Inside My Creative Mind

It’s been a while. I’ve been busy graduating with my creative writing degree and starting a new job. It’s been draining to say the least and it’s been overwhelming. Still all of this in the very best way possible, but still very draining. I haven’t had the energy to write, workout, update my new YouTube channel, or create. Nothing. But here I am with a topic that I need to express and there’s no other place I would other than here. 

        On a recent visit to my therapist we spoke about how things were looking up for me. I’m a college grad finally, my job situation just got 10x better, and I can finally FINALLY see a clear path up ahead on where I want to go. Then she stopped and asked me how I was coping with my miscarriage. This was the initial reason for me seeking treatment this go round. I told her that I was okay, but honestly it still sticks with me, over a year later. It’s more in the background like a low hum that I can ignore. Then there are the triggers where that low hum becomes a screeching siren. There’s the holidays where I think about how I’d be opening presents with my kid for the very first time or decking them out in their “My first ____” outfit. There’s the due date and miscarry date that is lovely placed four days after my birthday. Then there’s the baby announcements. Those are the absolute fucking worst. I truly want to hate the people posting their good news, but I can’t hate something that is a big moment for someone else and some I know the stories of their own heartbreak. I can’t hate on that other than that’s what I want.  

        I want my happy ending too and my brain cannot process why it was taken from me. So I keep going. I live with it everyday. Alone. I carry the weight of that. Alone. I have done so since day one and I will continue to. A man, no matter how in touch he is with his feelings, will never understand that kind of heartbreak, but God I wish they could. Now, I could stray from the topic at hand and scream “Men ain’t shit”, but I won’t. That’s a different topic for a different day when my heart does not ache like it does in this moment. That way I can speak truth and not hurt. Because even though it’s a popular go to saying I would like to believe that we know that statement isn’t true.

        I bring up my miscarriage because something my therapist said stuck with me. She told me that there have been studies that link the trauma that women go through after a miscarriage is similar to PTSD and I can see that. I felt that. The pain I felt when that happened somehow surpassed the grief that I had when my father passed two years prior. I was confused how I could be more devastated from losing someone I’d never met over the man who primarily raised me. There was the guilt that I had done something wrong or that something was wrong with my body. There was the feeling that maybe it was some harsh karma coming back to bite me or the fact that I’ve said, even since I was a kid, that I didn’t want kids. That one in particular has made my grief more difficult. I often ask myself “Do I have the right to grieve something that I swore I never wanted?” Either way it felt like my fault. You take that and add the fact that I find out two months later that my partner didn’t want kids it feels like getting hit with a bus. Then I realized why that weight felt heavy on my shoulders alone. 

         I think about this miscarriage today because I found out something troubling. There was something my partner did not even 6 months after this event that has crushed me. I won’t go into detail, I’m sorry. I’m so shocked and it’s a lot for me to process at the moment. With that being said, I look back on that time in my life of losing a baby, to finding that there may not be a baby with the man I was in love with, to a rift in our relationship shortly after, then us getting back good again, a surgical procedure to have my cervix shortened to prevent cervical cancer (and also would cause problems in me getting pregnant), and then all of this within 5 months and he does something to betray my trust. Something that I have still yet to hear sorry for and only excuses. It all makes me wonder what goes through a person’s mind when they hurt someone, especially after something life altering as this. I carry all of the burden of these things yet I was betrayed in a way no one deserves. My heart hurts. 

        So, in all honesty when my therapist asked “How are you handling the miscarriage?” I’m not fine. These are the little lies we tell ourselves to get by. “I’m okay”. “I’m fine.” “It’s no big deal”. It helps us not to focus on this, but at the same time it makes those feelings linger longer. So I am not fine. I am not okay. But I’ll carry this alone. Day by day. That’s all anyone can do. For now I’ll sit in this hurt. I’ll process and heal. I’ll learn from it and grow from it. I’ll build better with it. I’ll always wonder what I would’ve had, the mom I would’ve been, and the family that would’ve been created. My heart will always yearn for that. 

I am an October baby. A Libra through and through. Halloween is my Christmas and I love everything spooky. This year was much much different and it unfortunately altered my whole season and spirit.

