My period is meant to arrive tomorrow had my body not been laproscopically and hysteroscopically invaded nearly three weeks ago. I have been having some pretty nasty cramping and a bit of spotting-- very unlike me. Hopefully the crimson tide will wash up a big, nasty clot, or whatever that mysterious black spot was on my ultrasound last week. I had the surgery at a teaching hospital. Perhaps it is a Junior Mint? (remember that Seinfeld episode?)
and a sad man-friend.
My very special man-friend arrived home from his re-union and said, "I am glad you didn't come along."
Normally, one would be alarmed by such a statement, but in this case he was glad I had the foresight not to submerse myself into the grad school pals reunion-- the one where our friends M & J are 6 months pregnant. Ugh, a whole weekend of non-stop baby-talk action and the occasional 'your next' glances. I would have never survived.
I had just started to be not hysterical about our first loss. It was fourth of July weekend. It was hot and we were plastering the hell out of the front room of our broke down house. The room looked like a block of swiss cheese, with a little lath thrown in. We foolishly thought we could get it patched, skimmed and primed by Sunday night. We were so wrong.
Plastering away. Did I mention it is friggin hot? It's mid-day. J.'s phone rings. A call from a good friend of his from grad school. The guy who I argue with all the time because although he acts like a nice guy, he is really a misogynist and treats his wife like a child, not a partner. She likes it. It is all pretty nauseating, but I tolerate it, because they are his friends. But they are not mine.
Small talk ensues. J. says, "What, like a bean, I don't get it? A peanut?" He is so clueless. YO, J. take off the blinders. That's cutsy lingo for baby. They are trying to tell you in some obligatory, 'my brain is turning to baby-mush' code that they are knocked up! Get with the program!
I start to hyperventilate, then run upstairs, embarrassed at how quickly and physically I react to the knife that was just jabbed, one more time, into my heart. I hide in our bathroom and almost pass out because I am crying so hard i can't even breath. Hiding is no use, our bathroom is as porous as the front room-- gaps in the drywall do not make good sound barriers.
This is my recount of M & J's pregnancy announcement. She was 6 weeks pregnant. I was 5 weeks past my first loss.
After the second miscarriage J. told this couple of our problems. J (the grad school dude) was kind and sad for us, and that was nice. They know what we have been through, but not in any detail, because my J. doesn't do detail. But no one else at the reunion this weekend knows that we are struggling with this. So I dodged a bullet by staying home this weekend-- knowing full well that they, in their absence from our dilemma and blurred by their pregnancy bliss, would not be able to refrain from drooling baby talk for the entire 36 hours. And that is just what happened. So J. came home feeling pretty sad.
J. deals with this far less. Feeling the sadness of our situation may very well be part of the many random thoughts he has from day to day. But he doesn't have to think of it every time he calls the Dr., every time my mom calls, every time he has a cramp, every time he goes to the bathroom, ever time he opens a browser window. He has the privilege of the slightest distance.
This weekend there was no distance for him. He was ambushed. Even though I never want him to feel pain, in a way, I am glad he went to the baby-talk weekend reunion. Because he knows better today, how I feel every day.
1 comment:
My husband has no conception of how I feel (no pun intended). He thinks I'm an emotional nutjob. When I told him it had been two years we had been TTC last month he just kind of looked at me blankly and said "Oh". I wish that my husband could have even the faintest understanding of how I feel. I don't think that will ever happen though... *sigh*
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