roller coaster

I'm starting to feel that vice of anxiety that comes from anticipating a very busy time ahead. Within a week's time I will have wrapped If Not Now (a film I'm working on), flown to the midwest for a family reunion, returned to Boston hours before my first Hamlet rehearsal, welcomed Hamlet director and house-guest, John Hadden, and his dog, Leo, to my home, and faced yet another period OR the dawning excitement of motherhood. In an ideal world the house will be cleaned, lines will be learned, and I will somehow magically transform into an ideal vessel for human life by Friday.

check. check. and check.

I'm trying not to get my hopes up about getting pregnant, but of course it's looming very large in my mind. After Thom and I decided to start trying I went through a two week span where I just knew I was pregnant. I felt different somehow; I was aware of my body in a way I hadn't ever been. I had an urge to eat healthy and no desire to drink. I felt tired and experienced what seemed like implantation bleeding--right on schedule. Finally, I spent a morning feeling nauseous and dry heaving for no explicable reason (I was the happiest I've ever been staring into the face of the porcelain gods).

And the next morning my hopes were crushed when I got up to pee and discovered an unwelcome monthly visitor. I don't know if I experienced an early miscarriage (which happens in about 40% of pregnancies) or if my "pregnancy symptoms" were all psychosomatic. Either way I was devastated. I felt robbed and cheated. And I knew it was my own fault for letting myself getting carried away with the idea that I was pregnant before there was any real evidence.

So as I face the week ahead I suppose it's good that I have something to distract me from phantom symptoms and minus lines on pregnancy tests. I'm a little sad that I feel the need to set up emotional barriers to protect myself from disappointment, but I know that it's the only way to retain my sanity in what could otherwise be a heartbreaking process.

I keep thinking how magical it would have been for us to get pregnant on our first try. I just have to accept that it's going to be magical however it happens.