poor, poor, pitiful us
i received a reply today from the pregnancy crisis center that held their "walk for life" on pregnancy and infant loss awareness day. in my e-mail to the center, i asked that they consider holding their events on a day other than this particular one in the future; the reply i received expressed sorrow for causing us additional pain and offered me free and confidential grief counseling. it did not offer any assurances of consideration for future scheduling of events, which i find disappointing. it's not as though there wasn't room for it in the e-mail; there was certainly room to get a couple of obvious digs in for their "life begins at conception" ideology.
but i'm not going to carry it any further; i wrote a polite e-mail and received a polite response. i don't need to get into a pissing war with these people. i don't have the energy for it, plus i don't want to rip too much on people who at least offer some support to women with unwanted pregnancies. i need to save my wrath for the old men in mesh caps with seed company logos on them who picket daily in front of planned parenthood. i don't think any woman ever gained anything from being harassed by an old farmer.
*****
the miscarriage has changed things. after hans, it was all about him. after our latest loss, the focus has turned inward. it feels like it's about us now - poor us, with our double losses.
i understand that the world does not revolve around us and our little pack of dead babies. there are bigger, more important things going on. someday i will actually get back to caring about them. but for now, i have little energy for anything else.
that change of focus has also put some distance between me and hans. the tadpole has become a buffer, in a way it didn't while it still had a pulse. i miss that closeness with hans, the closeness i had with him when he was inside me that i didn't really give up when he took up residence on our living room shelf, not until the last couple of weeks.
my desire for oblivion is greater now, which would be why i've been drinking daily (although i haven't had a drink yesterday or today, so yea for me). it's also part of why i've been wanting to buy a new house. after we lost hans, i never wanted to leave this house, because it's where we learned i was pregnant, and where i felt him move while i read awful baby magazines (10 ways to help your newborn sleep through the night!), and where i felt him dancing when we played the futureheads, and where we made his nest. now, though, the house has too much grief, too many dark corners and damp patches waiting to trip me up.
i've been driving justin nuts telling him about other houses for sale in our neighborhood and the ones to the immediate east and west of us. i've been telling him i no longer see us growing old in this house, which we used to both want. he did finally come around a week ago to the thought of us selling our house if we ever left the country to teach for a few years and then finding someplace new here in cleveland when we came back. two nights ago, while i was rinsing dishes and he was licking his plate, he surprised me by telling me that if we had a third loss, he would be ready to sell up, move away, and make a fresh start. i about fell over. he had even considered where we would be equidistant from my mom and his mom and his dad, although i don't think he understands how hard it would be for him to live below the mason dixon line, but we'll deal with that if the time ever comes.
here's hoping it never does.
but i'm not going to carry it any further; i wrote a polite e-mail and received a polite response. i don't need to get into a pissing war with these people. i don't have the energy for it, plus i don't want to rip too much on people who at least offer some support to women with unwanted pregnancies. i need to save my wrath for the old men in mesh caps with seed company logos on them who picket daily in front of planned parenthood. i don't think any woman ever gained anything from being harassed by an old farmer.
*****
the miscarriage has changed things. after hans, it was all about him. after our latest loss, the focus has turned inward. it feels like it's about us now - poor us, with our double losses.
i understand that the world does not revolve around us and our little pack of dead babies. there are bigger, more important things going on. someday i will actually get back to caring about them. but for now, i have little energy for anything else.
that change of focus has also put some distance between me and hans. the tadpole has become a buffer, in a way it didn't while it still had a pulse. i miss that closeness with hans, the closeness i had with him when he was inside me that i didn't really give up when he took up residence on our living room shelf, not until the last couple of weeks.
my desire for oblivion is greater now, which would be why i've been drinking daily (although i haven't had a drink yesterday or today, so yea for me). it's also part of why i've been wanting to buy a new house. after we lost hans, i never wanted to leave this house, because it's where we learned i was pregnant, and where i felt him move while i read awful baby magazines (10 ways to help your newborn sleep through the night!), and where i felt him dancing when we played the futureheads, and where we made his nest. now, though, the house has too much grief, too many dark corners and damp patches waiting to trip me up.
i've been driving justin nuts telling him about other houses for sale in our neighborhood and the ones to the immediate east and west of us. i've been telling him i no longer see us growing old in this house, which we used to both want. he did finally come around a week ago to the thought of us selling our house if we ever left the country to teach for a few years and then finding someplace new here in cleveland when we came back. two nights ago, while i was rinsing dishes and he was licking his plate, he surprised me by telling me that if we had a third loss, he would be ready to sell up, move away, and make a fresh start. i about fell over. he had even considered where we would be equidistant from my mom and his mom and his dad, although i don't think he understands how hard it would be for him to live below the mason dixon line, but we'll deal with that if the time ever comes.
here's hoping it never does.
posted by laura at 10:32 PM
10 Comments:
Hugs, I feel like thats all i can offer to you. I don't know how I will/would respond to a second loss. But I know that I'm still not really ready to fully deal with the outside world 4 months after my first loss.
Laura -
I'm sending all the love and positive energy your way that I can muster. What you write is exactly what I think about if we lost this baby. I am sorry for you that you had this second loss. It's just not fair. As for selling the house and moving away, I often wish the same thing just because of our first loss. Something about a new house is refreshing...or at least distracting if nothing else. Hugs.
Holly
Great, a weak mea culpa slapped with a sales pitch. These people are masters, you know.
When I lost my job and keeping this house got a bit harder, I considered the irony that we moved out of a tiny house in order to get a larger one to FILL WITH CHILDREN. Now we're considering, just a little, sizing down.
If you do move a bit south, though, consider Louisville.
And hang in there.
Louisville, in the 90's atleast, had a thriving indie music scene. I spent a bunch of time down there on Bardstown. What's cooking around town now-a-days?
I have this same reflex, which I believe was spawned by a lifetime of leaving places.
Leaving the country to teach sounds amazingly wonderful. You guys would make such a team! Hoardes of people in foreign lands greeting each other with the phrase, "fecal incontinence".
I hope the sadness fades for you soon and you get a break.
It is about you guys right now... and it should be. You need time to heal and mourn. The world's problems will be there when you are ready.
Here's hoping you never have to suffer thorough another loss. Ever.
lyss, i, too, have a lifetime of leaving places behind me. i am currently in my 18th home; since i turn 36 on saturday, that gives me an average of exactly 2 years per place. maybe that's why it seems like the way to go. we've been in our house 16.5 months; i guess i've got a few months to go here.
Now's as good a time as ever to make a change in your life, and STAY, Laura.
It's a dream home, or atleast at one point in your life it was. It still is for me. I suspect this is what you know, so this is how you cope. Well, I hate to be blunt, but these horrible memories will stay with us no matter where it is that we lay our heads at night, and truth be told, I don't want these memories to ever go anywhere, they've some incredibly good memories attached to them.
Let's afford our roots an opportunity to grow a bit, here, eh?
Okay, what Justin says.
---
Music is still good. The local public radio brings a lot of publicity to it, and we get some 'cred'-ible indie acts to town.
Downside: Reading, in every review, My Morning Jacket being branded as 'Southern' or 'greasy Southern,' like they're Lynrd Skynrd or something.
Justin is right, but at the same time I know exactly how you feel. I think it's a natural human response to want to make a big change to try to get away from those memories.
Hope you're doing OK.
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