Managing

As quickly as this little being came into my life, it was just gone. It seemed so unfair that I was allowed to hold on to hope, but for only a few short weeks. I felt pathetic looking at the blurred images on my refrigerator as if they were anything more than pulsating cells. And all I had to show for it now was 6 extra pounds that felt like 100 under the emotional weight I feel.

I suppose I should feel grateful I had this moment of hope. For these several weeks, I was happy with this parasite growing inside of me. Too early on to call it anything else, it came to be known amongst friends as the sesame seed. It even got to evolve into the blueberry. And I became so superstitious. As if having the fear of losing the blueberry would bring on its demise. I even kept the picture of my deceased cat on my cell phone because for some strange reason I rationalized that deleting the picture would somehow delete the moment I was having. And I was full. Full of hope, full of dreams, full of future. The woman who lived her life in the present, who stopped looking ahead was actually living life with a calendar marked months in advance.

I started to imagine family. My own family. Family had become synonymous to my friends, not the people who I was related to by blood. The growing being inside of me would fit all conventional definitions of family though: we’d be stuck together, blood related and unlike my own, I planned to not abandon the little berry. This was the dream I never allowed myself to have. And now I am wondering what the point was in having this glimpse of a dream dangled in front of me, only to be snatched away.

And I hated the word for it; “miscarriage.” I didn’t miscarry anything, because if I was really carrying this precious being, I would have taken every precaution imaginable. The last image we saw of the blueberry, it looked squished, as if someone stepped on it. It sort of reminded me of the time my dad’s turtle laid an egg and the male turtle just walked right over it and it was no longer round but flatly oval. The blueberry was squashed.

In between the moments of sadness, I just feel angry. I had gone on my whole life never imagining this moment. Realistically, this was not meant to be at all. I remember the words of the emergency room doctor when I was just 17 as he told me I wouldn’t be able to have children. Of course what I heard and took with me was that I was broken. And I feel broken now still. My friends called it a miracle, while I felt that there was some other force at work. It just seemed beyond coincidental I could conceive the day my beloved cat had died. And still, I can’t see my own role in this still seeing myself as the broken girl.

And now I am the broken girl with the broken heart. For months I have been in my head with secrets. The secret of a pregnancy, the secret of a miscarriage, and now the secret that something in me just feels broke. The words of 12-step echoing in my head, “you are only as sick as your secrets.” And I do feel sick hoping to be on the mend. I suppose there is no way to truly mend this. I am hoping simply to add this to my list of experiences with the words of Mother Theresa to comfort me… “God never gives you more than you can manage.” I guess the better response when I am asked how I am doing, is that I am managing. Day by day, I am managing.