To quote Bright Eyes, “I’m wide awake, it’s morning.” Four-fifteen in the morning, to be precise.
I cannot sleep. I had such an awful dream, I don’t even know where to begin. Excuse the stream-of-consciousness this post is likely to take– despite the fact I’m wide awake, I’m still a bit out of sorts.
It was about my miscarriage. It’s not so much the dream that’s keeping me awake, it’s the notions and thoughts that it gave me. That it was somehow my fault.
I remember when I first found out I was pregnant, I wasn’t sure what to think. Was I scared? Yes. Was I unsure of everything? Yes. But I never thought that it would end up like this. This is not the path I chose. It chose me, for whatever reason.
If I hadn’t miscarried, I would be due towards the end of next month; about a month and a half after I graduate highschool. I can’t help but wonder where my life would be if I were pregnant right now.
I know for sure, I wouldn’t be living with my mother –she’d have kicked me out a long time ago. I wonder if I’d have an apartment somewhere, if I’d be living alone or if the boyfriend would have moved in; would I be living with an aunt instead? Would I have gotten my diploma through Adult Ed, or would I still be going to marching practice this week?
Would I still be waitressing? There are two women that I work with right now that are pregnant. One is due a month after I would have been, the other is due a month after that. They both look as though they’re ready to give birth any day now. I wonder how pregnant I would look? Would I look silly where I’m such a small person, or would I look the same as any pregnant woman?
There’s a girl that I used to be really good friends with in late elementary, early middle-school. She moved, and we lost touch. Coincidentally, she moved to boyfriend’s school (before I knew him) and became really good friends with him, too. They’re still friends. She’s pregnant; I don’t know when her baby is due, but from what I’ve heard from boyfriend, she looks very pregnant, and slightly goofy because she’s such a small person.
The miscarriage hit him pretty hard. Mostly, I think, because I kept it from him until after it had happened. I was afraid to tell him, we weren’t together at the time, and things were very strained between us. I wonder, sometimes, if he blames me for it.
I wonder if my depression would be better or worse if I were still pregnant. I wonder if I’m sufering from a little post-partum right now. I wonder if it’s only going to get worse.
When my grandmother gave birth to a stillborn baby, she suffered from horrible post-partum depression. I don’t even want to think about how terrible it would be to lose your baby after carrying it for almost nine months. The doctor told her that she would never get over the loss until she had another child.
The first time my favorite aunt got pregnant, she was eighteen. She gave birth to a stillborn baby. I know that she was incredibly depressed by it. I don’t know how she got over it, or if she even did until she gave birth to my cousin a few years later. It’s not exactly something you can just ask someone out of the blue.
These things that we keep swept under the rug, keep stuffed in our closets to collect dust; it seems that these are the things that we need to talk about the most.
Song title from Sara by Fleetwood Mac
