What I really meant to say......

I had drafted a Christmas letter this year to go with our Christmas photo cards. Well, things got busy and the letter was never finished and never got out. The letter had a re-cap. of our past year. Since we moved due to DH's new job, and because I also found a new job, we had quite a few updates. It was a decent, happy little letter.

As the Christmas cards with happy families and birth and pregnancy announcements came pouring in.....I realized that I was glad that I didn't send the letter. That letter was a lie. This is what I really meant to say:

Dear Friends and Family,

We couldn't be more relieved that 2010 is over. Don't be fooled by our cute photo card with our smiling faces. We are sad and depressed, and this has been one of the hardest years of our lives (and we thought 2009 was the hardest!). Mike lost a job he liked in August of 2009. He started his new job in Dec. of 2009 and got off to a bumpy start. He waited for things to improve, but as 2010 rolled on, it just got worse. He has a terrible boss who makes his job unbearable. He is miserable at work and hates his job. He often comes home grumpy and frustrated.

We had a hard time finding a new house we liked and must have looked at around 40 homes before choosing one. It was hard to ignore the childrens' rooms and nursuries that we knew would remain empty if we bought that particular house. Although we found a nice house, we still don't feel quite at home. We miss our friends and family, and we miss the cultural and social offerings of our home town. We've had to fix a couple of things on the house which cost us a few bucks.

In February, we lost my dear grandpa at age 96. He suffered a bit before his death and it was hard to watch. We miss him a lot, we have one less person at our family gatherings. He is in peace now, which is one of the good things of 2010.

We took a vacation to the Pacific Northwest in June to celebrate our 5 year anniversary. It was anything but a celebration. Mike was so depressed the whole trip, not at all a resemblance of the happy and joyful man that stood at the alter on June 4th, 2005. I had a hard time enjoying it and felt like I was on vacation by myself for most of it. I tried to forget about our unfulfilled dreams, the missing pieces of our family, the hardship and turmoil infertility has caused us, but it was hard to ignore when we were supposed to be celebrating a milestone anniversary.

In July I found a job at our local animal humane organization. I like my job, but it doesn't fulfill my longing to be a mother. Have we mentioned that we attempted IVF twice last year? Last Christmas we had some hope that our IVF with one little embryo worked. This year we have an empty space at our table again, which signifies the empty dreams we had for our life. No one, not even Mike, remembered in September the life that could have entered the world that month, no one but me. I've never felt so alone in this journey.

December has been a particularly hard month. There have been numerous pregnancy announcements among friends and family, each one a knife in my heart, each one a reminder that not only does my dream remain unfulfilled, it feels completely dead. The cards and photos come in and we are reminded over and over of what our life lacks. We try to hang on to what we have, and we try to hope that maybe one Christmas, there will be 3 stockings on the mantle. But truthfully, our hope slips away along with another Christmas with just the two of us.

So, to wrap up or summarize our life over the past year, I am recalling a moment we had on Christmas Eve. After going to church, spending time with family and the usual Christmas eve activities, we got in our bed for the night and Mike took my hand and held it over his heart. He said "do you feel that?" "what?" I asked. "That is my broken and hurting heart" he replied. And we cried ourselves to sleep.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

From,
Just the Two of Us