Infertility and Inferiority
Everyone has something that happens in their life that forces them to look their weaknesses and vulnerabilities in the eye. Mine just happens to be infertility. Knowing that my body is inferior to others casts a light in other areas of my life. I start to feel inferior or less important. Our brains are amazing and we subconsciously start to look for “proof” that our mindset is the only right one. We find the validation we are desperately afraid of. For me this happened today and thank goodness I know that’s what was happening and could stop that story before it continued it’s siege for my mind.
There is a person close to me who is notorious for treating my schedule carelessly. They will make plans with me and then show up within 4 hours (before or after) of the scheduled time. Yesterday I brought this to the person’s attention and they profusely apologized and said they would make sure to follow through on plans better. They were then 15 minutes late to our appointment today. As I was waiting for them to show up, I was getting really upset. And then I was upset about how upset I was. It seemed silly to be mad that someone was 15 minutes late. In the long run of life, that 15 minutes doesn’t matter. But I was mad which prompted me to think about WHY was I upset? What occurred to me is that with this person in particular I want their approval and love. I’m conscious of the fact that they desperately want me to have children and the fact that I haven’t yet is upsetting to them. When they make plans with me and then treat them so carelessly it makes me feel like I am less important then people in their life who aren’t infertile. I can’t help but wonder if I had children would this person still be unreliable and how would I feel about that? If they become reliable does that prove the fact that I was less important due to infertility? Or does it help just knowing they can now be counted on to be where they said they’d be when they said they’d be there.
It helped to just process that a little bit and know that at the end of the day I don’t get my worth from other people’s approval. Even the people who mean the most to me.
(P.S. If you want to argue and say that my body isn’t inferior please don’t. I’m not judging my body. I’m just acknowledging that I can’t do something other people easily can)
