Last December, Jake and I were at a doctor’s office. It was Saturday. I was there to pick up the pills that would officially end my missed miscarriage.
So much has happened between that Flatiron doctor’s office and now. I don’t regret a moment of it. My missed miscarriage last December was the wake-up call that I needed to realize I wasn’t happy and that something in my life needed to change.
There are very few events in my life that I can point to and definitively say, “that was the moment everything changed.” Since these moments are so rare, I cling to them, keep them in the deep pockets and folds of my mind to pull out and turn over - again and again and again. Smooth skipping stones to toss around in moments of anxiety or reflection.
There was the night of my ninth-grade winter band recital when my father decided he was no longer a part of our family. My younger brother and sister were giddy as they announced our parents were getting a divorce. Knowing how our lives have turned out, sometimes I wish I could pause that moment in the car and try to insert myself - my present, adult self - into the narrative.
I want to shake my brother, my sister, my mother, even myself, and say that this is the point of no return. We will not come back from this. We will grow, we will become stronger, more resilient, but this moment, in this car, will fundamentally change us as individuals and a family. We will spend the rest of our lives wishing we could go back to life before this moment.
When I realized earlier this year that my marriage was over, it was with the silent comfort that at least children weren’t involved.
Sometimes I forget I had a miscarriage. I forget that I was ever pregnant. I forget that there is an entirely different version of my life that could have happened, how I could have found myself managing sleep schedules and navigating diaper changes with a newborn. Instead, I am spending my evenings laughing at Doris or conversing with a trio of Italian siblings in their sixties at a cabin in Northern Ontario.
It is an entirely different life, one that I am so glad I have the opportunity to experience instead.
The day I found out I was pregnant last November, my first thoughts weren’t one of excitement, of sheer joy, but one of dull dread.
My mind immediately went to a conversation I had earlier that fall with my boss. She shared a story about learning she was pregnant. It was one of fear too, the acknowledgment that life as she knew it was suddenly about to change. Her fear eventually transformed into excitement, but mine continued to grow as the seconds turned to minutes, then hours.
I have never felt more afraid than when I sat in that bathroom alone, staring at the cheerful, pink plus sign.
In the immediate aftermath of this unexpected news, I found myself going through the motions, pushing down the fear, the sense that something wasn’t quite right. When Jake and I sat down that night, I surprised myself by saying I wanted to keep it. I thought I wanted to stay pregnant but what I really wanted was to fulfill some abstract desire held by my mom, Jake’s parents, society at large.
The first time I met Jake’s parents over Facebook Messenger, there was already this pressure.
“We don’t care about the order, about whether you have kids first before getting married,” his dad, always the blunt jokester, said within the first 20 minutes of the video chat.
Getting married and having kids always felt like someone else’s checklist that I had somehow found in my possession. My miscarriage was the biggest blessing in disguise because it woke me up. It made me think, is this really what I want?
I knew that so many people would feel okay with this version of my life. In fact, for most people, this was the aspiration, the pinnacle of success. And yet. And yet I knew I wanted more out of my life. This was someone else’s version of happiness, not my own.
When I swallowed the pills - the same pills Republicans now want to ban to restrict abortion - and waited for my body to receive the message that I was no longer pregnant, I felt sad but also at peace. I saw my life unspooling out in front of me, only instead of from my perspective, I was viewing my actions, hearing my words, as if I were some passive third-person observer.
I took a step back and realized all of the things that I wanted were currently missing from my life. I realized just how unhappy I was.
My miscarriage is what led me back to therapy. It helped me realize life had felt like a conveyor belt - you go to college, you get married, you have kids - but I had never stopped to consider where or when I should make those big decisions. My entire life has felt like one big race, trying to complete seemingly arbitrary milestones by a certain age.
When my mom was my age - twenty-nine - she already had three children. The sheer thought of having a child right now, let alone two under the age of three, is utterly incomprehensible to me. I want to remarry eventually. I’d like to have children one day. But I’d like to do it in my own time, not someone else’s.
The last year has felt like a giant reset, a second chance, an opportunity to finally live life on my terms. It was a long, difficult journey but one I am glad I decided to take. I feel like I came alive this year, that I know what I enjoy, the things I will or won’t compromise on.
I now understand who I am and the person I wish to continue growing into so that the next time I find love, the next time I find myself in a bathroom hovering over a pregnancy test, I won’t be gripped with fear but rather overcome with joy.