Pop Goes My Bubble

I think sometimes I float around in a bubble of denial. I convince myself that I'm happy and I'm doing better.

• I'm functioning at a pretty high level. 
• I'm getting out and doing things. 
• I'm making new friends. 
• I'm not crying every day. Well maybe that one is a lie but I'm not crying as much. 
• I'm injecting myself with needles every third day with ease. 
• I'm somehow managing to juggle regular life with my ongoing frozen embryo cycle. 
• I'm somehow managing to control my grief and not let the fear of a potential new pregnancy paralyze me. 

It's all going swimmingly until something comes into contact with my bubble. It's very fragile to start with so it doesn't take much.

POP!

That's the sound of my bubble bursting. 

That's what happened to me last night.

I went out to an event with my women's club. It was a fun, social event. Everyone was busy chatting about being back in town and getting back into the swing of things. Soon the conversation turned to children. 

I sat listening to people talking about their new play dates and all the new friends they are making through their children. Someone was talking about the holidays and having a lunch and just letting all the kids run around and play. Talking about all the fun things there are to do in London with kids. 

As I sat listening I suddenly felt like they are living on a different planet than I am. Or maybe just a different dimension. Like in those science fiction shows where there are multiple time lines and everyone is existing in a different one. 

I live in the same town as they do. I attend many of the same social gatherings as they do. But somehow I am still left out of a massive part of life. There is a whole part of the world where I have no place. It's the place where parents and their living children are. It's a place where I am completely left out. 

I'm never invited to play dates or children's birthday parties where I can sit and drink wine and gossip while my son plays with the other children. I don't do the school run and chat with the other Moms at the school gates. I am unable to make new friends at my child's school. I don't have big parties where all the kids run around in the back garden. 

Why? Because I don't have a living child. Because I don't fit. Because I have yet to be granted membership into the Mommy and Daddy Club. Sure, I'm a member of the Baby Loss Mom's Club but who wants to join me there?? No one!

All this happy chatter made me realize just how much of life I am missing out on. How much of life I'm excluded from. So in addition to my grief and anxiety for this upcoming cycle, I am now feeling very alone. 

Alone in a crowd. Which is not a very nice place to be.

*Pouring my heart out with Shell over at Things I Can't Say.