Love Letters to My Past: The Anger that Accompanied My Grief

TW: this blog post talks about miscarriage and infertility. If this is a topic too hard for you to read, please feel free to scroll by. I’m sorry for your pain.

“Grief lasts longer than sympathy, which is one of the tragedies of grieving.”

Elizabeth McCracken

When someone loses a loved one we give them time to grieve. When someone loses a friend or beloved pet, we give them time to grieve.

But when you open up that you have suffered an early miscarriage there is no time to grieve because most likely time had already passed and you’re expected to keep carrying on just like you always have.

I don’t call you up and say “my baby just died” because you most likely didn’t know I was expecting.

I don’t call you up and say “I’m on my way to the hospital because I think I’m losing my baby again” because again you didn’t know.

So when the time comes around to where babies are brought up and nosey minds poke in when you are well aware that you’d have a glowing belly to answer all those questions, you kind of lose it.

“Why don’t you have kids?”

“When are you planning on having kids?”

“Do you want kids?”

“Don’t wait too long!”

“Have you gone to a specialist? My friend…”

I genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, despise and dread these questions and comments.

I don’t have kids because mine are dead.

I was planning on having lots of kids by now but infertility robbed that from me.

Of course I wanted both babies I lost.

Rough. Those answers are rough, right?

I now navigate two things simultaneously: moving on and answering those questions I never thought twice about before.

I’ve spent hundreds of dollars on negative pregnancy tests.

Thousands in medical bills.

And countless hours lying awake trying to convince myself to move forward.

I have become a different person through all this and by that I mean I truly no longer give a damn if my hurting hurts your feelings. I have suffered in silence and I have tried to suffer out loud. No matter how I chose to grieve nothing soothed me. The anger that I built up inside was enough to build a castle. It trickled out each time the wrong question was asked of me, the slightest comment made of me, and sometimes out of nowhere my own crushed expectations crippled me.

_

I started writing this post over a year ago. I don’t know why, but I felt like sharing bits of it now. Maybe knowing how angry I have been will comfort someone else freshly in that anger stage.

There’s not a lot of space for us to be angry.

It’s always “just you wait” or “I know someone who tried for _ years” or “I couldn’t imagine.”

There’s no finish line when you’re in the throes of infertility. We don’t know if or when it will end for us. So the overly positive comments feel toxic to us because we’ve lost touch with positivity.

Just let the people you know going through this be angry. Tell them how it sucks and they don’t deserve this. Remind them they did nothing wrong. Let them voice their unhinged rants about how the world feels like it ended.

I’m no longer in that anger stage. I’m not numb and I’m not not bothered. I’m here. I’ve accepted my life for what it is and hope still glimmers inside from time to time. I find joy in the little things and I’m not as shy to walk in the sun anymore. I recognize when I’m having a bad mental day and I tuck away from people that don’t see it.

I still grieve the woman I was before loss, the man my husband was before loss, and the life we thought we’d be living. I grieve the idea of picking out names and counting down to birthdays. I grieve the hope that now feels like a chore to keep around.

If anything, each day feels like a step on the grief ladder. One step at a time, off the ground, and closer to the top.

What’s at the top? I’m not sure.

Perhaps it’s the version of me that made it. The woman that suffered in silence, the one who screamed in her car, the one who used all her PTO to go to therapy, who broke down in grocery stores, or who sat near the edge of a bridge daring God to stop her.

Each day I’m one step closer to the strongest woman I’ve ever known – myself.

-Liz-