It’s the end of the year and a part of me is truly shocked I made it this far. Frankly, I was shocked I made it to my birthday in July.
I often wonder if I’m just perfect at making horrible decisions or I’m one of those people who are meant to live a certain kind of Life and just figure out a way to get through it. Is it destiny or a string of Fuck Ups?
The 14th of January 2013 I had a miscarriage. When you hadn’t even known that you were fertile, no less pregnant and wake up to contractions and blood rushing down your legs, it’s a special kind of trauma. One of those experiences words can’t even begin to describe.
It was a bleak time.
I honestly don’t think I knew the meaning of depression until I went through the next couple of months after it happened.
There were days when I’d wake up and cry because I was still alive. I felt guilty and lonely. As if I’d somehow caused it and even though I knew I hadn’t, I felt like the blame needed to be passed somewhere and I was the only one to carry it.
I didn’t want to write about this. The thing with sharing experiences with people is that not everyone will respect it. We live in a society where everything turns into a joke, no matter how traumatic, and one never wants to be on the receiving end of being dismissed.
Friends often ask me if, in a sense, it wasn’t a blessing. If I would have kept the child and really, I don’t know. But I would have liked to have been the one to make the decision. I felt [possibly still feel] like my body betrayed me. For months afterwards I’d have panic attacks when my menstrual cycle came around and menstrual cramps would leave me terrified with flashbacks of that morning.
It’s been, by far, the most painful experience of my Life.
I still cry about it.
And I’ve learned that the real pain in certain experiences is that you go through it alone. You can’t collectively grieve, even with people who understand.
It’s your loss and you have to come to terms with it. You grieve as long as you want and you do your best to get by.
This is not a “Everything will be fine, just keep going” post. Sometimes I have no guidance to provide.
What I CAN say is Life’s taught me that Time heals and creates all wounds.
And that’s that.
“…But then she has to be so transparent and so honest, and like, her secrets are completely – they belong to everybody. And it’s caused her problems in her personal life. That’s almost common knowledge.
So I think it’s this thing where you feel – it’s such a cliché, but like such an open book sometimes. It’s a struggle to try to figure out what to keep to yourself and what not to. Because writing, for me, is so important, and I need to do it. It’s a physical need. And so the more difficult a thing is I’m going through, the more I’ll write about it. Sometimes I feel like, “Should I be keeping that to myself, or is that not appropriate?” But then I think, “Fuck it. Whatever.” And write about it anyway, because I need to.
The purpose that it serves is greater than ego or pride or what people may think of you and all the rest of it. I spent a long time trying to make sure that I wasn’t worried about being embarrassed or stigma or people thinking that they know you, because they don’t. The more that you work on your craft, the more that you can find ways to write about the most terrifying things, things that you can’t even really say out loud to yourself, but write in a way that still feels very safe, and everybody takes something different away from it when they read it.”
– Warsan Shire
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