After the miscarriage - one month on

I'm back again people, I thought I'd discuss where I've been since my miscarriage, it's not something I've spoken about much since my original post which you can find here if you want to know what the hell I'm talking about.  I can't promise I'm not going to swear today. In real life I swear enough to make a wharfie blush. I try my hardest to keep my language PG around here just because I'm really not sure who is reading this stuff, but I'm giving myself permission today to break my own rules, so if you're easily offended by bad language, now is a good time to click away from here.

The thing that has surprised me the most about the past month is just how bloody long it is taking for me to get over everything. I honestly thought I'd be moving on by now, and that all of this would be a distant memory, but it still hasn't happened yet and I'm starting to really get pissed off at exactly how human I am right now. That anger and frustration is starting to spill out of me now, and I find myself exploding over things that never used to upset me. Little quirks I had before I lost the baby are starting to get bigger too. I've always hated crowds, but these days anything more than three people in a room is a crowd. It makes it hard to have people visit, because while I love all of my family (they really are the only ones who visit me anyway) twenty minutes into coffee and chatting I'm ready to hide in my bedroom until they disappear. I've contemplated playing dead a few times until it becomes so awkward they just leave, but I really don't need to give people more reasons to want to lock me in the loony bin right about now.

My way of coping with my feelings has been to pile item after item onto my to do list, until I am now drowning in stuff that has to get done. I've taken on a business partnership to go with the diploma of management I'm studying, and I've also determined that now is the perfect time to learn how to do calligraphy, how to market a business, how to draw, and how to train a dog. I've scheduled all kinds of work for this blog as well, but I'm now at the point where I'm so overwhelmed nothing gets done. I sit here staring at my computer screen and worrying that I will never get through everything I've put on myself that it has almost become a self prophecy of failure. My family keep telling me to take some time off and just relax but it feels almost physically impossible for me to do that right now. I think I'm terrified if I have nothing to think about I'll start thinking about the baby and I just can't keep dwelling on that right now. I'm sick and tired of being sad, but there are days where it seems that's all I know how to be.

I think the thing that is making it hardest right now is that my body is now totally back to normal. (That's code for I got my period for anyone who can't understand subtext) and while I knew this day was coming, it still came as a shock to the system when it actually arrived. The doctors words came flooding back to me where he told me my cycle would start up again and then I could theoretically try to have another baby straight away if that was what I desired. I sat there hating my body for being so eager to get back to normal when my brain still can't wrap itself around what's going on right now. To be perfectly honest I do not desire to try again right now, and I'd love it if my ovaries and uterus could be sympathetic to this fact and give me a little extra time before getting back into the swing of things. I'm still not entirely convinced sewing my legs shut is a bad idea right now, and I'm half way through a bet with the baby's father who believed I'd be ready to "get back on the horse" two months after the miscarriage. I very kindly told him I'd put money on the fact that we will never ride that horse together again, and in fact I may never ride another horse at all. (I need to work on my metaphors I think, this one is getting creepy.) I then took great relish in deleting him from my life (my phone) and I now feel safe in the knowledge that he can never contact me ever again to discuss horses or anything else for that matter. Removing him was a huge step for me, and something I've not been able to do in the past, so that was a cathartic step to say the least.

I'm still not entirely ready to even discuss the fact that I've had a miscarriage with people who don't already know, although I did try to force this by discussing it with a substitute teacher at Miss K's kindergarten (she asked how many kids I have, I didn't just walk up to her and say hey, my baby died, just FYI), but her response was disappointing to say the least. She trotted out the old "well at least you still have your oldest daughter, you must be grateful for her even if you never have another child" line, as if Miss K was a consolation prize. I could have gotten angry at her poor choice of words at the time, but for all I know that could have been her mantra once upon a time, so I chose to let it slide and walk away quietly. And that's the thing. You never know what anyone is going to say if you tell them. I know a woman who was told she deserved to lose her baby, which is a huge fear of mine, so it's easier just keeping silent and not letting anyone know this is why I have permanent resting bitch face right now.

I can feel myself slipping, and yesterday was the first day I was able to admit out loud that I am not coping right now. This is about the point where I would normally go straight to the doctors office and get them to put me back on drugs, but I don't want to do that this time. I want to get through this on my own, without relying on chemicals to prop me up. I know exactly what I need to do, but theory and practise are always two completely different things. First I need to stop beating myself up for being slow on the uptake. I have forgotten the effort it takes to complete simple tasks when you're battling grief and depression, so instead of celebrating the fact that I was able to do the dishes for the first time in two months last week instead I berated myself for being too exhausted to do any other housework for the rest of the day. Instead of feeling proud of myself for hand writing an ad for the business I criticised my work and then hated myself for being inept at using photo editing software. That's the weird thing about grieving. Instead of saying I'm sad and angry because my baby died, I say I'm sad and angry because I suck at life and I can't do anything right. It's easier to focus on the tiny little details I mess up instead of looking at the huge and very sad bigger picture.

The next thing I need to do is take some time off for myself. So yesterday Miss K and I went to Maccas and ate junk food instead of going shopping for healthy food, and by the time this post goes live, we will be skipping school and kindergarten and on our way to the Melbourne Museum to look at the dinosaurs. Then we're going to eat pancakes at one of my favourite restaurants in the city just because it's been years since I've been there. It's also been years since I've wagged from school or work just for the hell of it, so I'm hoping this wild rule breaking spree is enough to lift me up even just a little bit right now.

I'm also closing my contact me page here on the blog for a little while, and giving myself permission to only post what I want for a few weeks. It may mean that there are longer breaks where I'm not here at all, but I promise I'll still be here at least once a month for the Fly on the Wall, so you'll still get to see all the crazy stuff we get up to when I'm not here. I'm hoping that by loosening the reins on my own life a little I might actually be able to start enjoying it again. I still desperately want to find the joy in every single day, but it's harder to do that when I'm tied to a to do list that never ends.

Well that's it from my little part of the world, coincidentally if you see any news articles about a dinosaur exhibit being totally destroyed at the museum this week, please know that I had absolutely nothing to do with it, it was all the five year old's fault.