Saturday, March 10, 2012

Coincidence?

I looked over my prior posts and realized that they are for the most part pretty lengthy.  Sorry…this one will be too…  I have some emotions, and an event that occurred last night that I need to get out of my head.

I haven’t posted for over a week.  I was having a blue week.  One where my mind was kind of tumbling all over the place…probably was wasting too many thoughts feeling sorry for myself.  Loribeth’s post on RecentReading on her blog The Road Less Travelled had me thinking a lot.  I was really disturbed by the article asking if people are over sharing their losses when they lose a pregnancy.  If you have read my blog you will know that I have never been pregnant, so I have never lost a pregnancy.  I don’t know why but I just kept thinking about pregnancies that were lost in my extended family and how those were treated.  I have a post about when my Grandma shared her stillbirth of her daughter with me.  My mom had a miscarriage after I was born and before my brother.  I have had an aunt and cousin lose their babies shortly after they were born for different reasons.  I would feel horrible if these family members were not allowed to grieve and talk about their losses.  But still, these thoughts stayed in my head and I kept thinking about it.
I was looking forward all week to Friday night.  We were planning an evening with friends and I was very excited to see everyone and have a good night.  The first event was to go to one of our favorite restaurants.  It’s a pizza joint in a building basement.  It’s dark and dingy but they make the best pizza and serve beer.  It’s the kind of joint where you can throw your peanut shells on the floor and be as loud as you want.  We stopped off to pick up a friend and went into his house.  Here is where the night changed.  As we walked in you could feel the tension in the air and people were arguing in the kitchen.  A different friend of mine was in the kitchen and was the source of the argument.  I am not very close to her, but I have known her for over 10 years.  This friend I know has been ttc to a couple of years.  They haven’t started on the road to fertility treatments that I know of yet, but I have shared some of my experiences with her.  She was arguing with another friend of ours who owns the house we were at.  He is older than us and has grown kids.  I was planning a fun night and didn’t want to be around people arguing so I said I was leaving and if anyone was coming with me they better get in the car.  Our car filled right up…I wasn’t the only one who didn’t want to be there:)
In the car they told me that the argument was about the young girl sitting next to me.  She is 21 and a sweet girl.  I haven’t gotten to know her very well before last night.  She hangs out with some of our younger friends.  We have been to dinner with her as part of the group a few times before.  She told me that she had a miscarriage 2 weeks ago.  It wasn’t a planned pregnancy, and has been having a ”on and off again” relationship with the father of her baby.  Even though the pregnancy wasn’t planned, or in an ideal situation she said it was one where she was excited and they had planned to raise the baby together even if their relationship didn’t work out.  They had picked out names.
This floored me.  It stunned me that she just came out and told me all this information.   The argument was because my friend (who I know is upset because of her ttc situation), found out about the young girl’s miscarriage and had told her how stupid she thought she was.  She said some mean and awful things to her telling her to be responsible and what she needed to do with her life.  She even went as far to tell her the miscarriage was a good thing.  Our friend whose house this happened at stuck up for the young girl and told my friend how she was in the wrong and so the argument ensued.
We got to the pizza place and made our order.  We sat in a dark corner and the young girl told me about her pregnancy and her miscarriage.  She told me about the hospital and what happened.  She told me with tears in her eyes how lonely it was since her mother lives across the country and couldn’t fly out to help her.  She told me about her school and her work and her life plans.  She told me how she hadn’t seen anyone since her miscarriage and was excited to go out and have fun tonight.  She was not expecting to be attacked about her situation or really to even talk about it.  I sat and listened.
I didn’t have to say much to her.  I think she just needed someone to listen to her.  I did let her that I thought she was strong and that it was a terrible thing she had to go through and I was truly sorry that someone lashed out on her like that.
More of my friends started showing up.  Our friend that was defending her in the argument showed up and I am proud to call him my friend.  He looked like her protector all night.  Making sure she was ok and making sure she was not alone.
It’s weird how coincidences work.  How Loribeth’s post had me thinking about pregnancy lost all week.  How if I hadn’t gone out last night I wouldn’t have gotten to know so much about this young girl and give her someone to listen.  How I saw the ugly side of my other friend and to know of the awful things she said. 
I’m still processing in my mind what occurred last night.  I think that’s why I decided to write about it.  I tend to get thoughts and situations stuck in my head and I dwell on things.  I can say that some of the things that were said about the young girl are things that I probably would have thought, but never said out loud.  More because it is hard to know of unplanned pregnancies that happen to young people that are not in a good situation to raise a child, especially if you are trying to get pregnant and not succeeding.  That evil green monster of jealousy causes these thoughts.  When we finally made it home last night I told M more about what the young girl said to me.  I told him that I think some of my wounds from our failure at having a child are starting to heal.  M told me that he thinks they are too.

3 comments:

  1. This post stirred emotions for me that had long been buried. I'm glad that this young girl had you and your older friend to protect her. No matter what the circumstances everyone deserves protection...even those hearts that didn't realie they needed it...

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  2. How nice that you were able to give that young girl the support she needed at a vulnerable time. : ) Glad if I was able to be a part of that somehow. (((hugs)))

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  3. A loss is a loss, no matter whether it was planned or what age you are. Yes, it's hard seeing young, unplanned pregnancies. But as I've written before, they just confirm to me how random the whole thing (who gets to get pregnant and who doesn't) is.

    I'm so glad you were able to help her. For me, when I can do that, it helps make sense of everything I've been through. And I just loved your last two sentences.

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