# 15 One year on...

Here we are, one year on. It seems so very Irrelevant to sit here with tears filling and falling from my eyes. We are currently in week 3 of a lockdown. COVID -19 has currently taken the lives of 10,000 currently in the UK , people whose lives ended far too soon. Loved ones all over the world are being taken because of this evil virus. Front line workers are losing their lives to keep others safe. This is most certainly a moment of time that we will never ever ever forget. I feel pathetic to feel such self pity when the world is in crisis.

Since my last blog A LOT of our lives has changed. I was on the verge of a slippery slope. My life felt pointless. I became completely and utterly broken. I felt a complete and utter failure at everything in my life. There were days that all I could do was stare, completely numb. There were days where all I could do was cry, and cry and cry some more. There were days when I couldn’t even face seeing anyone. One day, I wanted the pain to go away.

Life had to change. I left the one place of work that was my whole entire life, the theatre that I had spent 21 years of my life at, became a heartache instead of a passion knowing I could no longer perform and had stopped dancing to hopefully become a mum.

My husband and I had a serious conversation about life completely out of the blue one evening...Something still clearly needed to change. After losing my dad 3 years ago, my husband had mentioned about us moving up north. I was most certainly not ready. But as time has gone on, lives have changed, friendships have changed, circumstances and time change us all. Now was the time. Nothing was holding me to ‘home’ anymore. We decided to put our beautiful Devonshire “forever home” on the market, knowing it could take a while to sell...what fools we were, it took 2 days!!! “Sh*t. What have we done” we thought. Another 2 days later we were looking around Cheshire to find another new beginning. We found a beautiful little cottage in a stunning village and our hearts were furiously beating again. This is it. This is our new chapter, this is our new “happily ever after”. The two of us.

We moved and had plenty of time to settle in, especially with this lockdown we find ourselves in and have had many heart to hearts since. We had ‘the chat’. Would we do IVF again?! My hubby is happy. He has done his grieving and he has come to terms that we will not be parents. I broke down. (He obviously held me tight) but as I sobbed, I was still not ready to say ‘never’. He has an amazing talent, career, he has a family, he has a constant flow of friends. I am a failure, watched cancer take my parents and have moved away from my friends.

I’ve tried my best to make a new start, but Covid is a reminder that I’m all alone, it hit me like a brick the night before my birthday. A year to the day of my first IVF failing. The heartache is still exactly the same, I need my meaning. I need to be a mother. I need to give my love. I deserve to have OUR child!

My mum once told me that “If” was one of the biggest words in the dictionary. As a kid I never understood, but as an adult, she was so right. ‘IF‘ the IVF worked, life would be so different right now. ‘IF‘ it had worked I would have celebrated my lockdown birthday with my 4 month old, ‘IF‘ I pestered my dad more over his health, could I have saved him?!? If- It may only be a small number of letters, but it really is the biggest word Mum, now i understand.

But with so many people sharing their lockdown family pics, with pregnancy announcements after pregnancy announcements and with too much time for self pity on my hands, I feel worthless. Now, 1 year on, still no baby, nothing has changed...just the location.