A new day.

Today is a very good day.

It's my three-year wedding anniversary. It's the day my favorite person and I jet off to one of our favorite cities and spend a long weekend being no one but us. It's also the day that I confess a very big thing to you, because it's finally become more tiring keeping it quiet than letting it all hang out.

Here's my baggage, thrown open for the world to see: I've been trying to get pregnant for two years.

Exhale.

Two Junes ago, T and I threw caution to the wind and decided to just see what happens. Of course, nothing did. A long journey began then instead, one much more complicated than we ever expected. All the same, the June of my memories is a month of freewheeling optimism, a month of earnest hope, a month of giddiness. It's almost June again, and so much has changed. Our world is decidedly more measured in its optimism now, our imaginations a little more contained, our hearts a little more tender. But there is hope, always.

There's also been a lot of writing over here, in my quiet moments. Some of it is sad, some of it funny, and some of it just explanatory, captured so I don't forget the details. It's been good for me. When I started writing, the only audience I had in mind was someone besides you guys. The person writing wasn't the me you all know. She's a little more wry, a little more bitter, a little more beaten up. She has something big in common with the me of Freckled Citizen, though: they both hate whining more than anything.

I think it's the fear of coming across as a whiner that's kept me quiet here for so long. With everything I have in my life, who am I to complain about the one thing I'm missing? My mantra that keeps my inner whiner in check is "I am lucky." And I am; I know I am.

I've learned so much about myself in the last two years, so much about my husband, so much about who we are as a couple. I've never been prouder of us. I don't know when we'll overcome infertility, or if we'll overcome infertility, but I know that at the end of the day, I'm still one of the luckiest girls alive. I still wouldn't change a thing.

So if you'll indulge me, I'd like to share some of what I've written here from time to time - The Infertility Diaries, if you will. And whether or not you've ever set foot inside a fertility clinic, I have stories that might interest or amuse you. (The one where I inject myself with hormones at a wedding reception is worth the wait, trust me.) But what I'm offering isn't really entertainment or even for you: it's catharsis, and it's for me. 

I'm spending the next few days in New Orleans, where I'll be in my happy place of food, drink, music, and cheer. One of my favorite things about New Orleans has always been the way it wears itself from the inside out, guts splayed open right alongside its picture-perfect facades. It's the perfect city for me to start this new journey, this one where I unzip my insides and wear them openly. Decorum just isn't working for me anymore.

And so it's May 24, and it's a good day. Three years after the fact, and three years from now, too. No matter what.