My birthday fell on a Wednesday. I had everything all planned out. I was going to go to the amusement park the Saturday before, dinner with my mom that Sunday, and the Thursday after I was going to get into my car to go travel my second home, Chicago, for a comic con that weekend. I was, of course, looking forward to all of this. The Friday before my birthday I woke up with the feeling that my throat was on fire. Great. A cold. So no roller coasters. Instead I went to see Joker where I could barely keep my eyes open. That Sunday, even after feeling like death, I still wanted to go to dinner with my mom, but she couldn't be bothered to drive (which honestly hurt) and I didn't feel up to getting behind a wheel, so I crawled back in bed. On my actual birthday my mother managed to get under my skin about me driving on my own to Chicago... which, mind you, I'd done a ton of times when I used to live there. That Thursday morning I woke up nauseous and nervous. She had gotten to me, but I put too much money into this trip to let nerves get the best of me. Once I got on the highway everything was fine. Music was high, I felt free, and the sniffles didn't matter.... Then I get into Chicago. Once I got into the loop it was just bumper to bumper no moving. Good ol rush hour. Every time we would go an inch my car would jerk. We'd move a little more and then she'd start to jerk and chug some more. With only less than an hour until I reached my hotel I decided to hop off the highway and just take the city streets. I reached a tunnel and at a point and, just like the movies, I see steam rise thinking it was coming from the manholes. I go several blocks and it happened again. Oh, that wasn't the street that was my car smoking. Great. By the time I got to the hotel everything seemed to spiral from there, at least in my mind. I was scared to drive my car the entire time I was there. I checked under the hood several times a day as if I knew what I was looking for. Even if I wasn't scared I was too sick to leave my hotel room anyways. I had developed a cold sore right before the trip so I became incredibly self conscious knowing that that weekend I was supposed to take photo ops with Tessa Thompson, Brie Larson, and Jake Gyllenhall. I was convinced that everyone could see it underneath the makeup and that I just looked gross. You take the flu, feeling inadequate, and my car damn near exploding then top that with a comic con that was poorly ran and overpriced you get a pretty crappy birthday. I mean I did get to hug Jake Gyllenhall, so there is that.

I can't pinpoint where my happiness, I usually have for October, faded. Not sure if it's because that cold kept me from fully enjoying myself or, I forgot to mention, that the one year anniversary of my miscarriage was also that weekend. I was already feeling the effects of that weeks in advance. Pictures of babies making me cry, seeing kids out and about making my heart break and overall emotional. It's as is that feeling never really subsided a year later. It took me out as if I was just told that my baby was gone. A year later and it still hits me more than I can evern imagine. So sickness or dead baby. Which is causing me to feel like I'm drowning this time? Could be a witch's brew of it all.

Halloween was a bust. I was too sick to even think about a costume let alone put one together. Also where to even go. My own personal Christmas was ruined. Therefore any following holiday is ruined. Not looking forward to Thanksgiving. My family is dwindling and for sure show no signs of growing (because who knows if that can even happen, my complicated relationship, my age, and my mental health). I don't even want to think about Christmas. No motivation to even hum a carol or decorate a tree. This isn't my "bah-humbug". This is my "I just want to not exist for a little while". It's my "this is getting to be a little too much". Tis the season.

I'm not sure what it is about this year. I've had a few hard hits but definitely not like the past few years. I feel like 2019 has been nothing but the past three years breathing down my neck like evil spirits that refuse to leave me. They live to remind me of all I've lost and failed. Just so much death and unhappiness. Even with my hopes wavering there are few rays of sunshine. I graduate next month and no matter how I'm feeling I've come to far to fail this. But still I feel my future looks pointless and unfulfilled. I look ahead and I can't tell which direction I'm going and no matter which road I take looks like a dead end. It's very confusing because I've spent a lot of time this year trying to be a better person and I feel worse off. I suppose I still move forward. Find little joys, if possible, but I'm just so very tired. I feel defeat over anything else. Maybe it's Mercury in retrograde again or just my life being stuck. All I know is that this is more than birthday blues.