Struggling. Still.

Dear Baby,

An old friend sent me a text message today with three little words. "Are you pregnant???" She said she just had "a feeling" like something was going on. What could I say? "Thanks for asking! I totally was, but had a miscarriage, then thought I might be again, but got my period, but my period is so bad I'm worried I might be having another miscarriage."

Not exactly a text messaging kind of conversation.

Instead, I fell back on the old standby. Lying. In this case, though, I'm willing to give myself a pass on the dishonesty. Normally I'm not a fan, but I think this qualifies as an instance when a person is entitled to lie with a clean conscience. I'm the one who has to live with the heartbreak, so I get to decide who gets to know about it and how best to heal from it.

I really thought I was digging myself out of the hole, kid, but it turns out I'm not. Apparently, you can't dig up. That one little question sent me in to an afternoon of crying. Not that it takes much to reduce me to tears, but there you have it. I really thought I was making some headway; that I had hit the bottom of the sorrow and was climbing out.

Turns out, not so much. And now? Now I don't even know where the bottom is. I'm starting to think I really need to talk about this with someone, but I just. Don't. Want. To. I'm obsessing about it but I'm so tired of talking about it. It's a weird dichotomy, I know.

I think the main reason I haven't wanted to talk about it is because I don't want to deal with the follow-up. I don't want anyone wondering, or worse, asking, how the whole baby-making thing is coming along. I don't want anyone to feel like it's okay to ask me questions about it. And I feel like discussing this experience out loud with someone would be giving permission, either implicit or explicit, to dig deeper into my reproductive plans, hopes, expectations, experiences.

I'm just not interested in discussing it. And since unburdening myself on someone would be entirely selfish if I laid ground rules that they weren't even allowed to think about it afterward, let alone discuss it further, I guess I'm just gonna have to go this one alone. Well, "alone" in the sense that it's just me and your Dad. Though, frankly, I'm a bit worried about that. He's been responsible for carrying the majority of the burden that is my emotional grenade. It seems unfair to make him shoulder it alone.

Sometimes I get a little mad at him about it, but I think... No, I know. I know it's just my grief. He has done nothing wrong, but I wonder why he isn't having a hard time with this. Or maybe I'm so wrapped up in my own misery that I don't see his? Maybe there is only room for one person to fall apart at a time, so he's holding it together because I so clearly can't? Or maybe he just has a cognitive separation from it that I can't possibly attain? It wasn't his body, after all. He had no physical attachment, and it was gone before he knew it existed in the first place.

I dunno, kid. I'm looking for a way out. One of our kitties is curled up in a box that is about three sizes too small for her and another is dreaming with her eyes open. It made me smile, so I guess I'll start there.

Love you.
Mama