's good that I'm leaving for a work-related meeting next Saturday - in Iceland, of all places. Maybe being somewhere differnet will help get my mind off of how I feel like a failure for not being able to get pregnant, and for getting off the treatment train before we'd exhausted all the options available to us. It'd be nice if clarity and peace came in nice, tidy packages that show up when we need them most...I'm still waiting for mine.