The Mask

As promised, a continuation from last week. Click here to read Part 1.

The short-term effects of using a mask far outweighed any permanent scars the habit would leave me with; right? There was no better time to reach for that smiling, friendly, funny, happy disguise than when things happened that were completely out of my control. It served me well after finding out that my 15-week pregnancy was no longer viable. Inexplicably, the baby, who’s heartbeat had been loud and clear just a few weeks prior, was no longer living. After a late-night rush to urgent care and an emergency ultrasound, I was left with callous instructions to simply wait for my body to realize what it was supposed to do next. And it did; in our master bathroom, while John frantically spoke on the phone with a nurse who could only tell him to “keep an eye on things and come into the office if we felt it was necessary.”

When it was over, I crawled into bed and didn’t get up for two days. I took the pain pills they graciously prescribed, cried, slept and let the world carry on outside of my bedroom. The few friends that knew about the pregnancy sent food and flowers, and my husband took care of the kids while I hid from everyone. Ignorning messages and emails on my phone, only occupying my waking hours by looking up statistics on having three consecutive miscarriages. I learned that I was an anomaly; in the unlucky 1% of women who would experience it and there was no explanation sufficient to soothe the ache in my heart.

Slowly, I began to disengage with reality by listening to an old familiar voice inside of my head. Although I knew that it was risky to entertain the narrative hatching in my mind, this voice vowed to protect me from the feelings threatening to swallow me whole, as it had done so many times before. Unfortunately, it also meant being subjected to a barrage of self-deprecating thoughts meant to motivate through condemnation.

“Do you think that you are the only one who has ever gone through this? What right do you have to be so sad when there are women out there who have never been able to have children at all? Or even worse, lost a living child?”

“God is punishing you and this is your fault.”

“You have two healthy children that you’ve neglected for days; that is your priority now.”

They were words that I would never speak to another person going through the same thing; certainly not to someone that I loved. But upon hearing them, I felt compelled to take off the pajamas I’d been wearing for 48 hours and get into the shower. I didn’t deserve to indulge in the self-pity any longer. I concentrated on the task at hand, keeping my eyes up and straight ahead in order to avoid looking down at a belly, still swollen with hormones. Wrapped in a towel, I covered the dark circles under my eyes with makeup and erased any evidence of sadness or pain from my face.

I forced myself to shift focus and create a plan that left no time for dwelling in sadness or grief. I was going to walk out of this room and pick up my 3 and 6 year old from camp; I was going to stand in the parking lot with the other moms, and smile and make jokes and act like I had been sick with the flu for a few days. Tomorrow, I would join the new gym that I had been considering and go to the grocery store to buy all of the food I would need for a new diet. Carrying an extra 15 pounds as a physical reminder of the pregnancy would not fit in with my intentions of forgetting this had ever happened.

It was a nose to the grind, no room for anything else, downward-spiral charade that I put on from that point. I managed to reach a level of disassociation so severe, that it barely registered when I lost two more pregnancies, bringing the grand total up to five miscarraiages, and stumping even the most experienced medical professionals in the field of obstectrics. The voice became so loud and the mask so difficult to shed that I ended up a shell of my former self. The distance, that once seemed quite vast, between me and the truth, became narrower by the minute. These things I ran from were either going to catch up with me, or I was going to die trying to keep them at bay.

It was the exhaustion that got me here; weakened my reserve enough for me to accept help. I realized that while I could try to discredit my new therapist and act as if I could somehow game the system, it was probably not going to lead to any real, concrete results. Luna saw through me, past the mask, not because she was incredibly skilled and intuitive, but because I was struggling to keep it up. What had once been strong and resistant and seamless, now felt crumbling and heavy.

Without my permission, tears sprung from my eyes and fell down my face and I said, “I don’t know how to do this,” in a voice I didn’t recognize.

“That’s okay,” Luna answered, with a pained expression of someone experiencing genuine sympathy. “You don’t have to.”

Authentically Yours,