It’s Really Happening

I sat on my porch for hours.

Partly because it was like 100 degrees in my house and we don’t have air conditioning because my house is old and its the Bay.

But also because I was waiting on a delivery.

I blocked out 5:30pm to 10:00pm on my calendar today. No happy hours. No networking. No nothing. I needed to be home.

I left work a little early to make sure I didn’t miss it. Then, I sat with a glass of wine and my computer and waited.

Everyday for the last two weeks, I’ve had a moment where I thought: It’s getting real. The main moments?

1. Starting birth control.
2. Randomly crying at my desk (see number 1).
3. Telling everyone who asked me to do something in the month of June some version of, “I can’t commit to anything this month because I’m expecting to be a f*cking wreck, but let’s connect in July.”
4. Going to injection class where I showed my cycle coordinator my pictures from carnival before she showed me how to mix my medications and had me practice jabbing a needle into a prop I held next to my stomach because “muscle memory.”
5. Running into, talking to, encountering in some way shape or form damn near every dude I’ve talked/dated in the past decade.
6. Getting a box of needles, four injectable medications, alcohol pads, and a red receptacle for needle disposal delivered to my house as soon as I turned on The Black Godfather.

Actually, moment six was more like THIS SHIT IS REALLY HAPPENING than “It’s getting real.” And there were definitely more that six moments, but you get it.

I unpacked the box trying to remember the instructions given to me the week before. I couldn’t. “There are videos,” I told myself. I searched the materials to see that there was a number to call. The flyer said, “ Let’s UnPackIt Together.” But, that’s only 9:00am to 9:00pm and it was 9:10pm. So, I’ll have them walk me through it again tomorrow.

If you saw my IG stories, you know I took over a whole crisper drawer in my fridge (eff your vegetables). I spent some time trying to figure out the coolest spot in the house of other materials because I’m not sure there is a such thing as room temperature in this heat wave.

I start my shots on Friday. Two shots in the evening. Daily (?) blood draws to see how my body is responding. Constant picking up my phone anticipating instructions for my dosage each night (they’ll let me know by 6pm how much to take). The two shots a day will turn into three shots a day. And then the big shot. Then anesthesia, egg retrieval, hour-long recovery, and… Back to regular life?