The visible is always a mirror of the invisible. The reality is imagined before it manifests itself. Paulo Coelho
I had mentioned in an earlier blog that after getting my fertility test done, with my results being positive enough for me to start the egg freezing procedure, all I had to do then, was come up with the $10,000 dollars that I didn't have.
My plan was to try to take out a loan against the house that I owned. I was currently renting it out since my move back to my mother's home. I had an enormous amount of equity in my house so I didn't think it would be that hard to borrow the money needed off of it. And had it been before the financial/banking collapse it wouldn't have been difficult at all. But now as it was, all the banks I talked to (and I talked to at least twenty different ones all around the country) said that I would need to show what my job and wages were for the past two years. I didn't have the proof of a job and income to show since I hadn't been working full-time before my mom's breakdown, and once she came home from the psychiatric hospital I was devoted to her full-time care. It took two months for my family to give me a small stipend for helping my mom through her recovery, but it wasn't going to help me in securing a loan from the bank. I felt like I had exhausted all avenues on my own, but that there might be some other options open to me, like, for instance, getting a co-signer to back the loan off of my home.
As I mentioned before I had thought of trying to freeze my eggs since I had turned 40 (back when the procedure was just starting to show some signs of promise) but nothing came of my attempts then, and, as per my usual method of operation, I just seemed to let the notion of that scenario go by the wayside. It wasn't until my mom's breakdown that I became more determined then ever to try to make my dreams come true. But making this dream come true wasn't something that I could just snap my fingers and make happen. It was a process and it took months to fall into place.
During those months my mom was still in need of constant care. She couldn't be left alone. I was living in a crazy person's world (albeit she had been making small steps of progress towards normalcy) and I felt the weight of the world on my shoulders - trying to take care of her and yet still try to make my life something I wanted to live for. And yes, unfortunately, there had been times when I didn't see the purpose of my existence.
It was affecting the care of my mom because at times I felt depressed, frustrated, and hopeless. She knew something was wrong and wanted to know what. I've never been good at lying to my mother and because it was eating away at me with how to overcome my problems, how to attain my dreams in what seemed like impossible circumstances, I told her. Nothing could stop the tears from streaming down my cheeks. There was nothing my mother would have liked more than to be able to help me, but really, in her state, she couldn't.
Finally, I went to the last person that I thought could help and the last person that I thought would help, but as they say, desperate times call for desperate measures: I went to my oldest brother, co-executor, along with the next eldest brother, of my father's estate. It was my hope that my brother would be able to help me in attaining the loan. Sharing my long-held, deep-seated dream with my oldest brother was something that I did not look forward to; I dreaded it.
The reason I dreaded it was initiated six months before when my mom was in the psychiatric hospital. It was just before Christmas on a cold, rainy, just all-around dreary night and I was driving home after leaving my mom. Her situation at that mental hospital was so dismal, so sad, and I took all of that dismalness and sadness home with me. I couldn't seem to help it. I felt like I was losing the one person in my life who understood me and cared for me, the one person who made my life worth living
On the drive home I called my brother to give him an update on our mom's situation and as I was explaining her day, all of the sudden, I felt overwhelmed and fearful and I began to cry. My brother said to me, "If you are going to cry I'm hanging up. I don't listen to crying. I don't listen to my wife cry and I'm not going to listen to you cry." I can't remember if he hung up or not, but I can't imagine having much more to say after that. I learned something about my brother that night that I didn't know: he lacked things that were important to me: sensitivity, compassion, understanding and thoughtfulness.
So, I knew going into asking this particular brother for help, and having to reveal to him the one passion of my soul, which was to have the chance to have a baby of my own, was a huge risk and could possibly be the biggest mistake of my life. But I was so driven to find a way to have my hopes kept alive by trying to freeze my eggs that I was willing to do whatever it took. The night before I was to have the conversation with my brother I prayed that no matter what happened, whether he was able to help me, or not, that things would be okay, that they would work out, that at the very least, he would be understanding.
When we finally met and I faced him and told him this dream of mine that had been held close to my heart my whole life, of getting married and having a family of my own, how it hadn't worked out like I planned, but how I still felt like there might be hope left if I could get the money needed to freeze my eggs, he was as I feared anything but understanding. First, he told me if I wanted to do it, I should sell my house.
As much as I wanted to have my eggs frozen to keep my dreams of having children live on, selling my house I knew would not be an option, not when all I needed was $10,000. My house was the only bank I had. It was my only sense of financial security. It was my investment in my future and for $10,000 there was no way it would be a wise decision to get rid of.
The next thing he said to me is that if I wanted a baby I should find a guy and get married. When I asked him how I was supposed to do that, he said, "You need to be nice to a man." When I talked about wanting to have children, he said, "Get a dog, get a cat." It went down hill from there. At one point, when I said that some way I was going to have a baby, with or without his help, he told me that the minute my mom died I would be kicked out of the house we were living in.
What I wanted from my brother, even if he personally couldn't help me get the loan, was something along the lines of, "Well, I can't help you, but let's put our heads together and see if we can figure something out." All I didn't want, what I had prayed for not to happen, was for me to reveal my heart's dream only to have him crush it.
In my desperation I revealed my creative passion to the one person who doesn't understand either creativity or passion. Needless to say, to this day he is someone who I have chosen not to have as a part of my life any longer. He will never understand me, there is no effort on my part that could make him do so. I look at his life like this: sometimes you have "old souls," people from whom wisdom exudes from their being and then you have someone like my brother: a premature newborn.
I anguished for many more weeks until a miracle of sorts happened - I found someone that was willing to help me get the $10,000. Once I knew I had the money. I called the clinic in Chicago and set up an appointment for the procedure.
