On Being Okay

I am a writer.  It's what I do.  I write.  It's how I process things.  So when I found out I was pregnant, I wrote about it.  And the day after my miscarriage, I wrote about that.  And I'm still writing, about both those things.  Because I'm still dealing with them, and I expect that I will be for a long time to come.  And while it's true that there's no actual need for me to post what I write for the world to see, I've come to the conclusion that if there's any chance that what I've written might help someone else process things, well... why not?

It took me a bit to come to this conclusion.  If you'd asked me, a year ago, if I'd ever post in a public forum about having had a miscarriage, my answer would have been the cliched, "Not no but hell no."  Grief has always been a fairly private thing to me.  I don't want it on display; I don't want people feeling sorry for me; I want to deal with my shit and move on.

But.

Then the hypothetical became reality.  And I suddenly realized that by not talking about it, I was be making it more dark and terrible than it actually was.  That's not to say it wasn't terrible- it was.  It is.  It will be.  But by being able to talk to people about it, it helps me feel like it's going to be okay.  After all, I don't hide the fact that my father died- why should I hide the fact that our baby died?  To hide that it existed in the first place, to deny the joy that we felt over the burgeoning possibilities hidden in my womb- that, to me, seems more unbearable by far than to admit to people that now I'm sad.

I was still on the fence about it until a chance encounter this afternoon.  I ran into a friend of mine, and when he asked me about climbing, I hesitated, took a deep breath- and admitted that I'd just had a miscarriage.  And do you know what happened?  He didn't feel sorry for me- he gave me an understanding look, and then told me about when he and his wife went through miscarriage.  And then we made jokes.  And it was okay.  I was okay.

Sad, but okay.  So I got home, and I decided to post all these little writings I had laying around, so that the world can see how happy I was- and how sad I am.  And how okay I'll be.