Feel Everything...

So I had a miscarriage last month. 

No. There's really no easy way to put that information out there, so I thought I would just get it out of the way. I had something happen to me last month that I had never dreamed would happen, that I had no comprehension of how to handle. I have been thinking about writing this post and going back and forth on it for weeks now... It's something I've had no way of understanding how to process and honestly, I chose to work to ignore because it is such a foreign, scary, painful thing for me. But I need to get it out. I have been holding it in for a little longer than I should have, and the time has come...

Near the end of October I suddenly couldn't stop eating and my tits got huge and I literally couldn't stop crying. I hadn't given it any thought until my fifth day in a row crying at work, when my co-worker told me that she was going to go get me a test because it was ridiculous that I hadn't even considered the possibility of being pregnant. The following week I took eight tests. I obsessively took tests. Each little line got darker and darker with every test and after the eighth? It was decided. Danie was pregnant. 

If you know me, you know that having a baby is basically something my little heart has wanted for years and after the first test, and the third, and the seventh, my quiet excitement came roaring to a head and I was almost giddy. 

The following weeks turned into total excitement... everyone at work was thrilled and brought me gifts and snacks and giggled with me about the little thing that was happening in my belly. We spent weeks musing about baby names and what colour its hairs would be and what adorable things I would crochet for it. 

Every day when I went home I was plagued by fear, though. The fear of what my sisters would say and the fear of what the boy would say. He was so violently against babies and pregnancy that I was certain he would immediately leave and I'd never see him again when I told him. But there was only so long that I could find excuses for not drinking before he started to suspect something more than, "I'm trying to be more healthy," and "I've decided I've just been hitting it too hard, so I need to take a break."

I went for a real test in a real doctor's office and they confirmed what all those little pink and blue lines had been telling me for weeks. The boy knew why I was going to the doctor, so when I got home he was sitting on the sofa, looking gorgeous as can be in the morning sunlight, waiting for an answer. I came in smiling, still delighted with the excited baby conversations I'd had with my friend on the way home from the doctor, The smile on my face that held so much promise of a tiny creature that I could grow and love for me, meant something different to him; he had interpreted it differently. He thought the smile brought the promise of nothing growing inside of me and everything staying the same as it was. 

But there was something inside of me. And it was half his and half mine and when I told him, I saw part of him break. He got up and went for a walk almost immediately and I was left alone and reeling with my own thoughts. If he would come home, if he would talk to me about it, if things would ever be the same again.

Three hours later he came home with a bottle of my favourite cola and sat with me. He played video games and we didn't talk. Not even one word. We sat in silence as we went about our night. 

And then, in the middle of an episode of South Park, he grabbed my hand and tangled his fingers with mine. In that instant, a wave of relief washed over me that was so heavy that even thinking about it right now, two months later, it still makes my heart hurt. That moment of solid love that I felt, knowing that despite all the fears he had, he was there? That's what I needed in that moment. It washed almost every last bit out fear out of my heart and gave me a safe place to feel even more comfortable and excited about the idea of the thing that was happening inside of me.

We then spilled into weeks of talking about baby names and what we would teach it and what sex we preferred and what ideals we wanted to instill in it and how if it was a girl it would never be let out of the house. We laid in bed and talked about what would happen if we didn't work out as a couple, and how we would make it work. We talked about immunizations and religion and sports we would teach it. 

Then our pets found out. Suddenly, one day, they both became obsessed with laying on my belly. The cat walked up to me and laid his head and paws on my belly and the boy said, without even a second thought, "he's cuddling the baby," and my heart melted. Because no matter what was going to happen with us, I had those brief, fleeting moments of beauty that every girl imagines being a part of after watching too many romantic movies or reading too many books. 

No sooner had those words been spoken, though, things became complicated. I started to bleed. A lot. I started feeling more sick than I had before, and more tired, and more scared. And even then, on the scariest night? He was there. 

And then he wasn't. 

The day I lost the baby, I had never been more terrified. I had spent several of the days prior to that day in the hospital with things being poked into me and blood being taken out of me and tears falling for fear of whatever was happening. My sisters were there, but I preferred to be by myself, often not telling anyone where I was so I could process what was or wasn't happening to this little thing that I had become accustomed to in the previous fourteen weeks.

I was fourteen weeks and three days pregnant, and I was in the hospital by myself waiting. I was sitting with an overly chatty woman who refused to sit in any seat unless it was immediately next to a random stranger and who was super into telling every minuscule detail of her life to anyone who would occasionally glance in her direction. I was sitting with an elderly woman who had fallen and ended up with literally half of her body completely bruised. I was sitting with the overwhelming weight of the world on my shoulders, knowing something wasn't right.

