This Feels Like Drowning

This feels like drowning. My head is light and my breathing is shallow but steady. Is this what it’s like to die?

I’m sitting at my desk hashing out the things that have happened in the past five days. I was pregnant, and now I’m not. I didn’t think I could be this devastated over a bundle of cells. The girls at work proclaimed it an “organic nugget.” My best friend and I patted at my pelvis, calling it “fetus.” That’s all it was, a fetus. Something the size of a mustard seed that was sitting in my womb. It was not planned or desired, but the idea of having Sean’s baby made me the slightest bit happy. If I was to have anyone’s baby I would want it to be his. But now I won’t be having a baby anytime soon. The little bean of life that had nestled itself in my uterus is gone. "Broke its lease," as Ali says.

And now my soul hurts. I feel empty. There’s this deep part of me that wanted to love it forever. I suppose that I will, but not with my arms or my kisses. I will likely never be a mom. I probably will never have that chance. Saying that I don’t want kids makes it a little easier. It’s easier to push down the drowning feeling if I say that I have no desire to procreate. If I’m terrified to push life out of me, then I can’t feel the need to have a child. But it’s all a lie. I tell myself that because I know that I’ll probably never get to be a mom. I will never get to have my own babies.

Finding out by peeing on one stick after another and knowing that it won’t last is sickening. It makes me feel like vomiting all over again. Not just because the fetus is causing spikes in my hormones, but because I’m so scared of what I know is going to happen. I know that this won’t last. I know that I’ll lose this one too. It’s not my first rodeo, as they say. So I told Ali first, because my heart has stopped. I told Courtney at work because I know that when I lose this pregnancy she’ll be the one that understands. It feels like I’m terminally ill, there’s the impending doom of it hanging over my head and all I can do is wait.

So I can’t tell Sean, not yet. But when I’m riding in someone else’s car and make a comment asking, “Are you pregnant?” and then I am then bombarded with comments about how if I was pregnant he would want to know, it all comes out as word vomit. I can’t manage to keep it inside. It all comes out in one awkwardly laughing motion, because I don’t know what he’s going to say. I don’t know what he’ll say and I’m already broken. We make a back and forth motion while I hear the anxiety fill his body through the phone, and I’m trying to be the calm one. I assure him that it’s all going to be okay. I never have viable pregnancies. I’ll miscarry, I already know this. I assure him that everything is fine and he has nothing to worry about. When I say it it’s like opening up a wound to pour in iodine. Everything in my body screams with pain. But this is what I know he needs to hear from me. I know that I have to make him feel less like he’s falling. That’s my job.

When we get off the phone it’s in rush and I know that he’s still losing his mind 30 miles away. I know that he’s on the edge of his own insanity. I know how this goes. I feel compelled to text him a dozen times, I’m just trying to make it better. I want him to not hate me for this. He’s upset with me for not telling him first, when I found out. I can’t tell him while I’m in this car that I’m not driving how, when I found out, I wanted to cut my wrists open. Not because I was pregnant, but because I know it’ll never last—never.

He yells when I call him. He yells about how he needs a minute and space and time, and all I can do is ask if he’s really yelling at me. Between the two of us, I am the one carrying a tragedy inside of my body. He calms himself. We talk for nearly an hour, and the call ends with him understanding as best he can. I think he realizes how dead I am inside. In the morning I’ll be going to the doctor, I’ve told him. I just didn’t want to say anything before I knew. I just wanted to have all of the information. When I text him goodnight an hour later, I tell him that I love him. I do.

But then I go to the E.R. I have bleeding—stress induced. It’s from the yelling earlier. My blood pressure just never came down. The emergency room doctor confirms what I already know, that it’s not viable. This is number four or five of the dead bundles of cells. I’ve lost count. Counting just makes it hurt more I think. I text Sean and then I text Ali. They’re both asleep and I spend a couple of hours alone in the emergency room with a doctor that I don’t know and a nurse that pets my hair and tells me it’s going to be okay. I can’t even remember their names.

In the morning I go to an emergency appointment with my doctor at another hospital. She tells me to take these pills to flush everything out. I cry in my car on the way home. I tell Sean we’re in the clear. I feel broken.

I take the day from work. I tell my boss that I’ve had to have a procedure. I don’t want to tell him that my surprise pregnancy ended in an unsurprising way. I don’t want to admit that I feel guilty for drinking the weekend before, for telling Sean when and how I did. That I’m guilty for not being able to fulfill my biological purpose. I need the day. I spend it with Ali at an art event, where her tent is next to a doula. I cry when I see the art she has up. I cry when she talks about her home births. I cry when her partner shows up with her pretty blonde babies. I just cry.

I text Sean throughout the day, and he has said he’s going to leave work at a normal time for me. That if I need him to take the day off he will. That I can come to the farm and play in the mud and in the rain. It’s odd how he knows how to make me feel better. It’s odd that I know if I really needed it, I could go to his work and play with goats and farm dogs in the mud and no one would be bothered. And I love that he knows that sometimes that’s what I need.

He comes to me when he leaves work. He tells me that we should stay with Ali until her event is through, and I know it’s because he wants me to stay with my best friend. He knows that I need her right now. And when we get back to my house he holds me. We make a run for food and he turns on my seat warmer for me. He knows I’m sad and I’m cold. We get back and stand in the kitchen while we wait for the pizza to cook and he says we’re okay. He understands. Then he holds me some more.

And then I cry. I cry like a child. He tells me to stop trying to hold it in, and I cry even harder. I’ve never felt so broken, so empty. I know it’s not the most forward-thinking thing to say, but I feel like I can’t do the one thing that cis-women are supposed to be able to do. I feel incomplete. I get snot on his shirt, I shake in his arms and he just tightens around me. He puts a hand in my greasy hair and massages my scalp. He doesn’t hush me. He tells me to let it out. He braces me up so I don’t have to stand on my own. I don’t know if I’ve ever loved anyone this much.

Eventually he makes me laugh, which breaks the cycle of tears. He always does that. The night is relaxed. I’m sad but it isn’t the same. I feel like part of the emptiness has been filled for a moment. But I cry when he leaves. It’s nearly 2AM, and I have work in the morning. I don’t want him to go. I don’t want to be alone. I take a sleep aid and text him that I love him. I find it easier to go to sleep in the pitch black that night.

When I wake up at 6:30 to the sight of my prenatal vitamins I cry again. I open my social media to posts about miscarriages. I’ll have to turn it off for the day. I can’t handle it. I get to work and I cry in my car. I cry in the stairs and the elevator. I cry when I get to my desk, when I see dirty dishes in the break room. I cry when I think about the doula’s blonde babies. I cry when I think about Courtney, and I find it hard to look her in the face. It’s hard to look at anyone. I’m ashamed. I hate myself. Everything feels cold to me. I feel useless. I want to hurt myself, I want to die. And I wonder if this is what drowning feels like.