The Most Rational and Irrational Decision
Sorry, more Blue Ticket questions. I promise I’ll never post spoilers, and you don’t really need to read the book to have thoughts on these quotes.
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Some infertility has a known diagnosis. Some infertility falls into the unexplained. When infertility is a surprise—when you’ve gone through life thinking you would be able to procreate and then discover you can’t—there is a “why me” element to it.
I mean, the simple response is also “why not me?” No one deserves infertility. Like most things in life, it’s doled out randomly. Our uterus works or it doesn’t. It was a good egg or it wasn’t. The sperm found its way to the goal or it didn’t.
On page 185, the narrator lies in bed, thinking about her blue ticket diagnosis:
As I lay there I thought about what the lottery might have seen or not-seem inside me. What had been recorded and observed and commented upon for my whole life; the times I refused to play, or pulled someone’s hair, or buried dolls in the dirt.
In the book, you only have twelve or so years for the universe to determine whether you’re given a blue or white ticket. But infertility comes after twenty or thirty years of choices. It was very hard for me to not let my brain go to that place: Why was I being chosen for this? What had I done or not done that put me in this situation?
And if it’s this hard, why don’t I stop? Why don’t I accept it rather than fight against it?
A few pages later, on page 189, she answers that.
Because it seemed like everything was telling me it was the right thing to do. Every cell in my body … Having a child is both the most rational and irrational decision possible, in this world. This fucking awful, beautiful world, which I can’t stop loving, though I have considered it, I have evaluated and counted the ways.
The most rational and irrational decision to fight against those clear signs from your body and decide to forge ahead anyway, without knowing how it will turn out.
3 comments
Finding out I was infertile (we were “unexplained”) made me bitter and angry about all the money spent on birth control over the years and made me scoff at myself for the times in my 20s when my period was late and I was concerned that I might be (unintentionally) pregnant. Ha! Little did I know then that the odds of that happening were slim-to-zero.
Also sucky: when you’re so old that doctors don’t bother trying to find a reason other than AMA . I don’t think 36 when we first started TTC is *that* old but by the time we got to CCRM (responsible for our two miracles) I was 41 and they were like eh who cares. I mean ultimately we got what we came for and I suppose there was no point in finding the why at that point (luteal phase defect?) when their protocols would take care of various issues but it was still off-putting. I wanted to know!
Ah yes, the old “Why me?” question. I think we’re taught so often and for so long that if we work hard and try our best then we can achieve something we want. Our entire economic/societal systems are built on that! So it seems wrong to suddenly find that this isn’t true. Or the “everything happens for a reason” rubbish that people use to explain away tragedies, inequities, etc.
I’ve learned to accept that it’s all random. But yes, even now, the feeling that I deserved it continues to pop up. But I squash it down as soon as I notice it! lol