Recovery

On my phone because the computer isn’t working, so this’ll likely be short.

One week out and we’re doing okay, all things considered. We both miss our baby tremendously but we don’t have any guilt or shame or terrible remorse about our decision. If we had to go back in time and do it all again, we would make the same choice. It was the right one for us.

Nights are hard though. The grief tends to sneak up on me then. But that’ll get better with time.

Physical recovery is going okay. I’m slowly feeling more back to normal and the pain has been mostly manageable. Cramping is still an issue if I overexert myself and fatigue is overwhelming most of the time but that’s to be expected, given everything.

I go back to work tomorrow, which will be a welcome change of pace and a good distraction.

Thanks for the continued good thoughts, everyone.

How Not To Be A Big, Huge Jerk To Me Right Now

This post is going to be angry. Fair warning.

1. It is in no way my responsibility, or J’s, to comfort you.
2. If you can’t say anything supportive, or kind, about the situation (and that’s fine. Everybody has feelings and you are perfectly entitled to however you feel.), you need to not say anything, at least to us. FULL STOP.
3. Comfort in, Dump OUT. 
4. Please read and fully comprehend Item #3. I have had some unhelpful and horrifically inappropriate comments made to me and I am DONE dealing with them.
5. J and I have made our decision, together. You, as much as you may love me, are not a part of that decision. And you need to respect our choice. Even if you don’t agree with it, you need to respect it. (And yes, there is a huge, wonderful difference between agreement with and respect of.)(If you don’t understand this difference, you should probably not say anything to me right now because I am not explaining it to you. I don’t have the energy for it.)
6. If you can’t say anything because you don’t know what to say, or you aren’t all that great in a crisis, that’s perfectly fine. Honestly. I totally get it. It’s a difficult situation all around and I have many other people who are, fortunately, really great at being a support network right now. Sit this one out if you need to. (P.S. I do very much love you.)
7. I don’t owe anyone an explanation on why, specifically, we are deciding to end this pregnancy. If you think you are personally owed one, you are very sadly mistaken.
8. J and I are allowed to grieve however we need to. You need to respect that as well.
9. Do not attack, or beg us to change our minds, or question our choices under the guise of loving me, or J, or this embryo. It is not helpful. It is inappropriate, disrespectful of my express wishes, and it makes me either have a crying jag, a panic attack, or have the urge to rip out people’s throats and then smash plates.
10. You have no fucking idea how we feel. Do not presume to.

Thankfully, this post is only for a few people it seems but damn, I really fucking need you to take it to heart. To everyone else, thank you for your kind thoughts, personal accounts of your experiences (really, to those women who have reached out and talked with me about your positive experiences with abortion, I cannot thank you enough. You were, and are, a huge comfort in a difficult time.), continued prayers, silly links for distractions, offers to listen, and endless, overwhelmingly positive and compassionate support for J and I. We will never be able to express how grateful we are to you and for you.

On Focusing

Look, I’m feeling tired and very, very sick (morning sickness is All Damn Day sickness over here), so this is gonna be short.

J and I have decided to focus on cheerful things after the procedure, in order to help get our minds off things and to help with his mental illness (that’s a thing. I’m not discussing it here, but it’s serious and it’s another factor in why we made our decision.) We’re amassing TV shows, like Leverage and Modern Family that will help be a distraction, but we could use recommendations for books/movies/shows/things to do.

We’ve also decided to go balls to the wall this Christmas because we think it will be healing. It’s our first Christmas together though and we’re looking for traditions to start. We’re gonna try and pick up an Advent calendar today (and probably fill it with a Lego set that we can assemble together) and we’ve decided that Christmas Eve will be when we get new pajamas but we’d love to hear your favorite family traditions, if you’d like to share.

Thank you, everyone, for being so kind and supportive during the past week. We can’t thank you enough.

So.*

I’m pregnant. J and I aren’t keeping it, for financial reasons. We, understandably, don’t want to have a kid that we can’t provide for the way that we want to. If we were to keep it, the long and short of it is that J would need to get a second job and we would never see each other. We don’t want that, for a multitude of reasons.

Everything about this hurts like hell.

It is also, unequivocally, the right choice for us, the responsible, unselfish choice for both the short and long term. We do, eventually, want to get married and start a family. We’ve talked and dreamed about this already, before we even found out that I’m pregnant. We’re both just…sure about us, in a way that seems absurd when I say it aloud because it’s so soon and yet…I look at him and just somehow know that I’m probably looking at my husband. We’re building something, slowly and with great care and consideration, that we both believe is meant to last. We both know that having a baby (and god, our baby would be so loved) would not be in the best interests for us right now, either individually or as a couple. We’ll probably, if all goes according to plan, be able to start trying to start our family in a year or two.

