“I wish I had a brother,” he said this morning.
Which is something I have said a million times when I was little. But it was in a ‘I am sick of hanging out with two whinging sisters who won’t come kick a football with me’ kinda way, not in a ‘I am lonely and have no one to play with at all’ sorta thing. I know having a sibling or even two doesn’t automatically mean you’re going to have an amazing sibling relationship your entire lives, and I know it doesn’t even mean that you’re likely to always get along well at all…. but having no siblings removes the possibility entirely.
And it this that was a large part of what drove me for so many years on IVF, long after it outwore it’s economic viability and long after the emotional toll untenable. I didn’t want to have an only child. I’ve always enjoyed my sibling relationships (for the most part) growing up, and truly didn’t want to have my little guy not getting the opportunity to make good sibling relationships of his own. But this one has turned out to be totally beyond my control, and a single little rug rat he has ended up being.
Still… it’s like a kick in the guts when he says things like this, and reminds me of how utterly I failed. Being on IVF always felt like I was working towards something… an endeavour or undertaking of some sort. One that became all encompassing for many years. But ultimately it didn’t matter how much time, money, energy or effort I applied to the problem nothing I did affected the outcome. I’d never been in that situation before, where my concerted efforts mattered not a whit and I’d never encountered something that I couldn’t succeed at regardless of how hard I worked at it or how many resources I expended on it. And that is why the whole thing has left me feeling like I’ve failed.
I made the big mistake this morning of clicking on the IVF tag on my journal and reading back through the last 14-20 entries I have made on IVF… big mistake! Huge! It’s all too depressing, let’s go back to thinking about happier things – like back pain! 🙁