Just Float.

There is a moment in between positioning the needle and its swift piercing of my skin. It’s so brief, so unassuming and quiet, a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of moment, when for a split second, I hesitate. You wouldn’t see it if you watched me. I am methodical. Unemotional. If you observed me assembling Ikea furniture you would understand how good I am at adhering to directions. I am patient. I follow along with the instructional YouTube videos on how to inject each fertility drug that will hopefully produce some eggs. But there is a moment every night at 7:30pm, as I ready myself for that last step, as if I’ve been doing it my whole life, knowing fully that I will do this, I must do this, that the unseen hesitation appears. It is an emotional tidal wave filled with every color that has ever existed. And yet, I remain dry and untouched. It is a brutal reconciliation of realities. It knocks me down; it takes my breath away. And yet, I am still standing, unmoved, needle in position, just hovering above a soft pinch of skin. It goes against the grain to do something so seemingly painful to one’s own body, to stab yourself with a needle. I feel my heart drop with the acknowledgement that if I don’t do this, if I don’t swiftly move that needle through the air, piercing my belly, that no one else will. I dread this moment of hesitation and yet I know with certainty that she will appear, jumping out from behind the curtain of an otherwise unremarkable and almost peaceful process. This almost unseen hint of a pause is one of the few moments in life that is so beautiful and so painful in that is unadulterated and brutally honest. It provides a moment of clarity that is both earth shattering and reassuring. I could not recreate it if I tried. This is the moment, at 7:30pm, when I acknowledge that I am alone.

I’m certain I just heard a thousand silent screams from all my friends who are reading this. I can see your faces, like the checkerboard of photos on the Brady Bunch intro credits. You are yelling to me all at once, a chorus of concern. I can hear you, yelling over the hum of earth’s rotation, that I am not alone! Like standing outside of a loud party at night, I can decipher between your voices. Some of them are familiar because I’ve known you my whole life. Your voice feels like a well-worn poem that I’ve read and enjoyed a thousand times. A voice that has given me the gift of guidance and an ear that has generously surrendered to the monologues of a sometimes lost, but almost always humorous, Alexa. I know what you are saying to me in this moment, and I love you for that. Others are new voices, with new perspectives, but you are also here for me. You’ve made it very clear. And I love you for that too.

I know you are all right. And I know you are all wrong.

Recently, I reconnected with a cherished friend. He was romanticizing about my freedom and fantasizing about what it would feel like to try that on. And I get it. Who hasn’t dreamt of a world in which they can leave everything behind and start fresh, a clean slate, as if the past never existed. It’s reasonable that this feeling winks at us from time to time, reminding us that there are alternative realities that exist for us should we change course. And it's equally reasonable that we indulge ourselves with what succumbing to that fantasy might feel like, even if it is for just a moment. How long do we allow ourselves to listen to the siren’s song before she pulls us in to her reality? We dare to dream.

I’m known for my analogies, so it makes sense that I compared this freedom my friend spoke of to swimming in the ocean. It’s the most luxurious experience on earth. Feet in sand as soft as cornstarch, a warm sun on your face, and gentle waves that travel through crystal clear waters, giving you a physical and emotional weightlessness that could almost make you cry. But what if the undertow was strong, and you found yourself in the middle of the ocean, I told him. What if you are treading water and you can’t see land? It’s a fine line between the ocean of our dreams and the ocean of our nightmares. And what if I’m tired? What if I can’t even tell if the saltiness on my face is from the waves of the ocean or the overflow from my heart?

“You could float”, he said. He responded so effortlessly, as if he’d known his whole life that this question was coming, and he’d been gently holding on to the answer, ready to present it, like the most delicate egg. “What do you mean…float?”, I responded, almost exasperated by the ease at which he’d offered a perspective on a struggle that I was drowning in. He was reassuring in his advice, “just float” he said. A warmth came with his words as they washed over me. An internal thirst for calm was quenched in a way that I didn’t know I so desperately needed.

I could float?

I could float.

Face up to the sky, muscles relaxed with my mind free to contemplate, I considered this. Ears submerged in a salty sea, silencing the sounds of my breath and panic, I can only hear the tickle of water sloshing around my ears and the deep creaks and moans of the ocean. He freed me from my fixation on land. I had never considered that the answers may not be in the horizons we create, but in the view we have had all along, the one we can always see if we just allow ourselves to look up. In that moment, I understood the freedom he spoke about. The freedom that is always there if we can be a little brave. I know I am brave enough to swim, but am I brave enough to float?

Tonight at 7:30pm I will once again be faced with the gravity of my hesitation. And this time I must inject myself with three different drugs. That’s three hesitations. Three realizations. Three temptations to run away and hide. But I know that I can do this. I will be alone, but I will not struggle to find signs of land as the light fades and the sun sets on the horizon. I will take a breath, allow my body to rise to the surface, and I will look to the sky. Needle to skin. I will float.

****Thank you to everyone who has been through this and reached out to me with advice on going through this process. It is very helpful, and it means the world to me!!!

**** Thank you to all of my friends and family who have generously supported me in all the ways possible.

****I want to recognize that it is an extreme privilege to be able to attempt such a feat of finance and science, in a country without universal healthcare, in manipulating the human body into (hopefully) producing some viable eggs to freeze for the future, for the price of a (non-US) college education.