Sometimes It Bubbles Up

I cried, hard, last night. Hot tears that just kept leaking down my face. It caught me by total surprise. 

I've been really tired lately -- it's been very gray, and dark, and blah wintry. I don't think that helped. 

I have a coworker and friend who is much younger than me, and we briefly shared a room last year when there was some construction going on. She had to go through infertility treatments to have her daughter, and had explored what it would take to have a second child, but was coming to peace with the idea of having one child. 

I bet you can see where this is going. 

She pulled me aside after the break to let me know that she had found out she was expecting on New Year's. It was a total shock for her, because it was completely not a planned thing, and she didn't think it was possible. She was very respectful and empathetic, and wanted me to know because she was going to be out more often, and it was giving me a heads up. She even said, "I feel like I'm the person I always hated when I was struggling, that mythical spontaneous pregnancy person. It's real weird." It's weird too because now it's like, how to be pregnant as a "normal" person, when there's not all the monitoring that comes with infertility clinics, and the stress that comes with that. I'm glad that her doctor is empathetic and will monitor as much as needed for peace of mind. That's such a gift. 

I was good, and really proud of myself for how good I was. I am excited for her. This is not something that is even remotely possible for me, and we are at least 15 years apart, so this is so different than when people were pregnant and I was raw with the mystery of why it was always others and never ever me. Why the "miracle" and the "rainbow" just always passed right on over and around me.

My friend had an ultrasound recently, and I was nervous for her. It is so early. So I checked in, and things are good, but I made the not-so-great mistake of walking closer when she took her phone out. I briefly thought, "oooh, maybe don't look at a 5-6 week ultrasound, nope nope nope" but then was like, "You're GOOD! You can do this!" 

Spoiler alert, I cannot do this. 

I was fine for a while, and then the sadness just bubbled up. I have exactly one ultrasound picture with a little bubble in it, that was the first and the last where maybe it could have worked. Hers was more robust than my doomed little bubble, but it brought me back to that feeling. The hope and the devastation. The wondering if this one flimsy printed picture was all we'd ever have, the closest we'd ever get. The realization over the next few years that yep, that was it. 

The feelings of loss just bubbled up and over until I couldn't contain them anymore. I wasn't sad for me now as much as I was sad for me in 2012 and the soul crushing years that followed until there was the peace of knowing that it was over, that it wasn't going to be a possibility.  It hit me hard, and then ebbed away when I was finally drained of tears. 

I'm going to have to have an awkward conversation that is going to go perfectly fine but I am still dreading. I do not want to see any more early ultrasounds. Second trimester and on? Absolutely. I can handle all the things that are after my brief experience with having something sort of growing inside me. But it is too close to see those reminders of what was, of what wasn't, and what will never be. 

It's good to know where that boundary lies. It's good to give myself grace for feeling so sad, and to know that it doesn't mean I'm not in a good place or I'm not happy in my life now. It's a reminder that grief and loss are bundled up in my beautiful "after" life. Sometimes they are rolled deep inside, and sometimes they push up and erupt. Nothing is all good or all bad, all happy or all sad. I just had a little more sad than happy yesterday.