Hard Luck

Last time I had a miscarriage, and everyone kinda knew about it because I was posting my blog on Facebook, it was hard and awkward every time I saw someone and they would say they were sorry for our loss and bring it all back up again. I appreciate the sympathy, but I didn’t want to think about it right before a soccer game, or whatever.

So this time I’ve kept it very close to the chest. Only a few close friends and family members know. And that’s hard in its own way. Because when a friend is complaining about her kids being rowdy or something, or lamenting how she has to take pills because she’s so fertile and she doesn’t like the side effects, she has no idea how insensitive she is being. I would kill to have that “problem.”

Of course, she’s not even really being insensitive. People are allowed to be driven crazy by their kids. With any luck I’ll be one of them some day, and sometimes I may want to vent with the best of them. (I like to think I’ll have enough perspective to never take my kids for granted for a moment, but humans have a tremendous tendency to lose perspective again as soon as a given nightmare is over.) And being too fertile when you don’t want kids can cause genuine problems.

And I have to be sensitive to that. And I have to be sensitive to the fact that when I’m not being open about my struggles, people can’t read my mind and thus can’t be blamed when they poke at loose scabs covering years worth of unspeakable pain, a black hole of aching nothingness that goes on and on and on without any resolution, without sweet memories of a child to offset the bitter, without even a grave to visit.

All we have are dates. The day in May when my first miscarried baby would have been due. September of this year, when our second miscarried baby would have been due. Any time someone even mentions September lately, it feels like a slap in the face. And I know very well that that’s crazy.

I do find joy, of course. There’s a dark cloud over our lives, but sometimes it’s hazy enough to let the light shine through. But it is monotonous and relentless, like an Oregon winter that goes on for four years. And just when we thought it was almost spring, the winter closed in yet again with no end in sight.

I’m just so tired lately. All my coping strategies have worn thin. I feel like a whipped dog, and I feel weak for feeling that way. I know I should have perspective — things could be plenty worse, and are worse for many good people. But I seem to be utterly failing lately.

I also know that reaching too hard for an outcome, a goal, is the origin of a lot of human pain. It’s about the journey, not the destination, and all that. But this journey sucks! And how can I pretend it doesn’t? How can I pretend I’m not constantly mourning people in my life who don’t even exist?

Until this last loss, I could find ways to keep my chin up, to feel that better times were just around the corner. Right now I have no faith, no perspective. I guess this soon after a loss, I shouldn’t be so hard on myself for feeling that way.

But even the thought of trying again makes me feel like a whipped dog who thinks, “Maybe this time my master will be nice to me. Maybe this time he won’t beat me.”

I hate feeling like that. I hate feeling so powerless and abused, especially when there’s no one to blame, no one to take to court, no one to retaliate against. The universe tosses good and bad luck around with little regard for who deserves it. This shouldn’t have been how we had to spend our first four years of marriage, infused with this brutally expensive depressing emptiness. But it was.

I’ll pull out of this funk eventually, but I’m so tired of having to pull my ass out of funks. At some point, it’s just enough, you know? Enough.

But you don’t get to say when enough is enough. You have very little say at all.