A Journey To Motherhood (working title)

Chapter 7

I woke up the next day with an emptiness. I stared at the ceiling for a few minutes while the fan gently blew a comforting breeze into the bed. I wondered if what happened the day before was real. If I had just dreamt it. I started to sit up and immediately slowed when I encountered a jolt stemming from the lower half of my body.

It was real. I'm not pregnant.

I looked down to where I used to stare at my tummy so fondly and a lump started to grow in my throat. My eyes watered as I slowly brought my legs over to the side of the bed. I put my face in my hands and just took a minute to just cry.

Every moment felt vacant. There were many texts coming into my phone. My friends sent me gifts of condolences. A few stopped by. All they interacted with was a shell of myself. All I could feel was the hollowness of what once was. I tried to be kind, appreciative. Did my best to recreate my experience to them. But all my efforts felt weak, useless. I just didn't care. I didn't want to be around anyone. But I didn't fight those who reached out.

I spent the rest of the week at home. Trying to work. Trying to operate. Trying to get back to my usual habits. I'm not pregnant anymore. I guess I should go back to the way I was. I wanted to work out. I wanted to drink. I wanted to do something. To start acting like a normal human being again. Get back to creating my life the way I was before. Alive. Vibrant. Adventurous. But it felt like my efforts were trying to get generated from fumes.

I went back to work the following week. I couldn't focus. I had told some of my coworkers about what happened. Told my boss. Some people were understanding at an authentic level. Others did their best to pretend like their sympathy was real. But I could tell, there was no way they could understand the world I was in. I appreciated their efforts. Frankly, I realized, that in order for someone to really understand what that world was like, they would have to experience it for themselves. My mind briefly flashed to an image of me screaming in the emergency room and I shuddered. No, I'll take their superficial sympathy, it may hurt a bit, but I would not wish my experience on anyone. Not even my worst female enemy.

---

My mind was everywhere over the next few weeks. My efforts were weak. I had quarterly evaluation with my boss and she commented how I took forever to turn in a project that she requested 2 weeks ago....the week of my miscarriage. I just nodded, took responsibility, took note of what I can do better for next time. I had spoken to my therapist during this time and she thankfully had given me the space and tools on how to navigate what called my "grief," and prepared me to deal with a world that would understand I went through something, and would likely not do much to care.

Grief. I'm grieving. I experienced a loss. Things I was learning to come to terms with. I was having a hard time with it. Before my pregnancy I felt on top of the world. I was fit, I was strong, I was driven, ambitious, powerful. I loved to own my power and who I was. Now I had to learn how to do things like, relax. Heal. Rest. Be gracious with myself. I often prided myself as someone who could bulldoze through anything. I did try to do that at first. After a week I tried to go back to working out. I tried to go back to volunteering as well. My volunteer group took away my assignments, since they could see I needed to recover mentally. My body violently rejected the efforts I was putting in to working out through crumpling cramps and pain. I almost thought I needed to get back to the hospital. But I got the message. I needed to rest and heal...and I hated myself for it.

I felt guilty. I looked at my body in the mirror and the weight that it gained. I used to lose weight within a week, and I couldn't do that right now. My body had changed. It wasn't responding the way it used to. My periods felt different. My hormones felt different. I wasn't losing weight, no matter how clean or healthy I'd eat. How did other people do it? I detested what I looked like. It made me want to cry. I felt guilt over all those times I judged other women for not just dropping the weight that they wanted. "Just do what makes you happy! Do what you feel passionate about! Be disciplined!" and here I was trying to follow my own advice, and my body stayed the same. Now I wondered if any of those women experienced some kind of trauma, and what was their story, and felt a deep empathy to what its like to live in that world, where everyone is judging you based off of how you looked. I cried at the thought, I wanted to apologize to all of them and give them hugs.

I kept hating my body. I had hoped that if I was going to look like this it was because I had a baby on my hip. But I didn't. When I was cleared to work out again it took something to show up at the gym and look at myself and see these lumps and curves in places that weren't there before. I would often run to the restroom and cry. I'd cry, wipe my tears, and come back out to keep going. With the lack of results working out was really more for my own mental well being, and the social interactions. My therapists have often said the best way to combat depression is being around good people.

At home I'd play video games until my husband came home. We'd talk, share, and then I'd fall silent. I'd lay with him while he watched whatever show he wanted to watch and eventually fall asleep. My mind as it drifted didn't think about anything. I run out of synonyms to describe the depth of the emptiness that was always with me.

But little by little my external routine was starting to come back. I felt like I was fooling people into believing that I was back. Back to normal. I decided the best way to tackle my experience was to speak about it frankly, so I did. I think it created an illusion that I was recovering at a relatively quick place, which was nice for my friends. While also it was nice for me to not have to deal with people being weird around me. There was a comfort in having routine, things to do, people to talk to, work to be done. It was a stark contrast to the internal dialogue that was ongoing during these times. The anger, the resentment, the disappointment, the heartbreak, among so many other emotions about myself. I felt betrayed by my body. For not acting like how it was supposed to. I resented living in the body I was in. Internally, I daily ripped myself to shreds about how ugly I felt, how angry I was, and how I'll never be the same again.

No one understood, and no one knew the chasm that was the life that I lived when no one was around. For that, I was always alone.