I'm not only a member, I'm the President

It's President's Day and I'm thinking what it must have been like to have been president. President of anything. I've never been a president of anything. Never wanted to be. I have never wanted to subject myself to peer votes, scrutiny, judgement and criticism. I'm a wallflower kind of girl. I'll speak up when I want my voice to be heard, but otherwise just pretend I'm not even there. I really do prefer it that way; I always have. So to imagine being president of anything is about the least appealing thing to me.

However, I think I've become an accidental president. And it's been purely of my own accord. I've labeled myself, taken on this new role and this new identity, contemplated my new role at large, made myself own it. I am the President of Infertility in my own mind. At some point, I made my identity about being infertile. Hell, I refer to myself as "Infertile." It's who I am. It's what I do, (or rather don't do). And it's unhealthy.

I learned a couple years ago that labeling yourself and putting yourself into these categories like "childless" and "infertile," is a bad thing. Those labels tend to shape our thoughts and emotions, the way we interrelate, the way we treat ourselves. They can influence our thoughts and consequently our well being, and not always in a good way. "Infertile" has a negative connotation. You don't proudly announce to strangers that you're infertile. If you do, we need to talk because that makes you a very unique individual. So I have given myself a label that I associate with all these negative emotions; there are countless amounts of them that I don't need to list because if you're reading this you already know them, or you can probably pretty well guess what those are. So in labeling myself as an Infertile I've attached myself to all those other negative terms. "Because I am Infertile, I am insert negative thought or emotion here."

So I am going to start working on resigning from the Infertile label. I haven't quite figured out how I'm going to do that yet - your suggestions are welcome. But I know if I can take myself out of that box then maybe some of the negative things I think about myself as a result will start to go away some.

In other news, my dr appt this am showed two large follicles on the good ovary and one medium sized one on the gimpy ovary - a feat in itself! My estradiol is up to 182 today from 62 on Fri, so doc thinks I'll be ready for my trigger shot Wed. or Thurs. This cycle has been a lot easier than the first. Maybe it's because I've known what to expect so I'm a little less scared, but either way, it feels like a small accomplishment. For today that's good enough for me. After all, I am the President so if it's good enough for me it should be good enough for everyone :)