I'm not bouncing back this time....

So, if you've read this for any length of time, you know the drill: I'm doing okay, PMS draws near, I start to freak out a little, AF comes, I spend a few days crampy and depressed, and (depending on how much I've pretended to be pregnant) get extremely weepy and become a spaz for a few days, then finally bounce back and have an okay-few-weeks. Well. Usually, anyway. So I'm containing the tears fairly well, but it's less of a "bounce," and more of a "thud" this time. I have wanted to just stay home and do NOTHING. Like lay-on-the-couch-and-move-to-the-bed-type-nothing. I haven't cooked. I haven't cleaned much. I've seen the niece and nephews less. And this weekend, I mostly just wanted to stay at HOME... We are genereally on the move throughout the weekend, but lately I'd rather stay home alone. After sleeping in Saturday, I thought maybe I wanted to go to the Big City and get one of my favorite milkshakes and eat somewhere nice. "Nice," as in, no paper napkins, nice mood-lighting, adults-only restaurant. MY fav shake place is in the Galleria, hubby needed to pay the S.ear.s bill, and I really thought I was up for looking at the infant clothes/paraphenalia as he made the payment. By the time we got to the restaurant, I just wanted to come back HOME... I just zoned out. Ate a little appetizer, and only a few tiny bites of my chicken-pasta-dish. Mostly, I sat there and tried not to cry. And our waiter was bad.
What is the deal? I'm coasting into half-way through this cycle, and I haven't really gotten over the last? My mom came over while I was at work one day, and finished up my laundry and did some straightening... Did that motivate me to clean more? No, it made me cry because I can't seem to get my act together and clean my own house, and my mom doesn't really have the time to be cleaning my house, and she's got plenty to do with her job and helping my sisters with their kids. So what do I do today? I come in and sit down with the paper, then move to the computer, with my peanut-dark-chocolate-m&m's. That have disappeared, by the way.
Instead of good-to-inching-down-to-bottomed-out-depression-to-looking-up-to-coasting-easy-tostart-again, I've been good-to-inching-down-to-bottomed-out-depression-to-staying-down-to-getting-worse-to-almost-inching-up-towell-just-stay-in-the-dungeon-a-little-longer. Thank you God for the distraction of work. Though I DO think that one lady could stand a few less OTC pills in her trays. It's nursing-home-time at work, to be completed tomorrow, then move on to group-home-time for the remainder of the month. I tell ya, we go from Ar!cept and N@menda to Ser0quel and R!sperdal. But I digress....
I realize it is a grieving process... We're heading into 21 months of TTC with no luck. Not even the first late cycle, no real hint of heading out to buy a pregnancy test. Of course, the journey really started long before that, before we were engaged, when hubby told me he couldn't conceive. Somehow, I thought we would dodge the bullet. I've always been told by teachers/coaches/doctors that I wasn't good enough, would never be able to see out of my left eye, would never be the caliber of player they were looking for, etc, and I've busted my tail and proven them wrong. I just had to work harder than most people, but I WOULD get the job done... Until now. It doesn't seem to matter how hard I "try" or how perfectly I attempt to time things, it's not enough. Those voices, it seems, were right, just about the wrong thing. I don't even wear glasses anymore (though I probably should), I made the county and sectional softball teams in high school, I graduated first in my college class.... But I can't do the one thing I always assumed would come easiest. 21 months is nothing compared to 10 years (which terrifies me just to think it), but it's starting to sink in that it's not going to happen. I guess I'm trying to wrap my mind around truly "letting go" of ttc. I suddenly feel like I need to be "over" IF like I was "over" a bad relationship before I started dating hubby, before we move on to adoption plans. But does one ever really "get over" IF? And when I think that in 15-16 MONTHS we will reach that magic 3-year-mark by which apparently all adoption agencies eye your marriage as adoption-ready, I think we've got to get started on some things. Suddenly, that bedroom we use as storage needs to be cleaned out. We need to start child-proofing the house. I need to know what a social worker will be looking for. Should I start buying fire extinguishers and outlet covers?
Then I'm driving home from work. I look out the window and see the home of a childhood friend, M, who I've written about before. Who went from abused child of an alcoholic mother, to mom of 3 beautiful kids with a wonderful hubby, who transformer her run-down, bad-memories, childhood home, into a beautiful home full of love and well, beauty. And somehow that makes me think of "Firsts" I'll likely never see. First steps. First smile. First trip home from the hospital. They don't really make "First Christmas" shirts in 2T.
Like I said, I'm not bouncing back...