The Heavy Things

It only took me 4 years to think of something else to say.  It's a good thing I don't make a living with this thing.  Whether or not anybody actually wants to read what I have to say today, that is difficult to know.
So wow, what has happened since my last post?  I still live in France.  No wait, I'm like fully invested in France now.  Sure, there's this whole buying an apartment in an up-and-coming Parisian suburb thing that we did FOUR YEARS AGO.  But me, I even went so far as to actually become French.  Then I doubled down by having a baby here.
A baby, let's talk about that.  It has occupied a shocking amount of headspace since I decided I wanted one in 2015.  I always assumed that part of my identity would be motherhood.  I grew up surrounded by women for whom this was the case, so I've always reserved a part of myself for that purpose.  By that I mean, finding a job and lifestyle that were conducive to that possibility.  Keeping my dating life on track.  There was maybe a six month period where that went slightly off the rails, but by the time I met my husband, I'd pulled it back and was ready to say exactly what I wanted.  Ah, early 20's Joy.  30's Joy really misses your ability to eat carbs and drink beer, but not much else.
What I didn't see coming was how difficult it was for me to actually get to motherhood.  Multiple children on all sides of the family, vertically and horizontally, but every month a big minus sign and an unwelcome stain.  When motherhood is a goal you can't seem to reach, it feels like it's some club that everyone in the world can get into except for you, because for some reason you're not good enough for it.  And all you can hear is about how this person had a baby the first time they tried, and that one had a baby by accident.  It feels like every single woman you pass in the street is pregnant, some of them pushing a baby that can't even walk yet, swollen with number 2.  So you look into what could be wrong, but there is nothing wrong, scientifically speaking, not that they can see.  It is just Nature.  At the time, it was hard to say if that was helpful to hear.  One part of you said that it should happen, because they can't find any reason why it wouldn't.  But the other part of you, the darker part that watches crime documentaries and listens to murder podcasts, tells you that the reason it's not happening for you is because you aren't worthy.  As if Nature got a glimpse of your soul and said, "well sure, drug addicts and alcoholics can have babies.  Ted Bundy's mom could have a baby.  People who don't even want babies can have babies.  But this one?  There's something really wrong with her, best if she doesn't."
I carried that with me for about three years.  One thing the doctors told me during my multiple visits was that once it happens, you forget everything you'd been feeling, even if it had gone on for years and years.  It just goes away.  I was surprised that they were sort of right, no matter how much I swore I'd preserve all those thoughts and feelings in a part of my myself, because they were too consuming to simply forget.  I had to hold onto them, if only so I could sympathize with someone else who was going through the same thing.  I wanted to remember how I felt about everybody's well-meaning words, so that I could find better words.  One sentiment I heard more than once was that it would happen, probably when I wasn't thinking about it or even really trying.  And I always, always, always wanted to ask how did they know it would happen?  Did they have a crystal ball?  Maybe it just wouldn't.  And telling someone to stop thinking and/or trying so hard is sort of like telling a person who really has to pee to think about something else.  Bitches, that never fucking works, and neither does telling a person who wants to become a mother to stop wanting it so badly.  Only briefly does my desire to become a mother get eclipsed in that moment by the desire to punch you in the face.  Carrying the psychological burden of not being allowed into the motherhood club eventually turns toxic in ways you don't expect.  Every person who tells you they're having a baby, it cuts like a knife.  You want to be happy, to tell them that you're glad for their good news, that you hope only for wonderul things, but mostly you're beating down the monsters that are jealousy and anger and sadness and guilt and wondering what they did right and what you're doing wrong.  I never really found a good way to manage that.  We who find trouble sharing in your joy -- we know that these moments aren't about us, I swear we really do.  But we also are incapable of casting off the thing that's weighing us down, the thing running on a loop in the back of our minds, every day, all the time.  And for that, we're sorry.  I don't know, sometimes wine helps.  Occasionally tequila.
Strangely, the only thing I found that helped was talking to people who had gone through the same things.  Because they didn't make you feel bad for feeling hopeless or broken or guilty or unworthy.  Even if they'd managed to have a child, they unlocked those feelings from before for you, and acknowledged that there is no way around them.  And they didn't fill your head with empty promises that it would happen, because they knew how meaningless it all is.
But in the end, I did have my baby, didn't I, so what am I complaining about.  Sure, for something as natural as procreation and motherhood, I am continually shocked about how little of it is actually fucking natural.  Never had a BMI above 24 (though I admit I have been in the danger zone a few times) but somehow I got diabetes.  Everybody in the goddamn hospital told me there was no such thing as a woman who didn't eventually get milk, but how about we stop saying that.  I should probably see a therapist for that trauma alone.  Breast is best, how about a little empathy is best.  How about shutting the fuck up is best.  And maybe, maybe one day I'll get the feeling back in the my lower abdomen where they cut her out of me.  I'm hoping the fact that she literally licks the dog on the mouth helps with that bacterial flora she never got from me.
But maybe the weirdest thing is how isolating all these things can be.  I don't know if it's because our culture is still in the process of realizing that half of us are female, and maybe it's a good idea to talk a little about stuff that roughly half the population experiences.  Or because it's all a little uncomfortable.  I dunno, don't people send out pictures of their genitalia?  Doesn't that mean our understanding of what should be private has changed?
But for some reason, a lot of this we hold onto alone, or we comb Google, or we talk to strangers on the Internet through forums.  Like who came up with keeping a pregnancy to yourself until the end of the first trimester?  Do what you want, but it seems odd to me.  Don't tell anyone because it may end badly, and you shouldn't spread that around to people who care about you.  You shouldn't feel like you can talk about it to your friends, because disappointment and trauma are best kept to yourself.

But it is so heavy.  Looking on the screen, and seeing a black dot but nothing else when you know there should be a heartbeat.  Googling the English term for "oeuf clair" because, while plenty vivid in French, you feel like you should know what it means in your own language.  Blighted ovum, for those of you who are curious.  15-20% of pregnancies end that way, just a little info for you.  It is hard to sort out exactly how one should feel in this situation.  Acting like you lost something seems overly dramatic, because one could argue that there was nothing there to begin with.  All the same, something had been growing for two months.  Hope, confirmed by positive tests and rising hormones and nausea.  Washing vegetables with vinegar and not eating cheese or drinking wine.  And yet, at the end of 9 weeks, suddenly learning that you were nurturing a fantasy, a trick.  In the end, what you lost was something psychological, another thing for the "why you definitely need a therapist" column, though the physical aspect of it isn't super fun either.  It's like a heavy period, but, like, if your period was trying to break you.  The disappointment is heavy.  The crushed hope is heavy.  All of it, even the willpower to get out of bed; today, it was just too heavy.
So why say this.  I think because, I feel like it's too much to always have to carry this stuff alone.  And I'd like to put it out there, because I don't think keeping it in helps.  At least not me.  To be honest, I am, in all, really, deep down, okay with knowing that it just wasn't meant to be this time.  But it still hurts.  It is still grief and guilt and disappointment and uncertainty.  It is still a lot to feel.  But having laid it out here, this way -- it also feels like now I have a little bit less to carry.