Chapter 7: The Dark Side
By year three of trying to grow our family, Nate and I loosened up on the whole process. We stopped taking the overpriced prenatal supplements, allowed ourselves to drink on occasion, ate whatever we desired, and began traveling again. We also cemented the decision not to buy a larger house until we had a baby in our arms. We were still heavily focused on starting our family; we just tried to alleviate some of the stress we’d placed on ourselves during the process. We knew parenthood would bring with it a host of new responsibilities and pressures, so we were mindful to enjoy our comparatively carefree thirties as best we could.
That was only so successful, though.
As the months continued to pass and the miscarriage count grew, our souls started to turn bitter and a wedge had formed between us. Nate blamed himself for the failed pregnancies even though there was no evidence that his genetic material was the cause, just as I blamed myself for numerous reasons—the abortion, past health concerns, growing resentment towards my body, etc. The list was as long as it was riddled with judgement and self-loathing. I also blamed the Divine powers that be. Aside from the second miscarriage, the rest had no known physical cause. I felt that if babies were miracles, as people say, that meant the miscarriages were equally under Divine order. Each time I’d thought about that, it fed the growing, gnawing distrust that had developed over the previous years. Any Faith I’d once held had faded like a distant memory.
Sadly, each time I miscarried, I felt like I was going through it more alone than the one before. Since Nate wasn’t the one who’d felt the babies inside of him and hadn’t been affected by countless months of nausea and mood swings, his soul was affected by the losses, but his body was not. That made it difficult to relate to one another. Constantly fearing I’d see blood when I’d go to the bathroom; repeatedly feeling the cramping that signaled an inevitable miscarriage; the hollowness I felt after each baby’s fluttering came to an abrupt end; plus having to cope with each loss while under a flood of pregnancy hormones isolated me in unimaginable ways.
Aside from Nate, my best girlfriend was the only one who knew about our devastating miscarriage count. Our frequent heart-to-heart conversations united us like sisters and helped ease the pain enough to keep me moving forward. However, she’d never experienced that particular anguish, so we could only connect so deeply on the matter. That left me with an emotional wound still in search of the wisdom of someone who’d endured that exact pain.
I reached out to other women in my life who’d already had kids in case they’d traveled a similar, secret path along their journey to motherhood. Unfortunately, though, each time I tried to talk about my trials, I was offered little comfort and some version of “at least trying to conceive is fun.” I suppose they didn’t know what else to say, but having double-digit miscarriages trivialized by multiple people was another level of pain I wasn’t prepared to face. I stopped reaching out to others and bottled up the grief of my experiences as much as possible.
Then my body turned to expressing itself through strong, spontaneous physical symptoms. It started reenacting its memories of assault, abortion, and miscarriages. Physical pains of each trauma were frequently thrust upon me out of nowhere. Sometimes I would be having a relatively normal day—for that time in my life, anyway—when I suddenly realized I felt extraordinarily bloated, or was met with sharp, stabbing pains that caused me to become doubled over. Other times, I was woken up in the middle of the night by intense uterine contractions. Symptoms always subsided after I’d acknowledged the related emotional trauma, so I knew they were psychosomatic. But, unfortunately, merely having such insight wasn’t enough to prevent the pain from recurring.
I realized that was another part of the journey Nate couldn’t possibly comprehend. And since I didn’t know anyone who was openly relating to having miscarriages, I highly doubted my friends and family could fathom those other, seemingly bizarre experiences. It was just another series of experiences for me to bottle up and stow away far from others.
Internalizing the extensive grief made the wedge between Nate and me grow considerably larger, as did the divide with friends and family. The compounding agony and isolation of our journey even led me to despise any higher power that might exist, so I no longer had prayer and meditation to turn to. I was left with no human or spiritual bond strong enough to support me through that period of life. I withdrew from everyone— including myself.
As Nate and I carried the burdens of our self-imposed blame and loathing, it became nearly impossible to enjoy each other’s company. Somewhere along our journey to become parents we lost the unique selves we fought so hard to cultivate years earlier. We felt more like sperm and egg donors than two people in love who wanted to start a family. On the rare occasion either of us desired the other in a sexual capacity, it turned into a tormenting pop quiz instead of a spontaneous primal experience: Did we want to use protection? Were we still trying to conceive? What if we miscarried again? Could we handle that? Where was Nate on this baby-making journey? Where was I on this journey?? Is it time to turn to adoption? Should we just call it quits?
It was exhausting and, frankly, soul crushing. It was easier to avoid sex altogether.
