Regressing

Over the last few weeks, I've begun to feel a lot better about this process. Finally, it feels like little tiny fronds of the person I want to be are finally unfurling from within the dark, clenched recesses of my black, angry, resentful heart. Finally, I'm starting to think that I might be able to make it through this after all. For the first time, I've begun to feel okay, and maybe even cautiously optimistic, about the homestudy proccess.

But now we've got another appointment for our homestudy tonight and I've realised something. Of course I've been feeling okay about this over the last two weeks - we haven't actually had an appointment in those two weeks! Now that one is suddenly upon us again, I feel just as gut-churningly sick as ever.

(By the way, I almost wish we didn't use the same word (homestudy) as is used in the US, because the process is even more unpleasant than it is there. In short: TEN appointments, each three hours long, delving into EVERY area of your life, taking about six months and culminating in judgement by an assesssment panel - yes, really - and no choice at all about who does any of this, meaning that you can be assessed by an organisation whose values are very different to your own. Errrr, hypothetically speaking of course).

Today, thinking about this homestudy has sent me back to the work bathrooms for a few of those old familiar crying-at-work-and-trying-to-hide-it sessions that I thought I had left behind. It's proceeding in parallel with my supposedly normal life but once again is the source of huge waves of stress and anxiety that make concentrating at work insanely difficult. I'ts so drawn out! (Six months). It's so intrusive! (I really don't think the more ...errr... intimate aspects of our relationship are ANYBODY else's business). It's so prescriptive! (There are a whole lot of areas where, no matter what they say, there is definitely only one right answer). It's so embarrassing! (I'm not amazingly keen for my social worker to go and discuss MY fertility issues in detail with my referees). In so many hundreds of ways, it's just so humiliating.

I know I was writing on Sunday about how I need to deal with my control issues, and no doubt this is helping. And I know I just need to learn to cope with it. (Because there are still about eight meetings to go). And on a different day I might be able to work out how this is helping to make me a better, more empathic person. But today I just feel too raw.

Part of what gets me is that they get to decide whether or not we've dealt with our grief about our childlessness enough to be ready to adopt. (Seriously. That is explicitly one of the assessment criteria). And I started crying in the middle of my last interview, and I'm freaking out that I'm going to do the same thing again today. (If I could change one thing about myself it would be gaining the ability not to cry in stupid situations). Thing is, though, it's their stinkin' process and judgement and assessment and ritual humilation that are making me want to cry today rather than anything more biological. But short of shouting 'These are not tears of grief! They are tears of IMPOTENT RAGE!', that might be difficult to communicate.

Ach, it's going to be a long evening.