munchie found the 30th birthday Beccstravaganza to be exhausting
Ok, so, I'm in my thirties now, and I have to say absolutely EVERYTHING has changed (just kidding, nothing has). In a way I kind of wish a lightening bolt could have hit me at the stroke of midnight on my 30th birthday that zapped me into a new level of understanding and enlightenment, but it appears to be the same old me here. One of Jeremy's famous lines is "Nothing changes, Everything changes" and that, in a nut shell, is how it feels to be kicking off my 30's. My entire world has been turned inside-out and upside-down over the course of my twenties and in some ways I am completely unrecognizable from the girl I was at 20, but in some ways my heart, soul, and spirit have been unwaveringly constant.
It's like that with my relationship to miscarriage too--nothing changes and everything changes. I started this blog to put words out into the universe about miscarriage when it was still very raw for me. I wanted to talk about something that "polite" people don't harp on. I wanted to combat the fear, shame, sadness, and stigma-coated guilt I felt when it happened with real-talk and humor and honesty. Here I am a little over a year since the maiden voyage of this blog, still grappling with the emotional wreckage of miscarriage in some ways, but simultaneously completely transformed in terms of the way I think about it and approach it. I've come to know that it is unrealistic to think I will ever get to a point where the phantom of it doesn't still haunt me in some small way.
For example, on the day of my birthday, Chris booked me a massage. I went to the spa and my massage therapist was a little late. As I sat in the lobby sipping "detox" tea and waiting, a pregnant mama who looked about ready to plop out her baby right then and there waddled past me to check out at the front desk. I noticed her, but patted myself on the back recognizing that I no longer feel that old emotional sucker punch when I see someone blessed with a pregnancy. Moments later when I was called back for my massage, the therapist apologized for being a little late, but explained that her last client was very pregnant and was needing some extra time because she hoping the massage would trigger labor. "You understand" she said. And theeeeeere it was. The old 1-2-punch. Patting ourselves on the back, are we? Not so fast, kid. I would be lying if I said that familiar stab wasn't there in that moment. I wasn't resenting that beautiful 87-month pregnant woman out there, but rather I was resentful that it doesn't occur to so many that pregnancy is a loaded topic for a lot of women. There is no way she could have known, but it also didn't cross her mind that making accommodations for someone fortunate enough to have a successful pregnancy might come at a bit of an emotional cost. Admitting that I felt this way isn't the most flattering, perhaps, but it is the truth of how I felt in that moment. The thought sparked and fizzled all within the span of 5 seconds, but the fact that those momentary flashes still occur reminds me of how the experience lives within me even when so much has changed in the overall way I think about it. Nothing changes ...even when everything does.
It occurs to me that it has been a full year since the blog post where I wrote about the day we were told there was no more heartbeat. The day I launched that out into the great black hole of the internet was significant for me. Sharing that pain was the decision that has ultimately been responsible for all the things that fall into the "everything changed" category. You can read (or re-read) that post here .
Just like how at one point I thought "by 30 i'll surely have it all figured out" (ha!), many of us who go through miscarriage find ourselves thinking "by 'x' amount of time it won't hurt anymore". Time teaches us that we can't bank on any sort of time frame ...and that's okay. Some things change and some stay the same and my relationship to having a baby is constantly shifting just as my relationship to myself and to the world around me does as I grow older.
So really, I have nothing figured out, but in acknowledging that, maybe I have everything.
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