the day I struck the christmas tree with a tripod

Yesterday I was 14dpiui and tested negative; today I am 15dpiui and tested negative. My instructions post IUI were to call if I tested positive on an hpt or if my period started. Neither is happening. I am filled with disappointment and hope and speculation that I don't even want to write about.

Instead I will tell you about Sunday.

Sunday will be remembered by F and I as the day during our infertility in which I momentarily lost my mind

and bashed the Christmas tree with a tripod like the tree was a pinata.

The holidays have made this 2ww harder than others. We spent Thanksgiving with F's mom waiting for a + opk. We put up a tree just for the two of us only out of feelings of obligation for tradition (MIL actually went out and bought our tree as I was being inseminated). And now the end of the 2ww approaches as holiday cards and family photos arrive in the mail.

My FIL wants a framed photo of F and I for Christmas. We have been waiting for a clear day without rain to pack up the tripod and camera and take our picture together on the beach. Sunday was a clear day, windy, but clear.

The idea of taking a picture together to send to my FIL made me sad.

This is what we look like without children.
Why don't they have any children?
You can tell by this picture that they don't have any children.

Sunday was also the morning that F's brother sent everyone an email with his family photos. They look so happy. Family members and friends reply to all that they have a beautiful family.

After looking at their photos I wasn't sure if I could make it through the taking of our photo.

"Here, this is us. We don't have a beautiful family."

Yes, I felt sorry for myself. I cried in the shower, I cried while getting dressed. We only had a small window of time before the rain started again in the afternoon.

As we were leaving, I noticed the tissue paper that wrapped the scarf I bought my mom for Christmas under the tree was wet. What we realized was that one of the cats used the scarf to pee on. This is not typical behavior. The night before, F accidentally closed the door to the utility room where we keep the litter boxes and the cats could not get to them during the night. So one of them peed on the presents.

This is when everything fell apart:

The cat pee ruined not one gift, but another gift that was touching the scarf and absorbed some of the pee. At first, I handled the whole incident better than F, who declared that we would not be able to put any presents under the tree. I assured him it was an isolated incident and an argument about the Christmas tree ensued. I'm not sure what chain of events or words resulted in what happened next, but the argument ended with me telling F that if we could not put presents under the tree then I didn't want a tree...or a Christmas.

and that is when I picked up the tripod and swung it at the tree.

Wait. I have to say that we don't fight often. I have never hit anything, destroyed property (or ever attempted to destroy the symbol of a holiday). It became clear to both of us what my outburst was really about. Holidays demand that we confront our infertility, or rather our infertility is constantly confronting us. It is impossible not to feel the absence and lack in every tradition that we practice. Even taking a photo of F and I to give to my FIL makes me feel too vulnerable, my infertility too exposed; not to mention the tree, and whose ornaments should be hanging from it, whose gifts should be under it, what kind of family should gather around it.

Part of me didn't want to share this story. I feel ashamed and embarrassed, but I think it was an important moment in this journey, one in which, rather than merely acknowledging that yes, holidays are difficult times when you are infertile, I thought about how this time is actually affecting me. All of these feelings--insecurity, self-loathing, anxiety, grief, jealousy--all tangled in the idea of what it means to celebrate family during the holidays. Tangled like the tree lights and ornaments and broken branches after my wrath.

The tree survived (just turn it a little and you won't notice the hole) and we still made it to the beach to take the photo before it started raining again.

Here, this is us, just us for now.