Sunday, January 2, 2011, was my two-year blogoversary. Apparently, I wrote 191 posts in 2009, but only 130 in 2010. (Became less long-winded? That doesn't seem likely.) But I have averaged over a post every other day for more than two years now, making me prolific even if not necessarily edifying. When I read, I think, Stirrup Queen's post on tips for new bloggers (she was my introduction to the blog world, and Dear Gherkin was the first blog I read front-to-back), she suggested typing two or three posts before you actually start the blog, because people get really intimidated once they "have to write," and sometimes they get scared and never come back. It didn't sound likely to me at the time, and, sure enough, it's not a temptation with which I've struggled much.
The first of the Catholic bloggers I found was...Praying for Hope. (Isn't that awesome?) I just went back through reading my very first few comments when some patient souls started reading my blog. Some who have long since crossed over into new worlds; some who have gone private or off the grid; one comment from Jo (hi Jo!) whom I thought I discovered only a few months ago. (Isn't that funny?) And comments from bloggers I've loved since early on, including several that made me smile from shinejil.
Another fun (less fun) fact is that when I started blogging, I was 26. No, really. Isn't that ridiculously young? Today, I would give serious thought to not reading a blogger who was 26, on the basis that she was just too young to know what she's talking about. But next month, I will turn 29. It seems like an eternity from 26 to 29, doesn't it? It does to me.
And of course, even though I have deliberately set different milestones for myself (retiring from ttc and treatment by 30, principally), I know that that 29th birthday will bring with it a slew of involuntary milestones. In May, it will be if I don't conceive this month, I can't possibly deliver a child before my thirties. In January 2012, it will be, if I don't conceive this month, I will be 30 and childless. Please, God, let something happen between now and then to cast my life and its value in different terms. (Terminal illness or the loss of my husband would technically fulfill that request, but I want to stress that they are not what I have in mind.)
So, to everyone I've met and "met" in these two years - thank you for sharing your precious learning so that my treatment-apathetic self could have new medicines to argue for with the doctor. Thank you for sharing your stories, even (especially) the difficult ones, so that I didn't feel like the only crazy person, the only person made sad by infertility, the only person trying to be a good Catholic but badly rocked by challenges I wasn't strong enough to take with equanimity. Thank you for sharing your own journeys of incredible faith, so that I have influences in my life reminding me that I need to get my act together, and how much I could be trying.
Thank you for your encouragement and advice and much-needed prayers and often hilarious comments and fabulous intricate knowledge of hormone supplementation and delightful procedures performed on the female reproductive system, and thank you, above all, just for reading. I know I'm not an easy blogger to read, because I never say in ten words what could be said in a thousand, and because of my million tangents, and inability to focus on one topic (even infertility. Did I mention I just bought a day bed frame on craigslist yesterday? It's awesome; now I'm excited to have guests!), and excessive opinions, and probably disturbing struggles with faith, and intermittent rage and constant ranting. I like to think of myself as a good writer (and I swear that, in a professional context, this is true. I have been told by people who know what they're talking about and probably aren't lying), but I go back and read previous posts, and I realize that this blog is just the ramblings of a loon. At well over 300 posts, it would be nice if it were a lovely sampling of delicately phrased, meticulously edited, truly inspired prose. But it was meant to serve a different purpose, I suppose - to move me along the difficult road of infertility, and take me, on my path, past all of you.
God bless you all.
