Yesterday was my birthday. September 5th, 2014; the date to mark my 27 years of being on this wonderful, wonderful planet. A day that normally would have called for celebration, dinner at the local brewery with my father and stepmother, siblings, and anyone else who would've liked to join. Because typically, although I usually find myself trying to avoid my fellow man like the H1N1 virus, I can also find myself wrought in spells of joviality. Kindness towards others. Let's all be nice and enjoy the moment.
But this September 5th was not like any other that I've seen yet in my (now) 27 years on this wonderful, wonderful planet. When the typical flood of "Happy Birthday!!" texts started pouring in, my phone had long been shut off as I drove myself to the hospital with a weight in my chest that was comparable to a dumbbell. In the passenger seat sat a very small white Styrofoam...box? Cooler, I suppose you could call it. I stared dumbly at it at every red light I stopped at, and for an extra 10 minutes when I finally parked at my destination. Until I finally worked up the nerve to pick it up with trembling hands and take it inside a medical establishment for the last time.
I was spending this birthday taking the remains of my 7week 3day miscarriage to the hospital to be cremated with other lost pregnancies. Lost dreams. Lost wonders of "what if?". Just LOSS in every sense of the word.
The first trimester miscarriage I'd completed naturally, at home, by myself, on Sunday August 31st, 2014. Even now, although it is still so soon after the fact, I will never forget the way I felt when I handed that small box over to the appropriate staff member. I will never forget the way I've felt in the past month or will undoubtedly feel in the times to come...if I live to be only 31 or 101.
I've thought this whole time, rather ignorantly, that I would want to forget everything about this. That I would be immune to the process of pregnancy, hormones, bonding, and loss.
I now know that I don't want to forget. Not only that, but that I don't have to.
This blog is beginning with the vaguely described end of my physical connection to my baby. I will later describe this event in great detail, as every event will be. As this progresses, I'll take you through the process of my first spells of morning sickness and sore breasts, to when it all started to go downhill before I'd even had a chance to piss on a stick to confirm what instinct was already telling me. It will continue though the uncensored account of every contraction, blood spatter, and tear; through to the present. And how I cope (or not) as I claw my way back to some sense of normalcy.
There will be gore. There will be shameless swearing. You will find no sugar coated recollection of a shitty event in enlightened retrospect. No clip art of winged cherubs and rainbows.
Here, you will watch how a woman in her mid-twenties declined, was shattered completely, is still broken and grappling to put all the pieces back together. Sometimes she'll gather them gently in a pile and manage a smile, even a (now few and far between) laugh. Other times, she'll strike at them violently while she's in a tearful fit of dismay, scattering them back into total disarray.
That woman is me.
Angela: 27 years old. Blonde hair, green eyes, in an adoring long distance relationship, 2 small dogs, living in Northern California.
If you've found this blog while scouring the internet in the wee hours of the morning, nursing a broken heart or your worst nightmare as a mother materialized....know that you are not alone. I am here, aching just like you and literally thousands of other women are/have/will be.
Many things in this life are indeed "Sad But True". But it doesn't mean we have to like it. Take it with a grain of salt. Get the hell over it. No, there is a reason we feel so unjustified when bad things happen.
Because it fucking sucks.
If any of you reading this, or any future entry of mine, feels any sense of relation or thinks "Me, too." even once....then baring the rawest insides and emotions of myself as I experience my first brush with motherhood come to an abrupt and confusing end will be completely worth it. Regardless of whether you tell me that my story has affected you or not. You are as welcome to observe this silently as you are to share your thoughts.
Putting it out there when there are so many limited resources on a startlingly common yet stigmatic subject: priceless.
xoxo
Angela
No comments:
Post a Comment