I Had a Miscarriage; Three of My Friends Are Pregnant.

I think a couple of them might have noticed that I'm avoiding them. Should I just let them make their own assumptions about why that is? Should I address it directly?

You can submit your own question—or yell at me about how I’m wrong—by emailing me at 1followernodad@substack.com

THE SWEETEST SWEETIE:

I had my second miscarriage a couple months ago and I'm pretty sad about it. The grief was overwhelming at first, and has subsided a bit but it's still really, really hard for me to be around visibly pregnant people. I just feel extremely jealous and anxious around them. Unfortunately, three close-ish friends are currently pregnant! None of them had any fertility issues and I can't really contain my jealousy that they never had to go through what I had to go through. Plus, I'm fearful that I'll never experience motherhood, period. 

Anyway, I think a couple of them might have noticed that I'm avoiding them. Should I just let them make their own assumptions about why that is? Should I address it directly? And how do I stop comparing my life to other's lives whose seem far easier and charmed?

Please worry there are absolutely ZERO dipshit metaphors in this one. This is just a nice picture.

SOPHIA:

How could you not be sad? How could they not be happy? How could they not be sad for you? How could you not be happy for them?

It’s all there and it’s all fucked and it’s all human.

Look, you are—I’m 1000000% sure—happy for your friends (on some level). You are not a bitter, mean hag who would throw frog legs, Sugar Free Jello and three sets of false eyelashes into a cauldron and make a potion to yank away their happiness. Please breathe in really really deep and then let all the air whooooooosh out of you with the relief of “Ahhhhh I’m not a bad person who wants bad things for their friends.”

You’re grieving. And one of the many Sicko Fucko things about grief is that it’s unfair. Very rarely does every single person in your life go into the muck together all at the same time on the same level¹. Grief is an isolating dickshit in that way. So often grief is like, “How can everyone else just keep going on with their day at all after this just happened to me?” I don’t think you literally think that thought!!! I just mean that it’s bizarre for everyone else not to be there in the acute throes of loss. It would be like if a tornado touched down only at your house. If a blizzard were only happening for you while everyone else had a 72 degree-and-sunny day. It’s disorienting as hell.

So let me tell you three things that I think are incredibly likely. ONE: you are going to fuck this up. Well, ok, you can’t actually fuck up grieving. But I think it’s incredibly likely that you do something in the coming months that, had you not been in the depths of grief, would make you go, “WHAT THE FUCK?? Why did I say that?” or “I can’t believe that hurt my feelings!” or “Why was I rude/sensitive/mad/sad/self-isolating/guilty about that of all things???” I think you will feel bad about feeling bad. I think you’ll get upset with yourself for not being demonstratively happier for your friends. I think at times you will not give a flying fuck about if your friends are happy. And then maybe you’ll scare yourself a little bit with that feeling. Or feel guilty about it. I think you’ll—at least once or twice—handle things in a way you wished you hadn’t.

TWO: I think your friends are going to fuck this up, too. I think they’re going to say and do dipshit ass things. I think they’re going to (accidentally, innocently) do stuff that they should know would hurt your feelings. I also think they’re going to stuff that no one could possibly predict will hurt, and yet it does. I think some days their actions feel like a thousand knitting needles that are on fire stabbing into your heart.

I’m so sorry. It’s not ok and nothing you or I or your friends do will make it ok.

But, here’s number THREE: I think you will love your friends and they will love you. I think you should absolutely talk to them about this and explain where you’re at right now.

I think you should do it for the sake of yourself and for the sake of continuing friendships with these people and for the sake of community. (I’m not saying that if you ultimately decide not to talk to them you have failed to uphold the concept of community or friendship somehow). I’m just saying no one has ever gotten an award for sucking it up². There is not a big prize waiting for you at the end of your life (or before then) for Having Handled Things On Your Own. In fact, I would go so far as to suggest that there are lots of prizes—friendship! connection! intimacy! healing!—for doing the opposite. For cracking yourself open like Humpty Dumpty and being like, "Here is where I'm at and it sucks and I'm not sure what could possibly make this fucking shipwreck feel any better, please help."

