Justifiable Grief in the Wake of a Supernova
Four Mondays ago, I experienced a new kind of emotion; it was akin to grief, but more like a supernova in a part of my brain I never knew existed.
I woke up that day with rhythmic cramps that wrapped themselves like boa constrictors around my pelvis and back. I sped to my bathroom where I sat, chest-to-knees, as I watched blood and clots literally pour out of me. I had zero doubt over what was happening, but even as it was happening, I questioned the reality of my own experience. This can’t be what you think it is. So, I simply cleaned myself up, crammed an arsenal of tampons in my purse, and left for work.
A month prior, I found my IUD on the floor. Yes, on the floor. My boyfriend picked it up thinking it was an accessory to one of my son’s superhero action figures (kind of looks like a tiny crossbow, no?). First we laughed, hard at the absurd sitcom sketch that was our morning; but shortly after, we thought, “Oh shit … how long has it been out?” There and then, I joined the roughly 3% of women who find themselves suddenly IUD-less, perplexed over how it could have happened.
I phoned my doctor, who saw me right away. I handed her my IUD in a plastic bag like evidence from a crime scene. If her reaction was any indication, this was not an everyday sight for her. That day, I began the first of a series of urine pregnancy tests I would take over the next couple of weeks. First urine pregnancy test: negative.
I felt “pregnancy-like” symptoms for about a month following my IUD’s bold escape from uterus prison, but I chalked those up to the hormonal “crash” that’s sometimes felt after an IUD is removed (or expelled, in my case). I don’t know. My body just felt different, but as a mother to an almost five-year-old boy, it was a familiar kind of different. Second urine pregnancy test: negative. Third urine pregnancy test (at home, one week later): negative. Sanity: doubted.
On the Tuesday following that gore-filled Monday, I continued to experience “rushes” of blood and intermittent cramps, which were now more pronounced. Once again, I visited my doctor; this time I shared with her the details of what I went through the day before. After listening intently to my story, she tilted her head slightly and said (almost too calmly), “Hmm. Sounds like you could be experiencing an early miscarriage… but it’s probably a very early miscarriage.”
The first part of her statement roused within me this nondescript, yet cataclysmic flood of emotions. It felt as if the floor beneath me was splitting open and I was about to be catapulted downward into the Earth. Yet at first, it didn’t feel like trepidation, sadness, or some discernible response. Instead, I felt almost electrified by the validation of my ordeal. Every emotion I was capable of feeling was firing on all cylinders — all at once. At the same time, I shunned the state I was in. Laurel, this is a “very early miscarriage.” We weren’t trying to have a baby anyway. It’s inconsequential, Laurel. Stop. It’s on par with getting a cold, gaining two pounds, or spilling an unmemorable cup of gas station coffee on the floor. Don’t be dramatic. You’re always dramatic.
My doctor ordered a quantitative Hcg test to measure the exact level of the pregnancy hormone in my blood. The phlebotomist confirmed my name and date of birth. She then glanced at the reason for the test and gushed, “Pregnancy test! How exciting!” I pressed the nail of my index finger into the flesh of my thumb and replied, “No, not exciting. I’m confirming a miscarriage.” She woefully handed me an extra juice box as consolation for the awkwardness she just caused. Despite my shaky emotional state, I headed to work. There, outside my office building, I found the steady arms of my boyfriend with whom I cried the first of my tears.
The cadence of the day went like this: I went to the bathroom, then back to my desk, then back to the bathroom, then back to my desk about every forty-five minutes. Each time, I wiped my tears, which were automatic and almost robotically flowing at that point, fixed my makeup, and hoped to god no one noticed my unhinged state. On the last of those numerous bathroom trips, I found myself trembling with fear as I passed what looked like tiny bits of gray, jelly-like tissue. After thirty minutes of bogarting the handicap stall, I just needed to get out. I went back to my desk, fetched my computer, and hailed a cab. Omigod, please don’t bleed on his seat.
I made it home where I let myself fall like a discarded marionette on the living room couch, on which I wailed like a wounded animal. At the same time, I kept chastising myself. This is nothing, WHY are you acting this way? Your feelings are out of proportion with the circumstance! By nightfall, the bleeding ceased, but the cramps continued for a good week. Emotionally, I still didn’t get it. It took another week of introspection before I could parse out and name exactly what I was emoting during that time.
Hello, Mr. Guilt. The miscarriage was early, maybe five weeks. I acknowledged my miscarriage as a “loss,” but I felt I had no right to grieve or to even miss a day of work. It would be ridiculous. I felt guilty for feeling anything resembling grief. How dare I take up space with my grief when other women experience real pregnancy loss at 12 weeks, 18 weeks, 30 weeks? My grief felt misplaced and unjustified as if its very existence diminished the grief of others.
Walk in shame; live in the lonely. Shame and its confidant, loneliness, invaded my thoughts rather quickly. Almost a quarter of all women will have a miscarriage at some point in their lives, but talking about miscarriage openly is akin to “airing one’s dirty laundry.” It’s an uncomfortable topic. It’s a private matter. Miscarriage is firmly in the category of unmentionables. Often, the very word, miscarriage elicits a sheepish, “I’m sorry” followed by a multi-layered look of concern, blame, and judgment. She must have done something to cause it; too many drinks; too many cigarettes; too many squats at the gym. This archaic mindset about something as common as pregnancy loss is still so pervasive and so deeply engrained that even as I’m writing this, there’s still a part of me that believes I did something wrong.
There’s no resisting Lady Loss and Lord Grief. My pregnancy was a cluster of cells, a primitive mass, yet my sense of loss and grief was so deep, I felt it necessary to hollow out a place in my heart for it to dwell, indefinitely. But how could I grieve so much over something that barely was, and could never be? It’s a question I will continue to ask myself even though I know I won’t find the answer.
Four Mondays later, I’ve made a conscious decision to relinquish the power I’d been giving to guilt, shame, and loneliness. I’ve accepted that emotions often run together in packs, sometimes creating new and often unnamable emotions out of their unity. Grief doesn’t need to be justified according to the outwardly perceived severity of the loss. There’s simply no appropriate intensity or timetable for when grief will subside.
The grief just is, and however it is, it’s exactly how it should be.
