It's my twitterversary! This week marked one year since I started oversharing with the internets! It wasn't my first foray into tweeting, however. I'm a political junkie and I considerately attempt to keep my facebook page (mostly) politics free (I wish others would do the same, cough cough), so I posted articles about politics and followed all things lefty. I didn't actually interact with anyone, though, so I was admittedly missing the point of twitter.
Fast forward to my second miscarriage. I didn't know anyone my own age in real life who'd had a single miscarriage - let alone two. One night, I was googling medical tests for recurrent miscarriages, when I stumbled across a helpful post on a blog. From that blog, I discovered handfuls of other infertility blogs. I still remember some of the first posts I read in awe - Busted Kate discussing her bold move in signing up for pregnancy updates (whoa! here's a person who blogs about miscarriages!), Infertile Naomi cursing those pesky dentist x-rays (whoa! I'd just been to the dentist too!), and one I can't find again about someone poking herself in the chest to see if it still hurt (whoa! I did that too!).
And then I discovered people who tweeted. I started following a few and then panicked because I realized that no one would follow me back if I didn't have any tweets. So I held my breath and jumped in: "Reading fertility blogs and laughing and crying. What did people do before the internet?" Magically (and with a little assist from Womb Warrior), I started gaining followers.
And then I tweeted "mrohkay said (nicely) I should get a hobby to get my mind off things. Tweeting about fertility is probably not what he had in mind." Right then, mrohkay came home from class. He walked around behind me. BOOM! I slammed my laptop shut.
HIM: (Quizzical look.) What are you doing?
ME: Nothing. (That always works.)
HIM: Are you... (eyes narrowing) chatting with a guy?
ME: (Laughing nervously) No.
HIM: Then what are you doing?
ME: Nothing. (If at first you don't succeed...)
ME: Nothing. (If at first you don't succeed...)
ME: (Shit, I'm going to have to tell him.) Fine, I'm tweeting about miscarriages.
HIM: (Quizzical look.)
ME: Other people do it. It's not weird at all.
HIM: Oooookay.
And here we are. One year later and he doesn't even bat an eye when I say things like "I'm meeting ababy4al for lunch today!" Or "Hey, while we're on vacation, can we meet up with the blogger I showed you who has the boy named Theo?"
I've recommended twitter to two FB friends who I learned have fertility issues but neither were interested. Maybe it sounds bizarre to them, but I can't imagine how I would have handled the last year without twitter (and, later, blogging). I owe all of you a great big thank you!
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