I do not think your friends magically are going to have the answer. I do not think that any of them are going to be like, “Actually, this one weird trick would make us both not feel at all sad or uncomfortable or resentful about this situation!” But talking to them opens the door for both of you to do more talking. To say hard, messy, painful things to one another.

You are allowed—more than allowed!!!—to tell your friends, “I cannot show up for this (event/party/friend hang out) right now. I’m so sorry. I’m so happy for you, but I am also going through it right now because of my miscarriage. And I cannot. Missing this might not feel good later when I look back on it, but I need to do X Y or Z for myself in this moment.”

Share things with these people. Draw boundaries that work for you! TELL THEM WHAT YOU THINK MIGHT HELP! (Even if you get it wrong and you guys have to adjust, it’s better than not trying!) Maybe you don’t want to hear pregnancy updates but you’d love to get tea and talk/complain about your jobs or you can watch all of Vanderpump Rules to catch up before the drama airs. Maybe you do want to hear their updates, and not hearing them would make you feel left out! Tell your friends! Talk to them! Be open! Be vulnerable! If they are good friends, which I assume they are, they will want desperately to know what they can do/say to make this situation even 1% easier for you.

There’s very few ways to talk about grief that aren’t either corny as hell or paraphrases of Joan Didion, but I think your capacity for grief here is a reflection of your capacity for love. You have a lot of love to give out to people, and it is not diminished by holding onto your love for your babies. Nor, however, is your love or grief for your babies diminished by giving love to your friends and their babies.

You are allowed to be bitter and sad and resentful and mad and worried. Those are fantastic things to feel in the face of your circumstances. (Hell, you don’t even need circumstances— those are lovely things for anyone to feel from time to time!) Try your best to find outlets where you want to pour those feelings into. Therapy, journaling, speed skating, making weird, dark wax figurines that creep everyone in your life out, your partner, a not-pregnant friend who isn’t friends with those other people, reddit forums on miscarriage, support groups for pregnancy loss, your aunt who went through something similar years ago. Try your hardest not to pour those feelings into these friendships AND!!!! forgive yourself when then spill out anyway. You do not have to stop comparing your life with other people; I know that’s like some Ideal that everyone is supposed to be striving towards, but it’s simply not how being a person works. Especially when the comparison is “you have this person in your life and I am grieving the loss of that person in mine.” You can write down your most bitter, ugly, small thought on a piece of paper and show no own and burn it if you’d like. (It feels weirdly good). You do not have to be vigilantly magnanimous about this situation all the time!!! That is not the task! The task is taking care of yourself, which includes taking care of friendships that you want to keep.

I have not had a miscarriage or a pregnancy, nor am I a doctor (literally duh!!!) so I really am not qualified to say much about what might come next for you. And I really don’t want to dishonor what you’ve gone through by saying the wrong thing here. So please excuse me (or don’t!) if this isn’t the thing that you want to hear, but it kept coming to mind as I read your letter. I don’t know what motherhood will look like for you or when or what form it will come in. But you loved the absolute heck out of two babies, which is… exactly what moms do. You did that and are doing that. I know that doesn’t bring your babies back. I’m so so so so sorry.

I really hope you give yourself time. Not because it will erase the grief, but because it will change it. Even if the time you need is longer than you expected or longer than someone else around you expected. Again, hard to avoid cliche here about grief, but there really isn’t some magical timetable to consult for when it will stop feeling like this and change into something else.

I don’t know that I gave you a single piece of useable advice here, but I hope you know you aren’t alone and that so many people are here with you and for you. Keep pouring love and grace out whenever you can to whomever you can, yourself most of all.

1. That’s reserved things like wars and plagues and finding out that Magic Mike’s Last Dance wasn’t that good.

2. I mean, maybe Marcus Aurelius, kind of, but even he was writing in his little journal and I’m not sure he really got any awards for that other than it being considered a classic.

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You can submit your own question—or yell at me about how I’m wrong—by emailing me at 1followernodad@substack.com