Friday, December 30, 2011

I'm rubber, you're glue

In the baby-making process, there are people you can't escape.

I feel that way all the time at work-- there's the co-worker who belches, the one who makes personal calls all day-- and also on the road, when that asshole in the SUV tailgates me.  Then there's family, of course, but let's set that aside.

I felt that way about Nurse Nina.  If I had a flow chart like this one, there would be no "Do you trust [Nina's] knowledge?"  It would just be: Nina.
















And of course it all started with Mamie & Whitney, because they were lesbians who'd gotten pregnant with donor sperm.  They worked with Nina; we worked with Nina.  They recommended the California Cryobank; we used the California Cryobank.  This applied to charting, reading, thawing sperm, and the evaluation of cervical mucus.

It took a long time until we separated with Nina, and I wonder if that was a mistake.  Because I'm a terrible person, the first metaphor that came to me is that it was like putting a dog down.  A more reasonable, human metaphor would be breaking up with a boyfriend.  I have done both, and I waited too long both times.  (Full disclosure: my parents made the final call on the family dog.  I made the final call with my boyfriend, but a lot of people helped me-- that and Gmail's remember-password function.)

And in all these cases, you can argue about whether everyone tried hard enough and if there was a kinder way to do it, but when you remove someone from your life, you're saying that the problems between you outweighed the value of the relationship.  If you put down a dog, hopefully it's not because you're a selfish fuckhead but because he's suffering; if you break up with a boyfriend, it's because you're suffering.  "This relationship is more painful/boring/abusive/childish/one-sided than it's worth."  Does that mean, if you loved him more, you'd put up with the same shit, or does it mean that you totally love him but the shit is so truly shitty that you simply can't put up with it?

I used to see this hairstylist, Grant.  I liked him, but he wasn't, as the Makeup Alley ladies would say, my "HG."  (My holy grail lip balm is Burt's Bees.)  I traveled around to different stylists after a while, but kept going to him for highlights.  One day, years into the pattern, he said, "So, did you just throw me over, then?"

"Yeah."

In the course of our ... whatever the fuck this is, we've met and moved away from a lot of people.  Nina, Mamie & Whitney, Dr. C, maybe Dr. King, and all their respective receptionists and assistants.  They're nice people, but we're building a support group's worth of abandoned, rejected, medical personnel.  Hell, we walked away from the Cryobank for a little while.  If we order more sperm from them, will Shawnbay ask me if I threw CCB over?  What will I tell him?  Will he be mad?

Lesbian conception is not a game for people-pleasers.

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