Pause

Do you ever feel like your life is paused? Like the screen is frozen in the most awkward moment? You know that if you could just find the dang remote and press play you could get that awful look off your face and relax.

Ugly face moment from NBC's Do No Harm.
Poor guy, I think he's really intelligent, but he looks quite dumb here.

That's how I feel. My life is stuck on pause and I lost the remote (or Sterling ate it). I've realized lately that I've pretty much stopped living. Literally, the only thing that gets me out of the house is church on Sundays and my small group one night a week. There are soooooo many things that I want to do, but for one reason or another, I don't.

Take running for example. Once upon a time, a long, long time ago I trained for the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer 3-Day. The training sucked a lot. But my mom, the slave driver equivalent to Jillian Michaels had me scared out of my mind. So I trained, and I trained. I was in such good shape by the time the 3-Day actually arrived that the 60(ish) miles in 3 days was actually easier than the first 10 mile training walk. Now, I didn't lose a pound during all of that training, but Sam lost like a gazillion. It was disgusting. So, whenever we get really frustrated with ourselves, we say that we should train for something. Training = motivation. Sam always wants to run. Now, I can't run… like at all. But I figure, I couldn't walk 10 miles at first either. So running sounds ultra hard, but plausible. And then the fear sets in. What if, by some insane miracle, I got pregnant, didn't know it, and went for a run, and well, you know where this is going… What if running caused a miscarriage? I would NEVER get over it. Ever.

The same can be said for Zumba. Zumba looks fun(ish). If I had a partner in crime who was equally uncoordinated and new to Zumba, if we went out and bought new workout attire like Erika recommends, and if we stayed waaaaayyyyy in the back, then Zumba might help get rid of these extra pounds I'm carrying around. But then I think, "what if I bounced my baby loose?". See what goes on inside of this head? It's not fun, I tell you.

Then there is the financial aspect of living. The original plan was to buy a house this year. Sooner rather than later. We figure we got dealt a pretty crappy hand as far as graduating in the middle of a recession, but as far as the housing market goes… it couldn't really be better. We wanted to take advantage now, while a mortgage payment is actually less than rent, rather than miss the boat and watch home ownership sail ten years out of the picture. But that was the plan before we learned that becoming parents was going to cost us BIG bucks. I don't know how to be a home owner and a mom on the same budget. So if I have to choose, well owning a home is possible at 40, while getting this lady pregnant is probably, well, not.

And as far as posterity goes, my plan was to document our life really well with beautiful photos. I've wanted professional photos of us for over a year. I look like a moron 99% of the time in photos, but people like Chris + Allie can make just about anything beautiful. Here's proof:

Engagement photo of Sam and I in Fall of 2009.
All the credit goes to the*Reason for making me look lovely.

See what I mean? I'd love a photo session, but I keep holding out expecting to need maternity photos before too long. Plus, I feel guilty paying for photos of just us.

The pause on life is literally at all levels. When I really thought pregnancy was right around the corner, I wouldn't let myself buy any clothes because obviously I was about to have to buy a whole new wardrobe to fit my baby bump. I've slacked a bit here because everything I'm buying now is larger and therefore more likely to last into a pregnancy, but still the thoughts are there.

Sam and I planned to go on some great vacations. I thought maybe our five year anniversary would be somewhere fabulous like Hawaii or Europe. But we would need to start saving soon to pull off a trip like that sans credit cards. But lets get real, there is at least $15,000 needed before the Hawaii fund gets started, so that will probably never happen.

As far as jobs go, I delayed applying for jobs initially because I didn't want to have to deal with a new employer who wouldn't let me off for an appointment. Plus, I didn't want to have to explain what I was doing or where I was going all the time to a new boss. I figured that there weren't too many employers out there that would be very excited for a new employee who was trying super desperately to get knocked up.

I'm not happy in any way with this pause in my life. I'm so ready to move on, try new things, reach a new status in life. Of course, I'd really like to fast forward a bit, but normal speed would be much better than this stalled out, frozen thing I've got going on. As you may have surmised from the pitiful post from the other night, we are done with medically assisted trying to conceive for a while now. With that HUGE chunk of my life missing, I've got to figure out how to live again. There HAS TO BE joy in the waiting, you know?

Anybody else, fertile or infertile, ever feel like somebody pushed pause on the movie of your life? Did you ever find the remote? Are you still paused or playing away?