Beneath the Waves

Have you ever been robbed?

I remember when I was in first grade, maybe kindergarten, my best friends house was robbed. I went home with her after school to spend the night and when we walked into her house it was immediately evident that someone had broken in and stolen things. I remember being so scared. It wasn't my house or my things but I still felt a sense of discomfort and paranoia. Their privacy had been invaded and even as a small child it felt gross and shameful. Not that they had anything to be shameful about but it just felt wrong.

I feel those same feelings today. Except it isn't my home that's been invaded it's my body. It's my heart. I wish that I would have had a miscarriage. That I could've understood. It would have been hard and painful and I'm sure I would be feeling some of the same things that I'm feeling right now. But this, this feels wrong, and shameful. I was forced to do something I would have never done under other circumstances. My body didn't reject my baby and dispel of it. I was robbed. My baby was taken from me. Stolen. At least it feels that way. I know that my baby couldn't survive in my Fallopian tube and I know had the pregnancy continued much further then I may not have survived either but the whole situation just feels wrong.

The pain comes in waves. I think I'm doing fine and out of know where I'm drowning or it feels that way. One summer when I was a kid, my family rented some motel rooms or something on Tybee Island. I grew up in a small town about an hour south west of there. My dad had rented us some "boogie boards" and he would push us off on a wave and my brother and I would ride the wave to the shore and then swim back out with our boards to meet my dad for another round. We had been at it for a while and the waves were getting bigger. My dad said this was the last wave for the day. I don't remember being pushed into the wave by my dad but I do remember the wave overtaking me and me and my board tumbling over and over beneath the water. I desperately wanted air. I needed to reach the surface. I began to panic and then my face made contact with the ocean floor. I was now in shallow water near the shore. My mouth and nose were filled with sand and I was bleeding mostly from scratches from the sand and probably my face hitting so hard. That was the end of that beach day for us. I don't remember a lot else about that vacation, just some snippets here and there but I remember that moment like it was yesterday.

The grief and pain over this unexpected loss is much like that. Most days I'm coasting the waves but on others I'm tumbling beneath the surface unable to breath. Unlike the bloody face and the sand in my mouth and nose, I have no physical evidence of my loss, at least not by outward appearance. I don't go around with my stomach hanging out so very few have seen my physical scars. It's a very private pain. People ask how I'm doing and I say I'm fine or I'm ok because I don't think people really want to hear that I feel like I'm drowning on dry land. I mean, life goes on right? Should I be over this by now? I don't know how I'll ever really get over it. I know one day the pain will lessen, I just don't know when that day will come.

My mind constantly feels like it's moving in a hundred different directions at once. It makes it hard to sleep at night. And it's at night, when I'm completely alone with my thoughts that it hurts the worst. Even thought my pregnancy was still in the beginning stages, between 7 and 8 weeks, plans had already began to form in my mind and heart. It's hard thinking about Christmas to come when just a couple of weeks ago, I thought we'd be getting ready for a new arrival by then. Then I begin to blame myself. Is it because I wasn't excited enough when I found out? It was a complete shock after it taking so long to get pregnant with our two girls. I had only been not pregnant for 5 months.

So I lay here, wrestling with these thoughts and my grief unable to sleep. I wonder if I'll ever feel like myself again?