Dear Reader,
These past few weeks have been one of the most painful of my life.
My love and I learned a miscarriage was imminent. Then she went through the most pain I had ever seen her go through and I could do absolutely nothing about it. The physical pain lasted at least 2 weeks. We’re still dealing with the emotional pain and probably will wrestle with it for a very long time.
We both distracted ourselves by watching Dollhouse, Fringe, Kings, Glee, The Office on Hulu, any Netflix movie and even movies from Redbox. Sadly there were no House, Lie to Me, or Bones episodes we hadn’t seen available to watch. I rubbed her feet at night and at times her back. I figured out how to do one armed pushups and one legged squats from YouTube. My small pleasure from that is seeing a less bony chest in the mirror.
My kombucha culture continues to grow. We bought a 2.25 gallon container from The Container Store to give it a bigger home and, most important to me, a wider surface area for the culture to grow in. The Kombucha culture is aerobic and floats on top of the water to process both oxygen and sucrose. Elizabeth says it looks like a Jellyfish.
Throughout this time I had, of course, been keeping my parents updated. They knew what we were going through. I wanted so much for them to come up to Austin to be with us however I felt that would be asking too much. They have their own worries, concerns, and hardships to deal with. Why add another burden? Or so I thought.
I got into my intellectual, rational mode and described our situation as a lab scientist would. We are going through a tough time. We aren’t looking for condolence or consolation – this part, at least, was sincere. We know we’ll be okay. They said they could come up if we needed them too and I said don’t worry.
Frankly, I was lying to myself and to them. And worse and I slowed down the grieving process.
Consolation I don’t care for and probably never will but acknowledgement I craved. I wanted some recognition of our loss. Socially, knowing they knew about the happy news and not getting much acknowledgement that it was over made the whole pregnancy experience feel unimportant.
By not acknowledging the ending others invalidate the beginning and the existence of what to us was very real.
Elizabeth and I love to analyze and find solutions to problems and this problem too was addressed.
I realised part of the problem for us started in how we shared the news. By just and only announcing the impending miscarriage we left others to fall back on their habits for dealing with grief. Leaving us feeling worse since we needed others to deal with our grief very differently than they are used to.
It’s far better to announce a miscarriage through a letter wherein we can tell them the situation and what we need and how they can help and how important our family is to us to get through this. I feel a pain in my heart hoping there won’t be a next time. But if there is, this is how I will deal with it.
Lately we have thrown ourselves back in to the photography business game and want to improve our financial situation. This raises our spirit even if it brings occasional irritation dealing with impotent software.
At the time I’m reading several books about the body. I love to know specifics and not knowing anatomical terms nor even how to understand anatomical texts using terms such as sagittal, medial, proximal and the like just galls me. Soon the situation will be rectified.
I look forward to the future and what I can do everyday to better myself so that one day I can help others. Seneca helps, as does restricting time on Metafilter and Reddit.
Cheers and luck,
Eric
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