But we’re both struggling with the emotional complexities of ending this pregnancy. It’s a brutal feeling, knowing that something that you’ve both wanted for so long is right there and also not at all the right time for it. It hurts like hell that I will have had two pregnancies, when this is all over, and no living children. It hurts like hell that I’ll never know the color of this baby’s hair, or how their body looks when they laugh, or even whether it was a boy or a girl.

I cry a lot, these days. We both do. But we hold each other while we cry and that makes things a little easier.

Hopefully, we’ll be able to get an appointment at the clinic on Monday for our consultation to look at what options are safest for me, given my medical history and the fact that we’d like to preserve my fertility the best we can. Hopefully, things will go smoothly and there won’t be any complications. Hopefully, there won’t be too much pain and I’ll physically recover quickly. This is the best I can hope for.

We’ll be okay. It’ll take some time, but we’ll be okay. We just really, really aren’t okay right now.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’d like to spend some time with my baby, with what little time we have left.

*I do not, under any circumstances, want advice, to be talked down to or out of our decision, opinions on options, political or religious views, or anything even slightly smacking of judgement. This is, absolutely, the healthy, informed choice that J and I are making together. Your** opinions are not welcome. Full stop.

**I don’t mean YOU you, my loving and supporting friends. But there are assholes in the wild internet and ohhhh, I will block and delete comments to my heart’s content if anything even whiffs of being assholish. This is my relationship, my baby, and my life. Decisions made here are not up for comment.

Nerd Level 11

So, after I made baklava the other night for a date*, I put the pan on the stove top to cool once I took it from the oven. Only I forgot, about five minutes after I took it out, that it was likely still hot. I burned both my hand and hastily pulled them from the pan, startled, only to see that they weren’t even red.

So then I whispered, solemnly, “I am Daenerys Targaryen, Mother of Dragons, the Unburnt”, because that’s how I do.

Glad to be back, y’all.

*I go on dates now. Dating is cool.

Days Like This

What do you do when you worry about getting your emotionally and verbally abusive father what he wants for Father’s Day (even though he has heaped boatloads of cripplingly terrible words upon you this past year, you know, the one that made you want to take your own life already because of your severe depression) because hey, he’s been a shitty dad, well, forever and why should that be celebrated when everything, everything, is always your fault and he’d probably complain about how you got the wrong thing anyway and how do you cope when your depression seems to be slowly creeping back and you feel powerless to stop it when you lie awake at night and try not to weep and how  do you deal with the fact that everywhere you turn there are atrocities happening and people are being shot or forced into being sex slaves or being abused in a myriad of horrific ways (and hey, all those stories of abuse are bringing back some shit that you thought you were over but it looks like yeah, no, not so much) and how do you deal with the people you love losing loved ones or having to have emergency surgery or struggling with mental health issues or dealing with illness and the fact that today you heard about someone having to bury their 2 day old because the doctors couldn’t fix their tiny heart and you feel like there is a growing pit in your stomach of rage and sadness because the world feels horrific and full of despair and just plain cruel and you are utterly powerless to do anything about it.

What do you do. What do you fucking do. Because my mother never said there’d be days like this.

At least I’m honest. Well. With you guys anyway.

So, I’m in the kitchen just now getting a soup bowl full of vanilla ice cream (which I will promptly smother with chocolate syrup because somebody in this house insists on getting vanilla even though that choice is obviously wrong) because 1) it’s been a hell of a week, 2) we apparently threw out our corkscrews (?!?), 3) I’m watching the company picnic episode of The Office and sometimes you just need a bowl of ice cream while you get sniffly over how wonderful Jim and Pam are, 4) why am I even explaining this to you right now, I’m an adult lady who can make her own decisions and right now those decisions include a soup bowl of ice cream larger than my face. Haters to the left.

Anyway. I’m scooping out my treat and my little toe hits the button for the scale (why do we have the bathroom scale right by the fridge. Why. Terrible idea.). It beeped cheerfully at me. And then I shushed it. I shushed it saying, “shhh not yet shhhhhh just wait until morning*”.

Glad to be back, y’all.

*I have absolutely no intension of weighing myself then.

I am full of good ideas.

Me, looking at our overripe bananas: You know what we need? A banana…
…time…

Mom: Machine?

Me: Of course not. That would be silly. What use would a time machine for bananas be? You’d be crossing your own time stream every time you wanted oatmeal. It’s no good.

…I was going to say stasis.

Mom: Because that’s not ridiculous at all.

Me: You shut your unbelieving mouth.

The lies I’m telling myself today.

Adam and I breaking up doesn’t hurt all that badly. It’s not my fault. Or my depression’s fault. I will totally get through this and be forged from tougher stuff.

Everything is fine.

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