two years and the heavy glob

This week we passed the two year mark of our wait. Two years. The wait is hard for me because of the limbo feeling. That in process feeling that you cannot really put aside. I was explaining it to a friend, a good friend, one who really gets me. I said that most people think I am handling my wait very well. And I have to agree, I have been okay. But inside of me, in my brain or in my heart, or wherever it is, there is a space. And in that space resides *that feeling.* *That feeling* consists of many different emotions that are married to one another in a big hodge-podgey glob of many different feelings from different sources. I said that it is very hard to go around with this thing inside of me and I feel kind of alone carrying it around. I mean, sometimes it is a heavy thing and the weight of it kind of squashes me to the ground and I have a hard time standing back up and I will reach out to a friend who helps to pull me back up into a decent posture and begin to ambulate this world again. Sometimes I am so busybusybusy sublimating all of my energy into being uber-productive that my unending small accomplishments steer me away from even noticing the icky glob of feelings. But it is always there. And the accomplishments, meh, they are okay, but it just doesn't do the trick.

I said to my friend, too, that this road has become so long that I know longer know how I might see the world without this feeling to accompany me, to color what I see. Part of the glob of feelings I have is that I went through secondary infertility. And I HATE that. I really loathe that I had to take that time out of my life, out of my ability to enjoy life, to be fully grieving. And it took a while. I couldn't really hand in that dossier until the major part of the grief was over. I couldn't do adoption and grief at the same time. I know of people who have managed this and I give them all my admiration because I don't know how I could do that. But more than anything, I hate that the emotion tied to not being able to have a second kid the biological way is in any way involved in the feeling I have about adopting. Because as soon as it clicked over in my mind, I was adopting, for real, then I immediately became joyful about it.

(Of course, I worry about all the normal pitfalls of adoption and have thought about all of it and talked about it and mulled about it ad nauseum, until I got what is called adoption fatigue, but I will tell you with not one ounce of penitence or apology that I am joyful about this adoption, about this child.)

And this has led me to know this much. Friends and loved ones are important. I carry the space and in the space is the hodge-podgey glob. And I only accept into my life the people who know about the space and have mercy on me and are kind and carry within them the thought that my glob can become quite heavy at times. And on the days when the glob feels light, they are willing to laugh with me. One of my most treasured friends told me, "Your mind is a dangerous place, don't spend too much time there alone. You have to talk to people when you are feeling shitty like this." And so I do. I am. Thank you all, friends.