So I didn’t write for a few months because I was indeed pregnant. I was really happy, and didn’t know how to relate from the vantage point of my new found joy to this outlet of my past pain. Then, at 10 weeks, I found out I’d miscarried again. I still didn’t write – I guess I didn’t want to be a fair weather friend, or rather a stormy weather friend, since I’m only here when things suck.
It’s been over a month now. I’m just finishing my first period since May. Looking toward the future at least as often as I recall the past. Feelings of optimism and hopefulness are almost simultaneous with the realization that it is possible that I may never have a successful pregnancy. This is something I have recognized intellectually for some time, though my emotional self had never accepted it. My approach to adversity has always been this: there is no reason to dwell on the negative, there is always a solution, things will work out for me. I am lucky.
I don’t feel lucky any more, but feel guilty saying I feel unlucky. It isn’t hard to think of people who would be thrilled to have all that I have – a great set of parents, a loving partner, a small but comfortable home, and more or less good physical health.
I suppose I’ve arrived at a more balanced perspective of my life and of myself. I am not invincible, am not uniquely blessed with unending good fortune. But I also know that I am not an inevitably tragic tale.
I am just human and alive.
Hope is my crack. It keeps me coming back for more, even though the descent down its back slope is more jagged every time.
I am now one day post IUI. I now have a legitimate reason to be hopeful, because it is Possible. And while hope can be intoxicating, it has taken on a flimsiness for me as well. Hope is not a promise, or a guarantee of anything. Hope is a tease, a carrot tied to a stick.
Hope numbs all of that disappointment, covers it with heavy wool for a week or two. But there is always that voice, tiny and shrill, screaming about what if it’s all in vain. Sometimes the wool damps it too for a while, but it is sharp and will cut through.
At the bottom of the back side of this month’s mountain of hope is a pit of alligators. The day I will know whether this one took or not is the also the day that would have been my due date from the pregnancy I lost in October.
I have no plan for this day. I’ve been told we should do something special, to mark the day and to celebrate that we did get pregnant once. All of these months, I’ve been hoping hard that I’d be pregnant by my due date, so it wouldn’t matter as much.
I guess I can still hope, one last time, for that to come true.
So I’ve been pretty down lately. A girl can only take so much heartache. And I realized today that depressed is starting to feel normal to me. There’s definitely a numb quality to it, though the pain is still there nearly every moment in a dull, leaden way.
The best I felt all day today was while a little boy I work with was having a complete behavioral meltdown. He was upset, and I talked him down. His utter distress brought out my most tranquil persona, as was necessary to calm him, and in those moments, I was not the sufferer but the comforter.
And so I wonder if, right now, I am only capable of relating to those who are suffering, be it chronically or fleetingly. Misery loves company, and at least for me, the more miserable the better. If you’re happy and you know it, I don’t really feel like talking to you.
And so my inner circle of friends rotates. A friend with a life crisis is my new best friend, and a friend with a life crisis resolved becomes peripheral. I am sad about this. I don’t like losing friendships. But it is a difficult and painful balancing act to maintain a friendship in which the parties are experiencing such opposite fortunes.
In a way, though, I suppose it is a great fortune in itself to know that I have friendships that are worth this effort.
treebabies 