And then it was gone. The baby was gone and I had no idea how to do anything but cry. For days. I holed up in my house and refused to talk to most people and cried until there were no tears left to cry.

My yet-to-be-named baby was the size of a lime. I spoke of it with such great promise and excitement for what I was finally going to be able to experience. I felt giddy and looked forward to my upcoming appointment—the one in which I’d hear my little one’s heartbeat and see it's little body for the first time.

It is a deep and terrifying experience to lay helplessly splayed out and bottomless with a technician sitting silently on a rolling stool feeling around and looking for answers amidst the muted room. I stared at the dimly-lit wall to my left and cried because I couldn't see anything on the screen. I couldn't see the little dark smudge I had seen the weeks prior. I couldn't see anything. I know I'm not a professional, but I know what was missing from the screen, and it was the tiny creature that I had been working carefully to create for the previous fourteen weeks.

I couldn’t stop myself from breaking the silence. “Is it gone?” My voice shook, not wanting to face my reality. She didn't even offer a cursory, "I'm not able to answer that question because I'm just a technician." She was silent, and with that silence came all the answers that I needed. It was gone and so was all the hope that I had built up over the past couple of months.

Back in the hospital room, my sister sitting next to me in her glittery Christmas jumper, which seemed entirely offensive, given the circumstances, the doctor returned and started saying things...

"Just not viable."

"You didn't do anything wrong, the body is just very aware of what will and won't work."

"Future pregnancies are still possible."

"Drink lots of water."

And all I could think was that I had left a lamp on at home and I needed to not be in that room anymore. I needed to be out of that room and building.

I had kept all the photos of each pregnancy test (the ones I took because OMG I needed to show SOMEONE, ANYONE what was happening, because I couldn't talk to the boy about it in the first weeks that I knew.) Up until a week ago, eight photos had been lurking on my phone as a painful reminder of what I lost every time I would go into my gallery to show someone a photo of the pup or my dead piglet. Eight photos that stabbed me right in the heart with their little pink and blue lines.

I have no idea why I had kept them. Maybe it's because they were a reminder to me that I was able to get pregnant, and get pregnant again. Maybe I just wans't able to let go of the reminder that I was at one point.

Seven days later, on Christmas Day, I deleted the two pregnancy applications on my phone, unsubscribed from the pregnancy newsletters that I read daily, and deleted the week-to-week countdown on my personal calendar. I didn’t need the sad notifications reminding me of what could’ve been. I stopped replying to people's messages asking me how I was feeling, how I was coping, if I was eating. I stopped thinking about it completely. I needed to move forward. I was pretending to be strong and doing what I felt I needed to do.

I kept the eight pictures of the positive pregnancy tests that it took to convince me I was expecting and stored them on my phone until a week ago, then I decided that everything needed to be deleted just as if this had never happened—as if this baby had never existed.

As I attempted to erase the painful details that accompanied this experience, my symptoms faded. My bloated tummy, my tender breasts, the constant wave of nausea, and my ability to smell literally anything from a mile away all disappeared as I came to grips with my boyfriend moving out and learning how to live alone again.

I cried every day for six days. And then the tears suddenly stopped. I stopped crying for the baby and for all the loss that I had been carrying with me. I work to stay as busy as possible. I throw myself into my job, my crafts, and my friends in an effort to not have to think about the the loss.

But every so often, I think about it. I feel sad and sometimes still cry as I stumble across a toy someone bought for it, or a thoughtful text that was sent to me wishing me a healthy and happy pregnancy.

I read an article the other day by a woman who had lost her baby and her words put my mind at ease. Made it more simple for me think about what happened without being terrified of what it would stir up...

"It’s okay to run and find a private place to ball your eyes out because one more person announced their pregnancy 'while they weren’t even trying.' It’s okay to feel shameful for your reaction, all while sharing in their joy.

It’s normal to feel sorrow in between the happy moments of your life. It’s okay to feel frustrated when women continuously ask when you’re going to have a baby because 'you’re not getting any younger.' They don’t know your story. I used to be that woman who so carelessly and ignorantly asked that very personal question.

Feel everything.

Know that it’s fine to miss someone you never met. Know that there are no rules to this thing. It’s simply okay to not be okay sometimes. It’s okay to do you."

cold to warm to cold...

I met him when it was cold. I was wearing a jumper brandishing an elk skull in the chilly weather of early April in Wyoming. For the weeks after I met him I would spend days tucked into layer upon layer of leggings and trousers and undershirts to keep the bitter chill of three feet of snow and wind outside of me rather than inside. My layers and I would walk the several blocks to his apartment, stomping through the glittery snow, wildly anticipating the moments I would get to look at his face, hear his voice, and see what was in store for our time together. I had missed the cold so much and adored that Wyoming had decided to love me enough to gift me so much snow within the first few months of me returning to it, that my cold months after meeting him were doubly perfect.

