d & c tomorrow morning, 8 am.

the drugs have done nothing thus far but bloat and clean my digestive tract with vigour, making the weekend a cramped affair spent largely in bed or curled up on the bathroom floor, nauseous and exhausted, wishing vainly for bleeding. and for the small mercies of closure, the avoidance of surgery. i was wishing also - and equally in vain - for the comfort of having my body get something right in this drawn-out comedy of errors that seems unwilling to just end, already. i’ve given up on that, and am now merely hoping to get out without permanent harm, without further damage.

i hope it is not too much to ask. the doctor i spoke with yesterday, when i reported my reaction to the drugs, suggested it could take another month for my body to miscarry on its own, which i - impatient creature that i am - think sounds like a torture sentence. particularly as with this kind of pregnancy and the fact that as late as last week my hormones were blithely trucking along, climbing, there’s a one in two chance i’d need the d & c at the end anyway. so i’ve made my choice, and chosen the certainty of now, hoping it means we can move on, regroup, try again in January. the part of me that chance and luck have already beaten down like a kicked puppy cowers in the corner, peering up at the miniscule risks of this choice as if they are writ like a destiny i do not believe in but cannot shake: marked for struggle, deposit random bad luck here.

beyond the exaggerated sense of vulnerability, i’m mostly angry right now. combined with the, erm, hormonal load i’m operating under, this makes me a bit of a loose cannon, dreaming in red, wanting to spin loose and wreak vengeance, somehow, wanting power back over that which i am powerless to change. and therefore i’m retreating from people and conversation, because i do not trust myself nor almost anyone else. people sometimes say dumb things. i am likely to say even dumber things in return. so i think i will keep my mouth shut for a little while, because the kind of damage i’m likely to cause with my tongue right now could last longer than the hurt i’d be blindly trying to assuage by lashing out.

that’s the thing…i understand, very clearly, that this will pass. underneath the petulance and the foot-stamping at the world and all the obliviously pregnant people in it, i am…okay. not numb, not destroyed, not devastated. wounded, yes…but confused by the unfamiliarity of these wounds, uncertain how to cope with them.

i hurt. but this is so different from my prior experiences with grief and loss, so much less weighty, that some part of me is inclined to dismiss it entirely as just an eyebrow wax, a momentary ouch. because this time, what grief i feel is for me. and for Dave…and our parents who clearly hurt to watch us hurt…but really, at the core, mostly for me. it’s sheer self-pity, and kind of ugly in its Old Testament righteousness…but it is, at the same time, relatively gentle as grief goes. because it is for me. i grieve this loss as the person to whom it has happened, not - even in part - as the mother of someone to whom it has happened. that difference, the weight of that difference, is huge for me. there was no fetal pole. there is no baby to mourn…not as i see life, the universe, and everything. i sent my heart down that rabbit hole just to make sure i wasn’t quashing something it needed to honour, but came up peacefully empty. i loved the idea of this baby-to-be, without qualification. but that idea was my own…and it is easier, i think, for me to know that this baby i dreamed of never had a heartbeat than to try to sort out the messiness of souls and motherlove and comparisons between a nine week fetus and a two pound, two ounce boy with brown hair who squeezed my finger and had his father’s nose. and for that, that particular exemption, that measure of relative luck, i am glad.

so this sadness and frustration feels like grief lite, like a cheap imitation of something that i only know as ravenous and all-consuming. i feel surreal, a little like an imposter in the world of the broken, because i can see the road back this time, even if it is hard ground. it is strange to reconcile the fact that tonight we will probably use the concert tickets i bought Dave for his birthday back before all went wrong with the fact that early tomorrow morning i will go to the hospital to have this pregnancy finished, once and for all.

and yet, sulks a part of me, how much nicer it would have been to have this one night out - our first in months - without all this hanging between us like bloody sheets on a clothesline. why can’t we catch a break, even of timing?

but i do not know the answer to that question…and suspect there is none.