Last week, I had my 20^th treatment with The Dragon Lady. 14 weeks I’ve been seeing her. I don’t want to even try to do the math to figure out how much money that equals. But I’m pretty sure it’d be enough to put our unconcieved baby through a semester of fancy private prep school. By the way, unconceived baby, that is never going to happen. I don’t care if that’s where all your friends are going.

So last week, during my 20^th treatment, after we’d reached the final bit of small talk two people who saw each other for one to two hours every week for 14 weeks could muster. After we’d finally run out of topics ranging from The Bachelor (yes, she watches) to the current state of my menstrual flow to why American girls insist on dying their hair. After she had nothing else that she could scold me about. The Dragon Lady said something to me. Something that struck bone.

As she started placing needles in my back, she said,

“So sorry this is happening to you. You don’t deserve this. You did nothing wrong.”

I didn’t know why at first, but immediately tears started to fill my eyes. The Dragon Lady was still placing a few last needles in my back so I silently yelled at myself to hold it together, to not start my chin-quivery ugly cry until she had left the room. And why on earth was my chin all quivery anyway? It’s not like I ever thought that I did deserve this whole miscarriage/infertility thing. Or that I had done something wrong.

But after the Dragon Lady was safely out of the room and I had choked back all the liquid threatening to pour out of my face, I realized that somewhere in some dark crevice of my mind, around the corner from where I stored my 12^th grade locker combination, hid the feeling that I did deserve all this. That I had done something wrong. That maybe the last few years had been just a little too perfect and I’d reached some pre-determined happiness quotient and it was time for the universe to knock me down a peg. Or that I’d ruined my body by running or drinking margaritas every once in a while. Or that maybe this was some sort of eventual karmic justice for the times growing up when I skipped class, fought with my brothers or refused to eat my mom’s pot roast.

Somewhere deep inside I unconsciously stored the belief that I had all this coming to me. And I never even knew that feeling existed until someone told me it shouldn’t be there.

And now I see how silly that feeling is. Mainly because it makes this whole thing all about me. And it’s not all about me. It’s about me, my husband, our families, our future family, etcetera, etcetera. It’s not about me, it’s about us.

And also, it’s about you. I struggle to think that there are that many of us out there who have all unknowingly ruined our bodies in the same way. Or have all coincidentally built up the same sort of massive karmic debt. Although if you all like margaritas on Thursdays, once hid your brothers’ lego collections under your beds for two weeks AND grew up hating your mom’s pot roast, we should talk.

Otherwise, I just have to believe it’s just a total random unfair thing. And in case no one has told you, allow me to pass this along,

“So sorry this is happening to you. You don’t deserve this. You did nothing wrong.”