I'm sorry, Maria, that's so painful.

If it's okay, I'm still going to hold out hope that you become a parent because I think you'd be so very good at it. I think you have a lot of love that you could lavish on a child.

I'm sorry, Maria. I agree with Strix, your feelings aren't petty.

Oh Maria, your feelings are your feelings and they are real. And they aren't petty, but I do know that those feelings can make you feel that way. Any way you can find to lighten your burden is a good thing.

(((Maria))

{{Maria}} Your feelings are real and not petty.

If it's okay, I'm still going to hold out hope that you become a parent because I think you'd be so very good at it. I think you have a lot of love that you could lavish on a child.

I'd like to hold on to this hope for you, too.

And in news about periods in a different sort of way....

I had a dream last week that I was visiting my mom for Thanksgiving (which I never do). In the dream, I said something about how something was weird or off (I can't remember exactly). My mom responded with, "Well, that's to be expected since you're pregnant."

I immediately woke up in a cold sweat and started doing the math. I thought I was fine and it was just a dream, but you know how those things linger in your brain.

Yesterday, after 9th period, if someone had walked by the staff restroom, they might have heard a relieved, "Thank God!"

This is why the only thing I'm grateful for during this god-forsaken time of enforced cheer and gaity is my family and all of you.

Now that I have some time and distance, I'm also seeing how toxic our relationship was in certain respects. It makes me even sadder, because we both could have been happier. I miss him very much, but I'm realizing I started shutting the door on us even before he died. I think he did too, and neither one of us did anything about it.

Oh Maria, try to forgive yourself, no love is perfect.

and neither one of us did anything about it.

I hope this doesn't sound prescriptive or preachy, Maria. Just my experience but I want to share it with you. When my first marriage ended I spent at least three years just hanging on by my fingernails and really being only able to live emotionally in a step-by-step, handle the next thing kind of way.

And I finally came to a place where I realized that I wasn't moving forward because I wasn't choosing to imagine a new future for myself. That it was too painful to redefine myself that way, to hope again for something good. To imagine a future instead of survive the present. I had to let go of an idea of myself that was no longer true to become something else.

I really try to be grateful for what I do have, but there are certain things that make me petty still. I'm trying to change it, but you can see how successful I am with that.

I don't think that's petty at all. I am in much the same place, but probably easier, since I never had the possibility that was then taken away. I have no intention of being a single parent, but I'd like to be one. But it's looking like that may not happen. Which makes me sad.