There's a first time for everything

I'm not pregnant. The Boy doesn't even know yet, since he was still sleeping when I left this morning.

How do I know? Because last night, as I was walking through freezing pouring rain, I took shelter in a drugstore and, while there, bought my very first ever box of HPTs. I even bought the branded version. And since I bought them, I figured, why not use them?

So when I got home last night I tested. Negative. And while that empty space where a line should be felt like it was growing so large that I would be swallowed up inside of it, I went to sleep by rationalizing that it was still early and I'd get a more accurate result this morning.

And so this morning I tested again. More accurately, I tested at 4.24am when I woke up to go to the bathroom. And it was still negative. And so those wonderful rationalizations that I built up last evening just fell away like so much dust. The empty space where I was hoping beyond hope that a second line would be? It just screams "barren" to me. Because that's how I feel right now: like a fucking empty, barren wasteland. And lucky for me, I had 2 hours of lying in bed staring at the ceiling to think about how broken and fucked up I am, and how I clearly made wrong decisions that have led me to this point of trying to have my first child when I am almost 40, and just resenting the hell out of everyone who has this come naturally.

Because my mind is totally cluttered today, even though I know for certain that this had not worked, I am still taking the estrogen and progesterone. I know it is stupid and futile, but I'm just afraid of fucking something up, and so will take my medicine until told otherwise because I can deal with this not working, but I couldn't deal with it not working because I decided to just stop everything. Rational? No. But I'm not exactly in a really rational place right now.

Where I am is sad, and increasingly desperate as I approach my 40th birthday, and angry that I have to deal with this shit, and losing hope that this is going to work for us. I know that some of these are irrational feelings -- I mean, we only put back one embryo each time, and this is our very first cycle, and we still have one on ice. But I wanted us and our luck to be better than the statistics and have it work without a whole lot more emotional suffering. But that's clearly not my lot. More suffering clearly lies ahead, and today is just going to be a long struggle not to cry.