Words

My boyfriend (who I am hereby naming Bear) saw me logging in tonight and asked me about whether I'm still going to post in Notes.  I told him what I told y'all, about posting there and maybe cross-posting some.  And then I tried to tell him that because of how hard it is for some people to read such posts, maybe I'd post over there about it if I...if we...and I couldn't say it.

I danced around the word.  I said, "if we...you know."  I tried to speak and my voice dropped away.  Bear looked at me and said, "you can't say that word, can you?"  And he was right.  I couldn't.  Even when I tried, I couldn't force the word out.  Because it's just too fraught.

(Something I picked up from a friend of mine is that you don't really have to say anything after the word "fraught," it really can stand on its own.  Because when you use it, you're always referring to something bad.  Something is "fraught with danger" or "fraught with peril."  Something is never "fraught with puppies" or anything else happy.  So now I just use it on its own.  And that word really is fraught for me.)

Anyway, vocab lesson aside, I couldn't say it because I don't believe I'll ever be it.  I expect my body to fail me, to fail us.  And if we can't, it really would be my body failing us.  He has kids and had them without any problem, it wouldn't be his body.  It would be me being a failure, failing to so what a woman should be able to and failing to give us what we both want desperately, and we would know it this time.  No question, like there was with my ex when we didn't know who it was since all the testing for both of us was normal.  Me.

Bear really does believe that we can, saying that less probable things have happened, including us being together at all.  He said that that gives him the belief that we will be able to.  But that came about because of choices.  Whether I'll be able to or whether I'll hold us back isn't a choice.  He points out that whether we test, whether we cycle, whether we do treatments is a choice, though.  A real choice, which I didn't have before with my ex when one thing after another kept us from doing an IVF cycle.  And that is true.

But for now, all I can do is lean on his belief.