Mercy Street

A few days ago, I sent an email to some of my closest real-life friends, asking them that if anyone became pregnant, for the love of God, just please TELL me, and to not spend a lot of time talking among themselves deciding how to break it to me, how I would take it, etc.

I can take it. I can. The last thing I want is for people to tiptoe around me, you know? I’m never good at being perceived as weak, particularly when I’m not really feeling weak. I know that sounds really warped, but I think the idea is that pity makes everything worse. As if, on top of everything else, people feeling sorry for you is … oy, it’s too much to bear, really. It’s similar to the feeling I get when I’m upset about something and someone goes out of their way to be nice to me — it’s not that I don’t appreciate the kindness, it’s that for some reason it just makes everything more acute.

But I really can handle pregnancy announcements. Really. My friend Anna sent me the kindest email telling me about her pregnancy and when I read it, I felt nothing but happy for her, and that, honestly, made me feel like I was really healed, for lack of a better word. And she handled it beautifully — it was kind, it was thoughtful, it was full of mild concern, but it never made me feel like she felt sorry for me. There was no pity. (I don’t think Anna does pity, and that’s one of the things I like about her.)

This probably isn’t making sense. The point is, people who get pregnant now? All good. In a way, we’re all in this together — we’re all trying for more kids, hoping this is the month and oh, look! One of us got lucky first, and it had to be someone, right? Yay, for you! Sincerely, and without a drop of sarcasm. People who were pregnant before I got pregnant? Thrilled for them. I was before, and I still am.

What I do not handle well, relatively speaking, are the people who confided their pregnancies to me at the time that I was also pregnant, or people who announced at the same time, with similar due dates. This includes some close friends. It’s not that I begrudge them, or feel a drop of bitterness towards them — and I speak completely honestly when I say that I don’t, and would tell you if I did, because I sure did that first week, let me tell you. I hated anyone who was pregnant that week, rather indiscriminately.

It’s that I feel embarrassed. Embarrassed! Like this is somehow a personal failing; that I was somehow stupid to believe my pregnancy would make it, but it didn’t. Like people are judging me for telling people when everyone knew this was a possibility, right? Oh, what an idiot she is. Poor Jonna.

There we go again, with the pity. Pity that, by the way, I haven’t seen a drop of, except in my own twisted mind.

I envy them, of course, but again, not in a way that is begrudging or bitter or even directed at them. I’m happy for them — by and large, these are people I really love — but of course, I’m jealous and a little sad, because there will be babies born around that time, and none of them will be mine, and there was a time when it would have been. I think that’s … understandable. But it’s not bitter or angry, it’s just a relatively simple, uncomplicated feeling that only creeps in occasionally. I think about it, give it some air time, and then move on to being happy for them.

But still. I’m weirdly embarrassed, because I know at least one person probably clucked, “Well, this is why you don’t TELL people that early!” as though suffering alone is preferable to having people know what you went through, or why you’re not around, or why you’re sad. As though the act of telling people changed any of the circumstances for the people going through it. Telling people didn’t make me know that I was pregnant — I already knew, and the loss would have been as significant for me no matter who else knew about it.

So no, I don’t regret telling people as early as I did. I have really no regrets about any of that, because it was the fact that everyone knew that made getting through it that much easier.

And yet, there is a wee subgroup of people around whom I am embarrassed. Puzzling, really.

In every day? I am happy. I am great, even, and I’m not exaggerating. I have, at the end of it all, a wonderful life, and I do appreciate it a thousand times more than I did before, and it’s in large part due to what we went through. These aren’t consuming feelings, but isolated ones that crop up and need to be worked through as they happen, and I think writing them down is part of that, however disjointed.

So there you go. Done.

I hope you have an awesome Wednesday.

*Peter Gabriel

30 comments February 8th, 2011