Perspective Punch

I've been feeling really down again...and it's because three of my friends are pregnant and I want my damn uterus back.  Okay, so I've psyched myself out trying to act tough on the outside like I didn't care that I could never have a child again.  I told everyone I couldn't imagine starting over, that I didn't want anymore kids...but in reality, I've always wanted to have a lot of kids - um, like 6 to be exact.  But I can't anymore.  Now, let me be straight, I'm very, very happy for my pregnant friends, but at the same time I can't help but feel this loss.  I don't know how to explain it.  I LOVED being pregnant (weird, maybe?  but hasn't that already been established???).  Anyway, the fact is I have to deal with not being able to physically have any more children, and I keep trying to ask myself, is it the fact that I can't have another baby or is it the fact that my "baby" is growing older and no longer needs me/wants to be around me as much?  Exactly which loss is at that I'm having trouble with???  Is it fair to say both?

Anyway, like I've said, I've been feeling really super down.  Second guessing everything, the choices I've made, etc.  I went home today.  I just needed to take off and go "home."  I had a very good day but was punched in the face by perspective.  And I have to admit, I needed a good smack-down.  My BFF from high school's mom said to me, "See?  There was a reason that you married him and had to go through all that trouble because if you wouldn't have you would have never had that experience of physically being pregnant and having a child."  I know that, and that's what I keep telling myself...

But then I was driving back home tonight and on Route 12 these police cars come with their lights on and sirens blaring and after them a motorcade of cycles with the flags.  They were escorting a dead soldier home from the war...and that's really where perspective gave me a black eye.  I've seen several of these motorcades passing by where I live and every time it makes me cry.  What do I have to be selfish for?  Why should I feel sorry for myself?  What right do I have to be sad?  To mourn some part of my body when I already have a child?  A healthy, happy child?  Someone tonight lost their mother or father, son or daughter, their wife or husband, their sister or brother from fighting a senseless, selfish war. 

I need to stop.  I need to be grateful that I can still go home, that I have a dad that loves me, that I have friends who welcome me home when I've been gone for 10 years, that it can all fall back into place after such a long time, that I have a healthy, happy child, that I beat cancer and it didn't beat me, that I was alive today to see the sunset, that I could see the herons flying over the bog...

It's all about perspective, and I need to change mine, get out of this funk and be grateful that I saw and lived today.