I cannot think of anything to write.

That is what my fourth grade creative writing teacher used to make us write, over and over in our journals, if we were having writer's block.

I still have those spiral bound journals from my fourth-grade year.

Mine don't have many pages filled with that sentence. Surprised?

But I have written two whole posts and just sent them to 'drafts' because I feel like I am just writing the same stuff over and over again.

I'm so sick of myself.

I said to myself: "Self, today you will write something positive." And then I stared at the cursor, blinking, and was loathe to come up with anything of any substance.

Which is, frankly, pathetic. There are plenty of positives in my life to which I alluded in my last post.

But do I really want to write about how cute my dogs are? Or how exciting it was to paint our garage and install new cabinets this weekend after I returned from my visit with my Dad?

Bleh, none of those are really worth writing about.

Instead, I'll tell you a story.

Nineteen years ago a girl walked into her after school job and started filing. It was 'hippy-soul' day at her high school so she was dressed in crazy velour paisley bell bottoms and a vest with fringe. She had drawn a tiny flower next to her eye. Her hair was short back then. There was a boy--a very skinny boy, with a couple of earrings and crazy hair, and an striped t-shirt that looked like Ernie from Sesame Street, wearing Vans shoes and baggy shorts--he was in the next room, slicing away at boxes with a box cutter. He suddenly looked up from what he was doing and asked to no one in particular "Do swimmers sweat?"

The girl was intrigued by this boy.

A few days later they were working together, and he was making her laugh. Endless laughing will his silly antics and stories.

A few days later they went out on a date...but not really a real date, because he was older and she was younger and, well, you know....

He told his roommate that he was going to marry her, that girl.

The girl went to his see his band play and well, you know what they say about guys with guitars.

Fast forward a year and a half and he proposed with an original song, down on one knee with a little guitar and a million candles spelling "marry me."

She said yes.


It's a love story, you see. And I was thinking earlier about love stories after reading this part of this post:


It's cliché, but it's true, all you need is love. In the robotic and sterile nature of doing IVF, it's easy to forget the emotion motivating this all. You and your partner love each other and want to create a family out of that love. Though this experience could easily tear couples apart, I do think that my husband and I have grown stronger in our love through this craziness. There is nothing that tests a relationship more than surviving an insanely difficult life experience together. I find it incredibly frustrating when there is criticism of fertility treatments claiming selfishness or vanity as a driving factor. The media and general public seem to always forget that infertility stories are in fact love stories.

I love that last line: infertility stories are love stories.

It makes me cry just typing that--but it's a mix of sad tears and happy tears.

He's still that boy and I'm still that girl--we just have a few more candles on our birthday cakes.

And our love story continues.