The first thing I did after losing Nadav was go out and buy a pack of cigarettes.
For the first couple of weeks, I was on about two packs a day.
I’ve talked about my struggle to quit smoking here before. I’ve had stumbles, and somehow between every loss I fall back into the smoking trap, only to struggle with quitting again.
This time it’s no different. I promised Shmerson I would quit before we get pregnant. And I was on my way to doing that.
Today I got yet another BFN, and the first thing I did after getting it was to light up.
If you don’t smoke, or have never been a smoker, it’s hard to explain how addictive this crap really is.
For me, smoking is my own little way of punishing myself.
I hate my body.
I’ve always had a bit of a rocky relationship with it, but these last two years have really done a number on me.
On days when I feel particularly weak, I find myself crying and telling Shmerson that I killed our babies. It’s a dark, scary feeling to have.
Though the logical side of my brain knows that this is not the case, there’s a place deep down inside of me that feels this way. At the end of the day, my body failed to carry our children and to keep them safe. I hate it for that. I hate myself for that. Though I know that everything that happened was outside of my control, I can’t help but harbor this hostility.
So of course, the logical thing to do when you hate something so much is to destroy it. Some people cut themselves. Some people starve themselves.
Me? I eat and I smoke.
And then I hate myself some more for doing it.
I am the heaviest I have ever been. So much so that I’m afraid to step on a scale. I can’t stand looking in a mirror. I hate every thing about myself right now, and I’m too far down in the muck to do anything about it.
It’s just daunting. There’s so much there to deal with.
And to make matters worse, I have the looming prospect of eventually getting pregnant again, and having to be in bed for six months, and ballooning even farther out of control.
I can’t just wake up one day and say “I’m going to change everything.” It’s impossible. I’m doomed to fail if I put myself up against something that impossible.
But the truth is, right now, I can’t even find the strength to say “I’m going to change one thing.”
Because this kind of stuff takes time, and I am out of patience. I am tired of waiting. I don’t feel like I want to throw any more time than is necessary into the dark black succubus that is my inability to carry a child to term. I need this to be behind me, and the sooner it is, the better.
That doesn’t leave time for self-improvement.
Last week, I had a meeting with the head of the MA program in art therapy in my city. She loved me. She wants me in the program. Not only that, she wanted me in the special accelerated program that would give me a Master’s in a year and a half instead of three, and would get me off the hook with some of the program’s pre-requisites.
Then I told her about my plans to get pregnant again, and the looming bed rest.
She said that there was no way I could do the accelerated program while on bed rest.
So now I have to take a year to complete my pre-requisites, then do the three year program. Because there’s no way I’m going to wait another two years to get pregnant while I do this degree.
So that’s 4 years total instead of a year and a half. Yet more time sucked into the black hole that is my uterus.
I will not have a resolution until I have a take-home baby. And I will most likely continue to hate myself until there is a resolution. I wish I could say things were different, but that’s just how I feel.
Over the past few weeks and in the coming weeks, babies are going to be born to some amazing women. Those women got pregnant at the same time that I was pregnant with Nadav. I was supposed to be one of those women, posting a happy update. Posting pictures. Telling a birth story.
I am not. And that pain is too much to deal with.
So self-destruction and body hate is my fallback position.
I hate that. I hate that I can’t be rational about this. I hate that I can’t be healthy. I hate that a BFN this morning drove me to smoking and chocolate. I hate that I was ever put in this position to begin with. I hate how unfair all of this is.
I hate that I can’t do better.
I texted Rachel this morning about my BFN. She answered “It makes sense. Your body isn’t ready!”
I answered back:
“My body is a douchenozzle.”
Yep. That pretty much sums it up.
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Tags: body image, pregnancy loss, smoking