Shred your life, day 5ish: Pause

I had to hit the pause button today.

Since the miscarriage, I've had a lot of people stop everything to say, "I'm sorry for your loss." A lovely thing to do, and I appreciated it deeply every time. But I was also pretty awkward in response, because I couldn't feel my loss yet. It was a story in progress. I was tremendously disrupted physically and a little rattled because I couldn't control what was going on. But no real loss. I felt like a bad person about it, actually.

So I described it to my husband thus: I feel like I'm about to emotionally throw up.

You know? Like, you run to the bathroom and go nonononononononononononono...

I know I need to. And if I could convince my mind to just relax, the pain would take its proper (though disgusting and awful) course and be over.

But kids need dressing in the morning and feeding and dropping off in various places. And school still needs to happen. And everyone needs to eat again, and again, and again. Sure, dishes can wait, and so can dusting. But as long as the kids are there, I'm "on." So, aside from getting a tad weepy when a friend of mine sent me a truly lovely email, I have cried about this very, very little.

Today, I left Nora and the baby with a friend while I took William to school and then visited the midwife just next door. She followed up on my general health, we talked about the blood draw I was about to do, she did an exam, and ran a regular pregnancy test. While we were talking, a nurse poked her head in, said "it's negative," and left. The midwife and I continued talking, she wished me a happy Thanksgiving, I wished her the same, and she left and we were both smiling. Then the door shut behind her, I was alone in silence for three seconds, and the whole thing overtook me.

Our little person's story was now complete.

It was then, in that moment that I felt loss, because up until then, the story wasn't over. Now it is, and I've been an emotional train wreck most of the day.

So no time logging.

No busy-body-ing.

No keeping up with any housework or school at all.

Just eating fast food for lunch and snuggling my babies as much as they'll let me.

Part of this endeavor of mine is to heal the parts that are broken before trying to make it run again. So right now, I recognize it: I am broken. I am going to cry my makeup off today and skip school. I'm going to pray a lot and go to bed early.

Maybe I'll push "play" again tomorrow. Maybe not.