Well, things are... fine.
My job is a job.
Fertility stuff is still on pause.
And I just turned 37. Ugh. Life is in a holding pattern, which isn't great when you have a birthday to mark the passage of time.
But I'm trying to work on myself and pull myself out of this hole. I'm still doing my daily tarot card meditation, and a lot of what I've received lately has been about self-love and letting go, and I'm really trying to put that into action.
Someone doesn't like me? Let it go.
Plans you were looking forward to got canceled? Let it go.
That thing you worked hard on gets sent back for a million revisions before ultimately being scrapped? Let it go.
I'm doing better on most of this, truly I am. But there's one point I'm still really struggling with, and that is pregnancy announcements or anything maternity related.
In the immediate aftermath of my second miscarriage, I wielded the "hide" button like a samurai sword. I muted most of the new mothers in my feeds as well as literally all variations of the word "mother" (i.e. mama, mom, momma, mami, etc.). If you've tweeted about motherhood in the past four months, I haven't seen a word of it.
I have yet to take those filters off, but I am trying to do a bit of exposure therapy with myself in regards to announcements. Every time I see one, my stomach drops a bit and I go, "Goddammit, really?" But instead of slapping down "mute" like a snooze button at 5 a.m., I take a few deep breaths and say, "It's coming for you, it's coming for you," before letting it ride and scrolling on by.
I'm still not ready to face anyone pregnant in person. I feel like people will judge me for that — I feel a thousand stares of people rolling their eyes at me and telling me to just get over it already, that I wasn't pregnant for very long, and that there are a million hardships worse than what I suffered. I want to shake those people and scream, "How can I make you understand?!" If saying "I held my daughter in the palm of my hand before flushing her down the toilet" doesn't elucidate the kind of trauma this was, I don't know what else I can do to make you understand. Being around someone pregnant makes me have a physical reaction where I get a knot in my stomach and tears well up in my eyes. It's not a panic attack — I feel like those are categorized by a racing heart, and I don't get that — but it's a visceral reaction that I have yet to figure out how to control.
So, I'm working on it. Add it to the diet, the exercise, and every other thing I have to do to try to make myself a better version.
One of these days I'll get there. I just wish I had an idea of when.
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