I’m having a little insight here, feeling angry and sad about what’s happening, and thinking about what I really hate most about this situation, and I feel a vent coming on. So here it is.
In the ‘normal’ world when a woman tells someone she is pregnant, the usual response is happiness and excitement. I get that, I can see how it would happen, because you’d be expecting the outcome to lead to a baby, and that’s a good and happy thing to be excited about. After the amount of losses I have had, though, I fail to see how the recipient of my news can be excited. What I guess I really mean is, I fail to see how they can not just stop for a simple moment and think about how their reaction will affect me, how I am viewing their response, what might be going through MY mind. Why the fuck is it so hard for them to do? I guess I am thinking specifically right now of my yoga teacher. The joy in her eyes when I told her I was pregnant, she just lit up and started waving her hands around. Like a full term pregnancy and live birth were a done deal. I actually recoiled from her. Like I’d been punched in the face. Or, more accurately, stabbed in the heart.
This is what it felt like she was saying to me: OH WOW! I am so SUPER EXCITED and full of GLEE that you are going to be experiencing another miscarriage right around the corner. I just can’t WAIT for you to have to go through that horrific grief experience again, gee it seems so long since the last time, you must really miss going through that. Lucky you are getting another chance now, hey??”
That is what it looks like from my side of the fence, that’s what I face every time I get pregnant. Not the joy and expectation of a baby. So all that excitement and hope that other people want to give me, or even just express for themselves, just feels selfish and mean to me. They are not tailoring their response to my needs, they are just having a knee jerk reaction to the generic announcement of pregnancy. Yeah, ok, maybe they are also hoping that THIS time it will be different. But I just can’t tell them enough times to keep that thought to themselves. IT DOESN’T HELP ME THAT YOU WOULD REALLY LIKE THIS TO HAPPEN FOR ME. I would like this to happen too. But I would ALSO appreciate, more, if you could just be with me in my REALITY, on my side of the fence, and sit with me here and wait this out, before you go getting that fucking glee in your eyes.
Please. Just one fucking time.
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