Climbing Toward After

Once upon a time, when you could read all the infertility blogs over your lunch break there were so few, there was a writer who called herself Getupgrrl. I know some of you are nodding and smiling right now, while most of you are probably saying, "Who?"

She was a amazingly gifted writer. Stunning. She once wrote a post titled, "The Sound of the World Splitting Apart." I won't try to describe it because it has been years--six?--since I first read it and I couldn't do it justice. It was one of a handful of posts I've read over the years that  have never fully shaken from my memory. It was about a turning point in their battle with infertility, about a day when they received a diagnosis that closed off any possibility of pregnancy. But beyond the specifics it was about an instant when everything changes. When the world tears apart all around you, sending you tumbling into the chasm between before and after, and you know nothing will ever be the same.

I heard that sound recently, the sound of my world splitting apart. I don't know how, or if, I'm going to write my way through it. It is all rather unbloggable. But if I'm quiet right now, that is why.