Struggling to find Balance

Lately I really feel like I am struggling to find balance. I’ve always been one that balanced a lot of things in life all at once. During childhood, I balanced school, with friends, with family, with many extracurricular activities. In high school I balanced school, with friendships, with family, with boyfriends, with student government, with cheerleading and later on in high school...those things on top of a job, grocery shopping, balancing my checkbook, paying bills, getting ready for college, and some really difficult family drama. In college, I balanced school, with relationships, with student government, with work, with 2 internships, with paying my bills, with my apartment, etc. I know that you might think “well, everyone balances these things in life…these are regular life things.” But, I’ve always felt that I was exceptional at balancing things. I am a planner, an organizer, a hard worker, and when I allow myself to be…a natural leader. I’ve always been good at keeping everything in my life in balance while excelling (even in the face of adversity) at whatever I choose. I’m a go-getter…I love working hard, keeping my house in a nice and neatly orderly fashion, I love being social and making new friends and nurturing existing friendships. As an adult, I balance a full-time job, a husband, a neat and orderly home, our social calendar, relationships with my family, lots of great friends, a fantastic dog, a volunteering calendar, etc. etc. etc.

Since I've been dealing with infertility those things have become completely off-kilter. For the last year and especially in the last 6 months I feel like the only thing I’ve been able to focus on is infertility. This has slid everything else in my life almost completely off of my radar. Sure, I am still married, I still have a dog, I still have a house and a job and all that. But, those things are completely off-balance. Because infertility has taken up so much of my life, the other things I care about have become somewhat less important. It’s not that I don’t care about those things anymore, I just feel like infertility is so all-consuming that my heart, my brain, my life doesn’t have a lot of extra room.

I think I’ve noticed this a lot more in the past few weeks because the infertility stuff has been “old hold” for the past 2 months. Since the fertility stuff is on hold, I feel like there is a huge empty hole in my life that had been filled with infertility treatments for so long. All of the crazy fertility treatments were so consuming that I let everything else in my life fall away a bit, and now that fertility treatment is not there….there is not much there. My husband is my rock and my balance, but even he has other things going on….a full-time job managing a huge team of people across the country, a pretty intense travel schedule, a part-time teaching job, an rigid exercise routine, our dog, friends, extracurricular activities, etc. He, unlike me hasn’t let infertility treatments consume him…he still has his own life things that he hasn’t let slide away from him.

As for me, my work has become boring and monotonous. I got a promotion back in December and it’s like I don’t even care. I am doing the job, but my heart isn’t in it, I don’t have the “go get em” attitude. I haven’t been in close contact with my family for a few months now. I mean, it’s not that I am not in contact with them, but most days I would prefer not to have to get into lengthy conversations with them. I know some of my friendships have suffered and it’s not that I don’t care, I am just having such a difficult time reaching out and being social right now. I feel like I am forcing my social interactions. My friends ARE important to me….so why do I want to stay home and be anti-social?

I know it’s a balance issue. I let the infertility take up too much of my “space,” and then everything else that I normally balance slid off the side. I want to “slide” those things back onto my radar…I want that hole that I feel to be filled again, but I just don’t know if I have the strength or the energy to do it right now. I just feel like I am caught between a rock and a hard place.