I spend a lot of time dreading specific upcoming baby-related activities. June 10, for example. See also: Holidays, visits with my niece, etc. Consequently I've spent a lot of time in therapy talking about dreading the baby-related activities. We play out worst-case scenarios and discuss my exit-options for when I need a break.
The baby-related activities usually turn out to be fine. The dread is worse than the event. What I've come to realize - or what I believe, at any rate - is that the dread isn't wasted mental energy for me; it's critical. I don't think I could have gotten through this weekend without "handling it" ahead of time. (Handling it being a euphemism for having a major meltdown.) So, yeah, I had a meltdown on Friday - but it was in the privacy of my own home so that I wouldn't have a meltdown in public yesterday or today as my family gathered for my niece's baptism.
I blinked back tears a few times during the big show, but I was fine. Right or wrong, I attribute my coping during the event to the dread I feel before the event. Which leads me to my next point. I also spend a lot of time in therapy talking about how disappointed I am when other people do things to make my pain more difficult to bear. It's been suggested that not everyone is as attuned to other people's feelings as I am. That I shouldn't just expect people to know how I'm feeling without telling them.
This post sounds self-centered and whiny, I'm sure. But I have sucked it up so many times. I went to my grandmother's 90th birthday party last summer even though I knew there was a good chance that I would miscarry my second baby that day - which started happening in the bathroom as soon as I arrived, and yet I stayed through the party, through dinner, and through drinks while I was bleeding and cramping. I found out the gender of my sister's baby on the day of my third miscarriage. I missed only 4 days of work through 3 miscarriages. I threw a baby shower for my sister two months after I lost mine. For the last 8 months, I've worked in the office next door to a person who got pregnant 3 weeks after I did.
Perhaps my attempts to be strong have misled people into thinking that I'm unflappable. But it hurt - really fucking hurt - that my mother went out of her way to tell me (me!) how this weekend was so wonderful. I held the baby in front of the congregation and watched my niece be baptized and thought about how we would have already done this with mine. I answered three different people before and after the service who asked if the baby was mine. No, she's not mine. I greeted all the people who attended the dinner afterwards. I'm so glad you could come to the baptism (for the baby that isn't mine). I deflected the questions from near-strangers who inquired about my babylessness. I tried to get everyone's attention to say goodbye but they couldn't hear me - five times I said goodbye - because they were trying to make the baby giggle.
I love my niece and I wouldn't have missed this for the world. And so I sucked it up, like I've sucked it up a hundred times before. And yet I can't help but be disappointed that my mother would tell me how this was the happiest Father's Day ever. (On a positive note, my sister definitely gets it. She wrote me the nicest thank you note today.) Of course my mom is thrilled. She should be - it's her first grandchild. But don't tell me how over the moon you are; to me, the day is bittersweet at best. Honestly, I don't think it's too much to expect someone to understand that without being told.
Recalibrating expectations in 3...2...1...
