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Editor's Note: Please take a brief poll (you'll find out why at the end of this post).
The Internet, that wondrous invention that allows us to connect with others in far flung places in real time through various methods of search and social networking is also an amazing living archive. With the click of a mouse I can find myself as I once was, such as here in a different time and place.
Time travel has its advantages and disadvantages. I can revisit the woman I was while working on the woman I want to be. The danger — the thing to guard against — is getting caught in between. That's when you can find yourself dancing with ghosts.
This time travel applies to real life as well as online life. Take last Saturday. Lisa — yes, she's as cool in person as she appears online — and I met for lunch.
Quick aside: This lunch was perhaps the 10th time I've met an online connection in person. There's definitely an awkwardness to manage — as with any first meeting. It's one thing if the reason you found each other is work or an innocuous hobby or some other benign connection. More sensitive topics (e.g. malfunctioning reproductive organs, for instance)...well, that's a horse of a different color, something akin to:
[Cheerful greetings.] Kind of unusual what brought us together, huh?
Yeah, so, you've had your private bits appraised at length and your heart ripped out, too? [Sigh. Look at menus]
Um, still have days when you get all weird around pregnant women? Not so much? That's cool.
[Enter waiter.] Yeh, still need a few minutes.
Really liked your last blog post. How about those nasty infertility demons? [Insert story about one of the worst visits.] Aren't you glad they don't visit as often? Bread?
Sounds like the recovery/ reinvention thing is goin' well. Nice to be moving forward isn't it? Getting beyond the grieving phase? [Mind travels back, tears well. Snap out of it and move back to the present.]
So, planning any travel? Great shoes, by the way. I can get lost at DSW if I'm not careful. Free time - one of the perks of the sort of life we now lead. Seen any good movies lately?
Okay, you get the drift.
We're in new territory, Me, Lisa and many, many others. We've had an extraordinary, solemn, life-shaping experience but we don't want that thing (our infertility) to be the centerpiece of who we are, our relationships. We certainly don't want to walk around with the scarlet "I" tattooed to our forwards. We don't want to get locked into a stereotype. (In fact, I'd like very much to change a few stereotypes!) We chafe at labels that never quite describe us in the right light. We don't want to be defined by what we don't have or who we're not.
I have much respect for the power of that thing that made us who are today, which is why I continue to try to make sense of it, to turn it over, to explore it. But as I told Lisa, I also want to keep it at arm's length. I've moved along the continuum with blogs from Coming2Terms to A Fresh Start. Women who visit these blogs and other online forums are in varying degrees of healing. (Please don't get me wrong, these sites play a key role in healing, which is absolutely necessary to move forward.) But, now I wonder if it's time to create a new, new place — not just a blog, but a website with content that covers a range of topics.
There are plenty of parenting websites but isn't it time that there was at least one website uniquely focused on the hundreds of millions of people around the world living different kinds of lives -- one that doesn't always assume the reader is or will be a parent?
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