After over three years of trying to start a family, we’d each grown thoroughly cold, dark, and bitter. It wasn’t just our life that had become foreign to us, though- WE had become foreign to ourselves. We’d become shadows of the people we once were. And as our friends and relatives produced multiple babies each, Nate and I withdrew further into the miserable existence we’d found ourselves in because we were, sadly, each other’s only real support system. I’d even forced myself to share a vague version of our miscarriage journey with my mother because I couldn’t deal with her incessant monologues about the new babies in our family. I needed her to know that each time I listened to her anecdotes, it felt like someone was jabbing a rusty knife into a fresh wound in my soul, ultimately preventing it from healing.
That was the turning point that led me to move on from blaming the Divine for the miscarriages to blaming It for leading me down that rabbit hole of darkness in the first place. Why guide me to have a baby, only to take them all away? Why force me to witness everyone around me having babies, when the ones I had were all ripped from my womb? What was I being punished for? If it was the abortion, then the Divine was more sadistic than I’d ever thought.
Each day that passed, I cycled between numbness, anger, fury, mild depression, complete hopelessness, self-loathing, hatred of my body, profound grief, hostility toward a God I’d always questioned, jealousy of new moms, fear there was something wrong with me that my medical team hadn’t picked up on, and a sense of inadequacy that I’d failed to give Nate a biological child. I was completely broken. The physical rape didn’t break me. The abortion didn’t break me. But that—feeling manipulated…feeling like my soul had been penetrated and manipulated by a higher power who I’d reluctantly opened myself up to—THAT f@cking broke me.
My soul felt as if it was hanging off a rock cliff by mere fingertips. I saw it clearly in my mind’s eye when I was in one of my dazed stupors. All that was below was pitch darkness—no flames of hell, no ground or bone crushing rocks—just dark oblivion. It took every ounce of what I was made of to keep living. Not that I wanted to. I just didn’t want to leave Nate without me to commiserate with since I was the only person in his life who knew what he’d gone through. And with my complete disdain for Divinity, I figured suicide wasn’t an option. What would happen to my soul after I committed such an act? It didn’t seem like there was a God, so that meant no Heaven either. And if there was a God on the other side of this Earthly existence, I certainly didn’t want to be face-to-face with him or her. The vile sentiments I’d unleash would set the grimmest of tones for my time in the afterlife.
I felt trapped. Trapped in a life I hated, where every pregnancy test advertisement, diaper commercial, baby formula coupon in the mail, stroller at the mall, or conversation with family that undoubtedly discussed the charms and quirks of each newborn, stomped on my heart and blackened my soul a little more. I was living in pure darkness. It seemed like a hell on Earth… that was created by the Divine. Go figure.
To distract ourselves from our miserable existence, Nate spent increasing amounts of time at the gym, while I drowned myself in shopping and day drinking. When we did spend time together, we often paid our attention to movies and alcohol so we didn’t have to think or talk much about where our lives had taken us. It didn’t help, though. The pain was so deep that hoping alcohol would dull it was like expecting a hardy sneeze to reset a dislocated shoulder— highly unlikely. But we didn’t know what else to do as far as coping was concerned.
I continued to cycle through numbness and contempt on a regular basis and often craved whatever state I wasn’t in. There was a period when I was so numb I couldn’t even cry and nothing was compelling enough to get me out of bed in the morning. I’d also stopped contributing to the charitable causes I’d once wholeheartedly supported. I felt like there was no point. Misery would exist no matter what I did, so why try?
All I could bring myself to do was play marathons of shows and movies I’d once enjoyed. I laid on the couch in a perpetual haze, hour after hour, rarely paying attention to what was unfolding onscreen. The TV merely served as background noise so I didn’t feel completely alone.
That is, until I remembered a show I’d once enjoyed about a drug-addled concierge doctor. I thought that if I was already on the dark side, I might as well have inspiring company. It only took ten episodes of that show to call my soul back to this thing called life… albeit, through the desire for cocaine. The sexy, yet troubled doctor made snorting lines of coke look so damn exhilarating. An emotion I’d forgotten even existed. Part of me knew I was playing with fire, but it honestly didn’t matter. It was invigorating to feel something—to want something—again. It had been far too long since I’d craved anything at all.
When I toyed with the idea of acting on that craving, I remembered Nate worked closely with a few guys in the local P.D.’s narcotics unit on occasion. I let that roll around my mind for a minute… Once I realized I could probably get my hands on some drugs if I really wanted to, it felt too real for comfort. I knew I’d gone somewhere crazy within myself that could lead to real danger. I absolutely needed to take a step back and get reacquainted with myself.