Back to the world of the living

It's 9:55 pm on Sunday night. I should be lesson planning (I'm a teacher: I've been trying to keep that private but I'm throwing caution to the wind at this point). My family was in town today on a long-scheduled trip, and I spent the weekend with them. I had already been working this year on trying to cut back on the hours spent lesson planning. But this weekend, given the fact that I'm still physically recuperating from the D&C and surgery last Tuesday; and especially given the fact that I'm emotionally recovering from this pregnancy loss (will I ever re/cover what I had? Did I ever re/cover from the first miscarriage?); I decided to throw out all professional scruples and saved planning for this week until the final possible moment.


I feel guilty, of course. But that's my over-developed super-ego talking. Logically I know my lessons tomorrow will be fine (I've taught this unit four times before); and I know that I will stay up for about two hours (I'm currently drinking coffee); so I know my instruction tomorrow will be just fine. But I do feel guilty.

But not guilty enough to put down the blogging. What I want to do very quickly before I return to my school life is commemorate and memorialize this moment. This moment of reentry.

I took the entire week off last week after the D&C. That means I missed all Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. Never in my teaching career have I missed so much school. So there exists between me and school a chasm that is not just due to the event of losing the pregnancy. That event is concretized by the significant time spent out of the school building.

I feel sad to return. Because it will be the first time I enter the building again without the child inside me. Because I know that no one in that building will have journeyed this journey with me, so I will trek through the halls carrying the sadness on my shoulders alone. Because everything and everyone there is the same (although that does imply a good degree of narcissism, doesn't it? Surely others have experienced or are experiencing significant feelings in this world, too). Because I enter back to my old self, the un-pregnant self, the self without life inside that hasn't been me for the 8 weeks since conception. Because I don't really want to go back to normal life: I want to stay in this place of mourning my lost pregnancy. Because I'm afraid of forgetting to feel the pain and therefore moving on and therefore desecrating the preciousness of What Happened. Because I know that I'll have the energy and time to devote to school and tutoring that I had before I found out I was pregnant, and I don't want to be the Me Who Isn't Pregnant again. Because everything is like it was, and I didn't like that life when I had it before, so how can I not lament and mourn its return?

I feel I live a double-life. At school, I'm chipper, distracted, even energetic and positive. I smile with the kids and colleagues, and not even disingenuously; I fully am that energetic and positive self in that building. But then I come home and I flop into the pillows of my bed and obsessively check BabyCenter boards for hours. (I am a frequent visitor of boards I have a right to: the miscarriage boards, the multiple miscarriage boards, the blighted ovum boards, the May loss boards... But I also troll on the May 2012 birth board, which is almost sinister in its power of self-laceration.) Or just stare out the window and do nothing of any use or purpose or value. And that second self, the self of the self-laceration and purposeless window-staring, is the one I want to inhabit. I don't want another self. There is a deliciousness in the sadness, which, as my therapist has pointed out, is a sign of my depressive personality.

But I must now close this and move onto the lesson plan. I may have abandoned any hope of happiness in this life, but I am still primarily motivated by a sense of perfectionism, and my perfectionism will neither brook nor tolerate mediocrity in instruction. So on I must go. But here, at 10:12 pm on the first Sunday night after my D&C and therefore formal close to my pregnancy, I wish to pause and reflect and memorialize What Came Before.

This was a child. This was a life growing. And though God chose to end it, it was there and real and beautiful for many weeks. And I carried this child with me as I lay quietly on the couch in the teacher's lounge during my off period; and I carried this child with me as I took the elevator instead of walk the 20 stairs up or down to my classroom; and I carried this child with me through Monday morning All-School Meetings; and I carried this child with me as I exhorted kids to stay on-task, focused, and engaged; and I carried this child with me as I drove home from school each day, eager to lay on the bed and rest my body so the child would have a safe and healthy body in which to grow; and I carried this child with me as I left the house each morning having foregone my ritual coffee so that the child would have a neurologically calm and healthful bloodstream in which to swim; and I carried the child with me as I graded papers quickly and efficiently, not obsessively, because I was committed to caring for myself as I nourished the little baby inside; and I carried the child with me as I missed school for a few hours here and there over the past two months as I went to doctor's appointments, bringing with them as they did news sometimes good and ultimately bad; and I carried this child with me as I walked on eggshells and on clouds, both in equal measure as I swung between elation and anxiety and back again. I carried the child with me through all that. And she was a good child, and a dear child, and a blessed child, and a dream child, and a miracle from God.

And she is no longer here. She is gone. She has evaporated into the firmament, back to the heavens, back to the ether, back to my blood and tissues and the stars. But she was here with me for a few precious weeks, oh yes she was. She was Here and I loved her and honored her.

I'm sorry, my little baby. I'm sorry our time together was so short. All told, we had nine weeks together before the doctor took you away. But yes, my little child, you were here with me those weeks and I loved you so, oh, I loved you so. And I will love you forever. And someday we will see each other's faces, and we will know each other and recognize each other and embrace as we never would on earth. Because I carried you through the Monday meetings and on the couch in the teacher's lounge and in my car and without coffee, and many more places which I haven't mentioned here.

But never, for one moment in the eternity which God will now surely give you, denying you as He did the earthly time of years on earth, think that our nine weeks together counted only as nine weeks. They were a lifetime for you, but they were also a lifetime for me. And I'm sorry that I must now sometimes not think about you every moment but instead return to the lesson planning, and the essays, and the exhorting of the children. It is not because I didn't or don't love you enough. If I could have stayed the hand of God, my precious child, I would have. But God's hands were not here for me to touch, His will was not here for me to shift. He did not hear or see me, He was not moved by my prayers, He did not alter his design. He took you too soon. But no, my precious child, that does not mean anything to me. I will honor you and cherish you and keep you. And these nine weeks will count as nine centuries in the love I bore and will bear for you. May God bless you and keep you, and I will see on the other side. Oh yes, my dearest child, I will see you on the other side.

Love,
Your Mother