Grace is Gone

First, let me say that I am not a fool, although I have been acting like one, and the fact that so many people took a few moments out of their day to think about me, leave me a comment or write me an email, is beyond meaningful to me, I can’t even tell you. What you might not know, though, is how much it means to my family. My parents read every last one of those comments, as did some of Adam’s family, and I just … well, thank you seems silly and fruitless, really, it does, but I wanted you to know that it’s not just me who reads them and appreciates them, even when I’m acting like I don’t. My mother and Adam’s Aunt Carol were particularly moved, just so you know.

Which brings me to … well, what I think strikes me the most about the past week, and was entirely unexpected, was — is, really — how quickly I turned into an ungracious asshole. I want to put it another way, but I can’t. I’m amazed and, quite honestly, totally saddened, by how fast I moved from being a person who could compose herself enough to be considerate to someone else, even with a thousand tiny darts sticking out of her chest, to someone who, frankly, did not give a shit about anyone but herself. Everyone said the wrong thing. Everyone. Sarah in Huntsville did NOT say the wrong thing, however, and captured my feelings perfectly when she said:

” I felt like dickpunching everyone who said ANYTHING to me about it, because there was nothing they could say that either didn’t make me sneer at them in derision or cry. But I also wanted to facestab the people who just kind of ignored the whole thing.”

I LAUGHED. Because my God, yes, that’s pretty much it. I also — and this is perhaps most disturbing — had this almost (and at times, more than almost) irrepressible urge to wave a verbal air horn in someone’s face after uttering something I deemed inappropriate. “WRONG!” the air horn would blat, loud and forceful, right in their foolishly loose lips. “WRONG! WRONG!” I could almost see their hair blowing back from the force of the blast, as I stomped away, stuffing the instrument back in my purse without looking back.

Oh, but if you didn’t say ANYTHING? Well, wait … this actually wasn’t so bad, I mean, unless it was one of my close friends, in which case, FLEE THE COUNTRY, IMMA COME GETCHOO WITH THE AIR HORN.

I mean, yes, there are a few people — a few that I am unwilling to forgive, like those who have publicly questioned my friendship and made demands on it until I acquiesced against my better judgment and then HA HA! never said a word to me about this. And the others, who gleefully talked about my FIRST pregnancy, over and over again, in a flurry of excited sisterly emails and then, when I lost THAT baby … nothing. Not a word since. Yes, people like that, I am finished with. But for the most part, I understand that no one knows what the fuck to say to someone in my situation, so they panic and say nothing and I don’t hold it against them.

(I am, by the way, married to a completely loving, kind, thoughtful person who tends to PANIC! and say nothing in these situations, so I understand this phenomenon more than most.)

Basically, it was just awful, I was just awful, and … well, I’m still kind of just awful, for I have these moments of outright horror at the things people say. Things that, actually, are not THAT horrifying, but in my addled state tend to be magnified to DEFCON 1: LOAD THE AIR HORNS. The problem with all of this is that it turns me into someone I don’t like, and I’m not particularly proud of, and if THAT isn’t an excellent spirit to pour into this magnificent cocktail of suckitude, I don’t know what is!

The one thing I will say is the absolute wrong thing to say is this: “I know how you feel.” No, you don’t. NO ONE DOES, because you are not me, and I am not you. Two people can go through the exact same experience on paper, and feel completely differently, and want to hear/need completely different things. I was stunned by commenter Auntie G’s revelation that she didn’t share her own happy ending with me, because when SHE went through the same thing, she wanted nothing to do with happy endings. Me, however? I drink them up like water in the desert.

So no. You don’t know how I feel, even when I describe it to you in exquisite detail.

***

I do, however, feel better. I am not fully healed, but it has just occurred to me that life will – and does – go on, and that life includes all the things I was looking forward to before (minus the baby). Fun things, like hitting the beach with my family and taking Sam to a summer full of water parks. And of course, the less-fun things like measuring the playroom for carpet tiles and finally getting rid of the ancient Ikea chairs. These things will, God willing, still happen, and I get to enjoy them just the same. It’s when I think about the future — the Other — that things get murky.

***

What remains, too, is this very strange, thin membrane separating me and a much sadder, emptier life than I thought I’d have. I don’t know how to put it any better than that. The membrane is not real; the alternate life isn’t even real, not even if it ends here and now with just Adam, Sam and me, which, I hasten to add, I don’t think it will. I felt this most acutely when I foolishly Googled myself into some message boards of the, uh, recurring miscarriage ilk, and got a glimpse into a world that I can’t seem to shake. A world where people — and please God help me, I am not judging, or at the very least, I am BUSTING MY ASS not to judge, for we all process grief differently — save their wee embryos (yes, I mean pre-12-week embryos) after D&C’s and dress them in hats and take pictures and hold funerals for them. It’s a culture — a cult, almost — that I can’t see myself ever being a part of, even if things had worked out differently, but God, it’s there, and it’s so close and it’s one of those things, like I said, I can’t shake.

I can’t say I would ever be the type to, um, dress my embryo in corduroy and denim (mine is, after routine chromosomal testing, being flushed with the hospital waste of the week, and maybe that seems heartless), but I guess what strikes me is that it’s so easy to see how it could happen; how CONSUMING it could be if you really dug your heels into a place like that. I feel like I am the thinnest air pocket away from being a person who buys clothes for her embryos, even though rationally, I know that’s not true.

Online communities — particularly ones that are highly specialized and focused — are extremely powerful. Please, one day let me regale you of the YEAR OF MY LIFE I spent embroiled in a — oh I can barely type it — CAT MESSAGE BOARD. WHERE PEOPLE TALKED ABOUT THEIR CATS. I DID THIS. I DID THIS. I, a perfectly well-adjusted, pretty twentysomething with lots of friends and a hot boyfriend (now husband), spent an UNGODLY AMOUNT OF TIME talking about the merits of wet food vs. canned and examining my cat’s stool for optimum health.

(If you’re wondering how it happened, it started because — surprise! — I was googling after discovering that my cat had recurrent urinary problems. And if you’re thinking that CAT MESSAGE BOARDS do not have flame wars, HA HA YOU ARE SO WRONG AND ARE YOU DYING, BECAUSE I AM DYING TYPING THIS OUT.)

(Also, I no longer own a cat, and in fact, hate cats. EVERYTHING ABOUT THIS IS HILARIOUS.)

These places are rabbit holes. RABBIT HOLES. And if I have any advice to anyone going through this, it is that maybe you should stick to blogs that talk about this kind of thing, and step away from the pinkie nail-sized knitted hats, for it struck me as a fast track to an insane asylum. Email Julie, who will probably say the perfect thing to you, even though she doesn’t know it. (To me, she simply said, “I AM APPALLED,” and honestly, I hold it with me, because it is so hilarious and so perfect, I don’t know why.)

Happy Tuesday, friends. Thanks for listening, and my apologies for my astonishingly douchey comments and written air horns over the last seven days.

*Dave Matthews Band, whatever. I’m not judging your tiny hats, so lay off my lame music.

108 comments May 23rd, 2011