Purging the Past

Mr. D and I are finishing up a few house-related projects.  If you've ever decided to do some home improvements by yourself, you know that they usually turn out to be more expensive, more time-intensive, and more tedious than originally anticipated.  One of our recent projects includes finishing a backroom in our basement that will be turned into a craft room/office.  It's almost complete - thank goodness - but we have some organization left that will make us both feel like this was a worthwhile project.

As we've been cleaning out this room and organizing, one chore that we've both been ignoring is cleaning out "the desk."  We have this old, ugly, cheap desk from Off.ice Depot that we purchased 7 years ago that has stood the test of time.  The desk has moved with us to 3 different homes, and currently is a "catch all" for bills, pens, papers, taxes... you name it.  Mr. D and I are ready to pitch it and move necessary items to our new backroom, but we needed to sort through old files and papers to make sure we were purging what we could and saving what needed to be retained.

About 20 minutes into our organizing, I came across a HUGE file full of medical paperwork.  Receipts, documents, pictures, cost estimations, cycle plans... all from our RE.  I sat down and went through every piece of paper.  Some of it I had completely forgot about, and some of it reminded me of a place I remember being so sad, in the depths of a crap battle against IF.  I knew I had saved some of this stuff, but going back through it felt so surreal.  I can't believe that just 2 years ago, we were still freshly pregnant, hadn't told anyone except our families, and were clinging on to that paperwork for dear life.  It told a story.  It documented everything we had gone through, paid for, thought about, contemplated, and envisioned as we yearned to start our family.  It would also be what we turned back to if things didn't work as planned and we needed to start fresh again.

I couldn't throw it away.  Mr. D challenged me appropriately, asking, "Why would we need this - didn't we agree that we are done after this baby is born?"  The answer is still yes... this baby will complete our family, and I hope I never need those papers again.

But something inside of me just couldn't let go.  So, I purged what I could (random doctor appointment reminders, copies of prescriptions, etc... things I definitely didn't need and really didn't care about), but I held on to a lot of it.  There's something so intense about the journey to conceive that will never leave my soul... it was part of our lives, it was one hell of a road to get where we wanted to be, and I never, ever want to forget the steps we went through to become parents.