His apartment was always warm. He would let me in and I would strip off layer after layer whilst telling him about my day or hearing about his. We rarely went on adventures outside of his apartment in the cold weeks, instead, we snuggled in for movie nights and cracking open cold ones, sometimes just the two of us, sometimes his friends would join us. It was always an adventure and always different. Music that filled his heart the most would travel with the much-needed warm air between the yellow walls of his apartment whilst I cooked gigantic meals. We would sing off-key to all the most sad and angsty songs until I served our meals up and we would sit and watch shitty tv and learn about one another. We slowly discovered the little things that made one another giggle and cry and swell with love. We mused over the things that we had in common and play fought about our differences. 

I spent those cold weeks carving my new self out of ice, anticipating new growth as the spring shifted both outside and inside my body. I carefully monitored my mind and my heart, along with the newly budding sweetpeas outside my living room window, waiting to see what gorgeous things were going to shoot forth with the upcoming changes in the weather. What colour would they be? How gorgeous were their blooms going to come out? How long would it take for them to achieve full growth?

We then spent weeks in the sweltering heat of his downtown studio apartment. We would spend hours tangled, sweaty limb entwined with sweaty limb, refusing to let go because holding one another was so much more important than relieving ourselves of the staggering heat that had overtaken our bodies. Our only movement was our toes gently tickling the other's foot, so as to not exacerbate the already overwhelming warmth our bodies had been filled with. Every now and again, a tickle would cause a spasm that would radiate through one of our bodies from our feet and end in a gentle glance and smile between one another, knowing that was exactly where we were supposed to be at that very moment.

The melodic tunes and tear-filled lyrics of one band or another floated through the air and he would sing the words to me with every bit of conviction that he had inside of him, occasionally pretending to burst into tears, which would throw us into laughing fits lasting the entire night. 

My heart was filled with such an abundance of warmth that I had a legitimate fear that it would burst into flames at any given time, which would only be natural given the ridiculous dry heat that Wyoming chose to bestow upon us. We would dream about trips we wanted to go on together, people we wanted the other to meet, and films we desperately wanted to watch together.

and it's cold again. Not just in the air, but in my heart. It sounds so stupid to say aloud, or rather type, but it's true. In the morning I need to put on extra layers of cloth on my limbs and strength in my heart. 

 

It's been a month since he moved out and I am fascinated by the shift that my heart has made in that time, by how quickly it became icy after being filled with such a tremendous heat for so many months. I speak to him and there's a corner that still has a pocket of warm affection for him. I see his name pop up on my phone and I am instantly sent back to the sweltering summer lying on his bed between his cats, sleep still in our eyes, words still so, so gentle. But it is only a momentary warmth before I realize my insides only know how to ache with his presence. That ache that you get when you have spent too long waiting at a bus stop in the middle of January. That ache that permeates beyond your skin, freezing your muscles in place, and stopping every other function of your body. The primitive response your body has to save itself by retaining as much necessary warmth as it can.

But I fear there is very little sustainable warmth left. I fear that any warmth that might be hidden in the secret spots of my heart needs to be reserved for myself because I don't think that I can withstand this again without fixing things. I don't think that I WANT to withstand this again. Too many changes in temperature can destroy something, so I want to cultivate warmth for myself. I want to work on rebuilding that little fire in my heart until it is a roaring blaze that cannot be stifled by anything Something that I have complete control over. 

 

It was the most tremendous, gorgeous nine months of my entire life, and I cannot believe how fortunate I was to have been able to feel the things that I felt, see the things that I saw, and experience the things that I experienced. There was beauty like I have never seen and pain that will undoubtedly haunt me for the rest of my life. I will never be able to look at these past nine months as anything but tremendously valuable, but now? Now it is time for me. Time for me to keep watch of my own heart and tend to the things in it that I need to so that when the spring comes? I will get to find out how gorgeous those blooms within my heart that only I get to plant are going to come out and how long it take for them to achieve full growth. 

This heart is mine and I will make it through this cold spell by myself and for myself.

i'm going to save my own dang self...

A year ago Thursday, I was left. I woke up at four in the morning and bundled my now ex-husband into a gigantic truck with a thermos full of hot cocoa and as many snacks as I could fit into a grocery bag. I hugged him one last time and sent him driving halfway across the country to a new life that I genuinely hoped would bring him as much joy as he deserved, which I have discovered was a lot.

