Another piece of the puzzle

I’m finding that mentally, I’m going through this process where my mind releases little pieces of information at a time. I know I feel emotions – angry, sad, anxious, scared etc. – but sometimes it’s hard to know why. There are the simple reasons – I lost my baby and I’m mad and sad about that, but I know there are other underlying reasons. I just don’t know what they are until they show themselves to me.

Overall, anger is the rarest of emotions I feel about the miscarriage and it really doesn’t pop up that often. However, when I saw a pregnant woman walking down the street smoking the other day, it turned up in a big way. The inner tirade started – I loose my baby doing everything right and your baby continues to grow despite you knowingly putting it at risk! In those moments, I know I haven’t let it all go.

So, as I was on my afternoon walk yesterday, one of the reasons revealed itself to me. A while ago, my friend who is trying to fall pregnant said to me “It’s so unfair because we spend so long trying not to get pregnant that when we want to, it seems like the hardest thing in the world.” And boom – in an instant, I realised that was one of the reasons I felt angry.

In my 20s and 30s I was so diligent. I remembered to take my pill everyday. I used condoms with partners until I was in a committed relationship. I took the morning after pill when accidents happened. I did everything right. So right in fact, that I didn’t fall pregnant. I was a gold medal winning performer on how not to fall pregnant.

It took time to find my husband, get married and get to the point where we wanted to have children. So I think part of me just thought that given all my diligent work for so long, falling pregnant when I wanted to would be my just reward. It didn’t seem like it was too much to ask. And really, it wasn’t.

I did fall pregnant quickly but in my raw state, I couldn’t see the point of falling pregnant if you loose the baby. I realised that part of me feels entitled to have this baby the way I want to with whom I want to. Otherwise, I would have let myself get pregnant to some random, and just have dealt with the consequences, but that’s not how I wanted to experience motherhood.  

I guess when I strip the anger back, the real reason I’m angry is my experience was not the outcome I had hoped for. As an optimist, I normally expect the best from life and take it as a personal affront when something negative happens. I’m not in denial about negative things happening, but it always comes a such a shock to me when it does.

I suppose this is a good lesson to learn – don’t be attached to our expected outcomes. If we go into a situation with a pre-defined picture of what will happen, how it will happen and what it will look like when it does happen, we are only opening ourselves to fall when our perfect picture doesn’t come to fruition.

The simple fact of life is nothing is perfect so why do we continue to think it is? Or that it will be? Or that it should be?  It would be much kinder to ourselves to just go into any new experience and say to ourselves “I am open to whatever this experience will bring me.” That way, we open ourselves up to whatever it will be – with no labels of good or bad on it. As Shakespeare said “There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.”

So the lesson I have learnt from all of this is that good can come from the bad. As a result of the bad, it seems I’ve been able to help others, generate discussion and bring issues forward. I’ve helped people release emotions they’ve couped up for a long time and improve relationships. So if I look at my experience with open, non-expecting, non-judgemental eyes, I see the beauty and value in it.

That helps to vanquish the anger and I appreciate the calmness it brings me. However, as the eternal optimist, I now face the challenge of reminding myself to think like that. Perhaps it’s about embracing a new mantra – “I’m open to that.”