Loss, Pain, Grief

To lose the baby you are carrying is like losing one of your fingers. You can manage to make it through a lot of the day without thinking too much about it...until you need to thread a needle or tie your shoe or type. And then you're reminded, and it all comes flooding back.

It is so much worse, so much more traumatic than I thought. Even the word -- miscarriage, as in "I couldn't carry you." I don't know why I couldn't do it. I wanted to. I tried. The feelings of helplessness and failure are almost too much to bear.

Tomorrow is my first day back to work, and it feels like facing a firing squad. I dread it. Everyone is going to have their "I'm so sorry" face on, and I just don't feel like I can take it. I know people don't know what to say, but I don't either. I always end up feeling like I have to comfrot them. They say "I'm so sorry" and I end up saying something like "Thank you, me too. It's been really rough, but I'll make it through..." I feel like soon they will all expect me to start feeling better. When they ask how I'm doing, I'll have to reply "A little better," because that's what they want to hear.

Will I make it through? Does it get better?

At times, the grief is a wading pool; at times, a riptide. At times, I am buoyed by hope; at times, my lungs fill with the pain of it all and I am flat on my back on the bottom, held down by the tons of water above me, feeling as though I will never reach the surface.

Hemingway said, "The world breaks everyone, and afterward many are strong in the broken places." My heart is a broken place. I hope Hemingway is right...