Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Why Do I Do This to Myself?

I've been in the middle of a huge project. I am one of those people who takes photos all the time, so I probably have a few thousand photos even though I'm not quite 27 years old yet and don't have any children. My photos, while all put away in albums, were in a mish-mosh of albums with no unifying theme other than they were all cheap and easily obtained at Walmart, K-Mart, and other similar stores. I decided a couple weeks ago that this was an extremely poor treatment of my memories and I started transferring the photos over to high quality, archival albums. They cost about $15 each, instead of my typical $5-$8, but it's worth the money to be sure my photos will last a lifetime. I'm glad I did it, too, since I noticed as I transferred them over that some of my photos were sticking to pages in the cheap albums; left there much longer, they most certainly would have been destroyed.

The rough part came last night as I got to the photos from 1999. In 1998, one of my cousins had a child at the ripe old age of 15 years and 4 months. She is not the first in my family to have a child at the age of 15; in fact, her older sister did the same at the same age, only weeks after my 16th birthday. So even though I am the eldest of the cousins on my mother's side of my family, 2 of my cousins started their families long before I was even thinking about it. Being one of those amateur photographers, I have *tons* of photos of E (the child who was born in 1998). It really hurt going through those pictures, looking at that beautiful little baby and seeing how young my cousin was when she became a single mother (since the father was long gone shortly thereafter). I know it wasn't easy for her to raise a child while a child herself, but it just reinforces the injustice in the world. Here I am, a married adult with a husband who is a wonderful man and will make a fabulous father, we have the means to provide for a child and the extreme want in our hearts to share our lives with one. Yet, we lost our child. There must be some reason why it's happened this way that I haven't figured out yet. However, these photographs don't make things any easier. This past Sunday was the 2 month anniversary of my D&C, and next week is when I should have been finding out the gender of our child. I should have been nearly half way right now. Instead, I'm this mess. This coming Sunday will be the 6th birthday party for E. Normally, I would have been excited, but this year the event is colored by my own turmoil. Yes, life isn't fair, but why can't it be sometimes?

2 comments:

Stephanie said...

I so wish I could give you the magic answer .. the pill that would make it all make sense. But unfortunately I have no answer. It's been over a year since my D&E and I still have no way of reasoning why such a horrible thing happened to myself and my husband. I hope and pray that some way you will find a way to find peace and that soon you will be pregnant with a baby who is very sticky and very healthy. Unfortunately I don't think it's ever meant for us to understand .. but to accept (and boy is that the hard part) and try to pick up the pieces afterwards. My heart and prayers are with you. I remember after my D&E the day came that would have been my big ultrasound to find out the gender .. I cried all day. It was so hard. The milestones come and go .. and with time it starts getting easier. Not easy .. but easier.

Kether said...

I know what you mean. Shortly after my D&C one of my employees found out she was pregnant by a man she'd only been dating 8 weeks or so. When she had an abortion I almost lost it. How come she got a healthy baby that she got rid of and I was married, had a house, and could provide for a baby and lost mine? This has been the major struggle for me since my miscarriage---the strange and arbitrary way babies seem to be doled out in the world. It is still hard for me even though I'm 21wks to see women get pregnant effortlessly and without all the extra heartache and worry. This has been a hard journey for me, but it has brought me to a good place--not just because I'm pregnant, but because I have grown and stretched and become a part of a community of incredible women.. I hope that the same happens for you--and that soon you find yourself on the "other side of the stick."