One year down, many more to come!

A year ago, I was doing a lot of this...

 And very little of this...

A year ago, I was trying so hard to count my blessings while feeling like my whole was crashing down around me.
I hardly ever noticed the positives.
I focused a lot on the negatives.
The only optimistic thing that kept coming to my mind was thinking that I was going to get pregnant right away with fertility drugs...and when that didn't happen, I was a sad, depressed mess at the end of every month.

So it's been a year since I was diagnosed with Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome. While I'm glad I don't feel that same depressed way I did a year ago, I still have sad days.

When pregnancies are announced, it is still hard. It has gotten a bit easier but it is still hard.

I just really believed that we would be pregnant before we hit the year mark. I figured I'd be different than other infertile women and that fertility drugs would just fix me but that just isn't the case. I'm not sure why I expected to be different but it must have something to do with the 2 miracles in the above pictures.

This month has already started out hard. I guess I can look back and say it is ten times better than last August but it has still been harder than some of the other months this year. With every pregnancy announcement or baby update, I am reminded that I am not pregnant and that I may never be pregnant again.

Along with the infertility blues, PCOS is just plain crappy sometimes. I am not the healthiest of eaters and I know it would help to lose some weight but losing weight has never been a forte of mine. I have a lot of mood swings and there are days my body feels like crap for no apparent reason at all.

If you could have told me at the age of 14 when I was diagnosed with my first ovarian cyst that this would be my life 10 years later, I probably wouldn't have believed you...or I just would've been really scared and sad. I don't know all of the details of why women get PCOS or how many of them had ovarian cysts long before being diagnosed with PCOS (because for me, it was 9 years later) but I do know how hard it is to have a diagnosis that affects your every day life, good or bad. Even on my good days, PCOS might give me a little stab in the ovary (Seriously, though...) and it seems to just be reminding me, "Hey, I'm here! Don't forget that you're stuck with me!"

I know that last paragraph was sort of pessimistic but PCOS just isn't easy. A year seems like a long time until something like this happens and now that I'm a year past my diagnosis, I still feel like there are way too many things I don't know.

I have been pleasesantly surprised at the amount of support I've been given throughout this year. Through the miracle of Twitter (which I once wasn't so fond of), I joined a support group where I am able to talk about the unfamiliar and sometimes familiar things my body is going through. I can even talk about how it just plain sucks that I'm not pregnant.

Even though some of those women have not become mothers {yet}, they still welcomed me in and let me share my feelings as well. I often feel like I have no right to talk about the fact that I'm not pregnant because I am not childless but secondary infertility is a very real and hard thing. I wish more people could try to understand that. I wish it was an easy thing to explain but it really isn't. You kind of have to live through it to know what it feels like.

But even though most of the people I love have not lived through it, I appreciate that they try to understand as best they can what I'm going through. I appreciate their gestures and their listening ears. What I wish for the most is another baby but what I've gotten over the past year is still a ton of blessings, some disguised as heartache.

God has taught me so much and I remember kneeling down those first few months last year and telling him I could not handle what I've been given but He really showed me that I can.

My favorite scripture since I was about 14 has always been 1st Corinthians 10:13.
"There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that which ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it."

I used to read that scripture with reassurance that God would not give me more than I can handle.
It got me through many hard years as a teenager. I dealt with depression. I had body images issues and didn't treat my body right. I broke the Word of Wisdom. I was bullied and had a lot of fake friends. I really relied on that scripture when I was a teen and it always got me through the things I was dealing with.

But it didn't get me through infertility. It taught me about myself through my infertility. It taught me more about that promise from God.

Instead of focusing on God not giving me anything I can't handle, I now know that I can handle anything God gives me because He will never abandon me.

He is the constant in my chaotic life. He isn't just a strange belief I hold on to because I want something to make me feel better about my life. I know He is there. I've never really doubted it but there were times I wondered why the heck He was giving me the trials I've been given.

But I hope to face God one day when my life is over and be able to show him that I am the rock he was slowly polishing. I want Him to see me shine. I want Him to know that I listened and accepted my trials, even though they weren't always easy.

So a year with PCOS is gone and because I know life is precious, I hope to have many more years of PCOS to come.

And that's how Suze sees it.