Thank you all so much for all the thoughts and prayers and emails and cards and flowers. You all really saved me through this.
I tend to be a fairly prideful person. And my life has already been filled with so much tragedy and hardship that I feel completely worn out. So I frequently find myself telling God what I will and will not live through. For years, whenever Bear is unaccounted for and I start to worry, I pray for his safety with a threat. “Heavenly Father, if you take him away from me. I can’t do this anymore. I won’t be Mormon, I won’t believe, I’ll go right out and get blackout drunk and I won’t look back. So don’t you dare.”
I have always been very much aware of the blasphemy and irreverence I am committing when I behave this way. But I could never bring myself to stop. I have lived through more than any person should be expected to, and sometimes I just have no more resources to keep going.
When we got pregnant, I was overjoyed, but I was also terrified. I was afraid to sneeze or cough too hard, I was afraid of even the most mild forms of exertion. We moved our whole house and I hardly even moved a stinking box. It wasn’t because I was afraid of hurting the baby, it was because I was afraid of what a miscarriage would do to me. If it weren’t for Bear’s enthusiasm and some very clear answers to prayers, I never even would have told anyone because I was so terrified of miscarrying and having to face the fallout.
This might not make a ton of sense to the rational among you, but I think there is a pressure the infertile woman begins to feel from her friends and family. One that she invents, and nothing that her friends and family are necessarily guilty of, but it is still a weight. I know that there are so many people out there who love and support us and want nothing but the best for us, and all of those people are rooting for us and praying for us. When we got pregnant there were tears and gasps and joy from hundreds of people. And there is a part of me, an illogical part, I realize, but a part none the less, that feels like I just let those hundreds of people down.
I honestly believed that if I had a miscarriage, it would break me. I could not see any other possible outcome. After all this time and everything that’s happened, I did not think I had it in me to keep going. I guess I’m a lot more resiliant than I even want to be.
There were still moments. Moments when going out and getting drunk looked like the best possible solution. Other moments that I really don’t want to think about because of just how close I came to the brink. There was a week in between the first appointment and the D&C, and I was almost entirely alone during that time. I was too distraught to reach for help, and poor Bear had to just watch helplessly as he left for work every day. It was his first week at a new job and was being trained by corporate reps flown in for him. He couldn’t even leave early at the end of the day. We’d been to our new ward exactly once, and I don’t know a soul down here other than my sister-in-law who has a 3 year old and a 3 month old. I was alone, terrified about the baby and worried that I just didn’t have enough faith and that’s why it was happening. I think those days just might have been the darkest I’ve ever lived through. And if you know me personally (I’m thinking of my college friend Mark here especially) you know that is quite a high benchmark to reach.
Bear is an exceptional husband and he reached out for me when I couldn’t. He called my friend Shelle and she dropped everything to come and stay with me for the week after the D&C. Bear and I were talking about what a miracle it was that Shelle found a way to leave her five children and constant obligations for an entire week. Bear quoted the scripture that says we will not be tried beyond what we can handle, and said that if I had been alone for that second week, it would have been too much. So Shelle being here was my miracle.
It was a really good thing she was here, not just for my sanity but because I ended up having a lot of complications and I was really sick that whole week. Basically, my body doesn’t work. I ended up having to go back to the doctors several times. It was rough.
I learned a lesson in just about the hardest possible way to learn it, but I know now that I’m never going to abandon my faith. I’m sure there will be times when I will wish I could, because it would make a few dozen things a whole lot easier for right now, but I can’t. I know too much, I’ve seen too much. I know better.