The opposite of winning the lottery...

This is turning out to be a tough week for many of the wonderful and courageous women who share their IF experiences via their blogs. I thought I would share the poem that I wrote following my premature miscarriage in November 2006, which captures my sadness, my anger at a NP who first told me that I imagined having been pregnant, and my struggles with a distorted body image and an eating disorder. My therapist and a couple of friends thought that it might be cathartic for other women experiencing loss as well so I thought I would post it in the hope that it would do just that.

The Scholar
11/29/06

Loss
Surrounding, engulfing…
How can nonappearing, decomposing, deconstructing, disappearing
overwhelm?

I thought I had you,
my fingers grazed the softness of your smile,
my eyes scanned the fluttering of your growth
I sensed you in my heart, experienced you in my soul
Spied the future in other’s strollers, thought I felt your hand in those mittens in the store.
Gurgles and drool, comfort and frustration, I considered it all
and, with great fear and excitement, embraced the future.

Meanings fly off of these events like daggers, leaving me desperate for a shield of validation.
I am the expert of my own body, its yearnings and aches, its needs and pain. In the long saga of maturity,
only I have tended to its needs, experienced and studied its endless struggles.
Yet I have been here before, in the land of “your instincts were wrong,” “you misunderstood,” “you misread”
How dare I be criticized/corrected/”informed”/belittled.
When you really know me, when you can live me, then I will remove my armor.

I am the only one who resides here, the only genuine witness to it all:
the tightrope strung above shaky ground, the haunting of the shattered mirror,
the furrowed brow of confusion and exhaustion.
Only I have tripped over my imperfections and the unwavering struggle to erase them.
Others have watched, some even felt my tears brush their shoulders,
But not one of them replaced me, no one pushed me out of the path of the flying splintered wood and glass.

Alone is how it all shakes down, in ways of safety and disrepair.
Will I know you – or is it better for us both if I never find you?
Whisperings of doubts and condemnation, maybe it is all “too much”
I stand in circles, overcome with examinations and analyses.

Tests can be traumatic for the scholar, no matter what shape or form or color.
The will to control the outcome is only so strong
the expectation of failure, to be surprised by suggestions of success, only to result in disappointment,
is difficult to withstand.
Visible reminders of uncertainty and mystery are everywhere, unwelcome.
I am finished, fed up with courses, instructions, and lectures.