I Had a Miscarriage by Jessica Zucker (classic books to read .TXT) 📗

Turning points happen when you least expect them, I guess. I learned this too well through the trauma of my loss, and here again, reiterated in love. This galling exchange stung to the core; and so, I licked my gaping wounds as I grew more anxious on my brief drive home, up into the placid hills, even more depleted than I had been two hours prior.

Sometimes—I found rather quickly—having history with someone doesn’t necessarily protect you from egregious statements, unintended harsh comments, or unfortunate stalemates. Sometimes, instead, hearing afflictive words from someone you’ve known your entire life can be arresting, blanketing you in an isolation no one should ever know.

• • •

“Oh, the karma!” a family member exclaimed when I shared by phone that the bleeding, which had finally ceased, began to trickle once again. Blood spilling from my body once more: a continued consequence of the miscarriage. I didn’t have the stamina to digest this misfire amid the reinjury I was navigating, as I riffled through my bathroom cabinet in search of yet another clunky pad. I thought I was done with these. Later, however, when I had a moment to think, I was effectively flattened by her off-handed insinuation. Was she implying that I somehow deserved this miscarriage and the subsequent, seemingly never-ending bleeding? That I had done something in my life that set me up for this grand devastation? Sucker punched once more, I felt the wind knocked out of me.

Questioning my own hurt feelings and my interpretation of this comment, I went to Google and looked up the formal definition of karma. Maybe it was me who didn’t understand. In Hinduism and Buddhism, karma means “the sum of a person’s actions in this and previous states of existence, viewed as deciding their fate in future existences. Destiny or fate, following as effect from cause.”19

I was speechless as I mulled over what this utterance—Oh, the karma!—signified about how this family member of mine viewed me, life’s trajectory, and perhaps, most especially, spotlighted her conceptualization of tragedy. Was she implying that my miscarriage was in some way my fault, and my fault alone? A lesson I deserved to learn? Something I’d done in my past now catching up with me, something so abominable that I somehow had a hand in my fate, now crushing my spirit? To make matters more confusing, had she suddenly adopted religious/cultural beliefs outside of her own (Judaism) that she likely knew little, if nothing, about? Did she fully comprehend the meaning of the word “karma”? I couldn’t make sense of it. The comment burrowed into my bones. It remains there. It festers sometimes, still.

• • •

There were lots of little instances like this, off-handed remarks burned into my mind with their (perhaps unintended) cruelty. Take the first Thanksgiving after my loss, which featured a showstopping awkward moment when a family friend excitedly shouted from across the table, “Congratulations on your pregnancy!” It was six weeks after my miscarriage. He hadn’t heard that I’d lost the pregnancy. Stunned, I calmly looked around the room to secure a waiter to bring me a vodka tonic with a twist of lime, and fast. In hushed tones, this uninformed friend was quickly educated about my recent loss as I sipped my cocktail, now tinged with tears.

The following day, Jason, Liev, and I boarded a plane originally meant to take us on a celebratory “babymoon.” Instead, with a hollow uterus and pulsating hormones and no baby to nurture, I had a sad week on a stunning beach.

While there, I thought, Fuck it, I deserve some self-care. A massage or two could ease the tension in this body of mine that had just been to hell and back. So I shuffled into the airy, lavender-infused spa, and lay still on a wooden table. I would have given anything to experience a sense of peace for even a few minutes.

“Anything specific going on in your body?” she asked.

You can say that again, I thought to myself. “Well, yeah, I lost a pregnancy at four months along recently.”

She uttered words of sympathy and began to touch my tender body. Halfway through the treatment, as I began to feel the calm I’d been yearning for, she spoke.

“So, do you think there’s something you did that caused your miscarriage?”

And just like that, on the precipice of peace, I was pulled back into war.

• • •

In the wake of so many missteps—so many well-intentioned comments, questions, and regurgitated platitudes gone awry—I felt discombobulated. In an effort to try to carefully balance between my desire to retreat and regroup alone, and my acknowledged need to reach out and locate the arsenal of support that would no doubt flank me, I felt suspended in my grief: Do I risk bringing people into the fold who, like Sara, I believe could offer me the support I need? What if I, like I had been with Sara, was wrong? Could I handle another devastatingly awkward conversation about my jeans size? Could I weather another comment about my now nonpregnant body?

Turns out, the decision was somewhat made for me. Aside from a smattering of people—a handful of individuals from various parts of my life whose only commonality was showing themselves present, empathic and willing—the vast majority of people that I knew did not seem accessible. Those who did rush to my side were instrumental in my healing, eventually helping to restore me back to some patchwork version of who I’d known myself to be. But for everyone else, it seemed as though my unconscionable experience somehow forced them to flee.

Where have they gone? I wondered. I began to second-guess myself. After all, I was navigating wonky hormones, and my sensitivity was without a doubt on high volume; so I turned inward and asked myself: Was I misunderstanding something? Overthinking, maybe? Or were these friends of mine, both old and new alike, indeed reaching out to me with less frequency than they had prior to my loss?

My hunch