A year ago Thursday, I stood in the calf-deep snow and cried gigantic tears on the side of the road. The snow was falling around me like I was starring in a cinematic masterpiece as the heartbroken heroine who's life was falling apart right there in front of my house, and I bawled in the freezing cold for fifteen minutes, surrounded by glittery fluff and freezing cold air. 

A year ago Thursday, I started my new life by myself and thought that I would never survive it. I spent so many weeks completely allowing myself to deteriorate. I drank until I couldn't think anymore and let my life fall apart to the point that the people closest to me were terrified I was going to do something awful to myself. I let myself fall into a depression whose depth I had no concept of. I just dropped myself in like a rusty penny into an endless wishing well and went with whatever was going to happen, hoping something would catch me and I wouldn't have to do any of the work. I didn't work to fix things, I didn't push myself to look at what had brought me to this hideous place, I just plummeted and decided not to put any safeguards into place that would allow me to rescue myself were I to have the desire to stop my descent. 

And then I met someone, many someones, who saw me, maybe didn't realize I was falling, but rescued me anyway. They scooped a girl up and unknowingly saved her. I had my airs of sassy drunk sadness that made people laugh and want to spend time with me, despite the serious undertones that existed in what they perceived as jokes about self-hatred and suicide. We drank and giggled about how much we hated people and became a safety net for each other and all the hatred soon faded and turned into laughter. I found myself crying much less frequently than I laughed and felt grateful, so genuinely grateful for these people that had stumbled into my life.

I had a depressed beauty that drew a fellow sad human to me late one Friday night in April. A fellow sad human that I immediately felt a kinship with because his self-created purgatory of misery seemed almost identical to mine. We became almost instantly inseparable and I fell madly in love with his gentle kindness and the way he held me like it was literally keeping him alive. I allowed myself to forget that I had things that needed fixing in my heart in lieu of his nasaly voice singing Conor Oberst to me late into the night as the hot summer heat rolled in. I forgot that I had work to do in my head because I was so distracted by his stupid blue eyes and the way his long ginger eyelashes caught his tears when he unashamedly got too excited about something he felt so passionately about that he couldn't stop himself from falling to pieces. I couldn't help but forget that I needed to fix me because the way his hand clutched onto mine whilst we were together felt so completely like home.

We spent all of our time reveling in our brokenness by drinking as much as we could and making so many poor decisions that it is almost staggering to think about now. It all seemed so beautiful, and even today, as I sit here and type this, I look back at those nights, windows open, empty beer cans surrounding our tangled limbs, I smile so sincerely for the love that I was so, so fortunate to have been able to feel. It felt so completely simple and raw and real that I never once questioned even a single moment of it. I only allowed myself to fall entirely into that feeling so I didn't have to think about anything else. I fell so hard and so suddenly that I had no idea what was happening until it was nearly over.

But now? A year on from that crying girl on the side of the snowy road? I'm just a sad girl in a different place and I am completely furious with myself. Those blue eyes have left, those hands don't reach out and tickle mine until I lock fingers with them anymore, and that voice hasn't sung to me in many moons. I have suffered a series of losses that I hate myself for allowing, and I have spent the past month reflecting on the work I did and didn't do during my divorce and have realized that I fucked up and robbed myself of the valuable time that I so badly needed to make my heart whole again by myself because falling for someone else made everything so much easier. It was so much more simple for me to focus my energy on loving someone else than to have to learn how to love myself genuinely and entirely.

So this year, I have decided is mine. I went into last year with the intention of living for myself and fixing every broken piece that my exes and friends and I created within myself, but I let that promise that I had made to myself, that promise that was so desperately important, fall apart with the flash of that crooked smile and the promise of a case of cheap beer. 

 

I'm not going to let that happen again. I need to re-learn how to love myself again with the ferocity that I love everyone and everything that I encounter with. I need to stop focusing all of my attention on everything else because it's easier than looking inward and learning to love my broken pieces and fix the ones that are hardest for me to love. I am going to choose to pick myself back up and remember why I am valuable for me, not for anybody else, just for me. I am going to stop putting everything I have into the wrong humans, and cultivate beautiful things that make my heart feel happier. I am going to stop making decisions that are going to hurt and clutching onto hideous things because my romantic heart is so addicted to the idea of holding on. I am going to finally, for once, do this for me and only me and become the strong, fully capable, not-always-crying girl that I know I am worth pushing to be. 

 

I'm going to drop myself down again, but this time, it's going to be down a well lined with as many stunning, amazing, worthwhile things as I can get my paws on. I'm going to plummet until I am whole again.

I'm going to save my own dang self.