Stupid doctor, babies and herring

I just watched an episode of a TV show I've been following. Up until now it was just sort of background noise for cleaning the living room, and something to sort of laugh at. But in this episode someone lost a baby. Everyone was crying (including me, yay) and it was horrible.

I can't watch such things. I can't even think about them. I get too depressed to continue with my day. This might all be too personal for the internet, but I'm using a fake name and I doubt anyone will ever find out who I am anyway. And if they do it's not like it's a secret.

I lost a baby two years ago. I was 22 and had just gotten married when I got pregnant. I was so happy. For some reason I knew right away that I was pregnant. I don't know how. Maybe I just thought I was and turned out to be right.

When I went for a check up, I saw the shape of my little baby on the screen. I remember being excited and asking a thousand questions. My doctor ignored the questions and said “I'm sorry, but I can't find a heart beat.”

I had no idea what that meant. I thought I knew about pregnancies. For some reason I didn't know how often they go wrong. I said “Then what?”

She said “come back in three days, then we'll look again. I'm sorry. I know it's not nice to hear something like that.”

I went to get dressed (how mean is it to get such a message naked from the waist down?), turning that phrase over and over in my head. I did not want to understand it, and made myself believe it mean something else. When I came out she said I should be prepared for the worst. She never said the word “dead” or “abortion”. So I went home telling myself that the worst was something other than dead.

I remember the feeling when I walked home, my hands pressed against my stomach as if I could talk the little thing into staying alive, repeating in my head, again and again, that everything would be fine. I thought maybe she couldn't see the heart because it was covered up by something else. Maybe there were two and that was all. Twins run in my husbands family.

Then there was the second visit, where all I could see on the screen was a messy shape that didn't look like a baby any more. She said I'd have to have “it” “removed”. I still couldn't really understand what it meant. I had to go home and google it, and read about the process of aborting living foetuses before I understood what they were going to do.

I hoped, hoped and hoped that it would just disappear on it's own so I wouldn't have to go through surgery. Of course, all that happened was that I carried a dead baby around before finally going. I cried so much that the anaesthetist couldn't get the needle in my arm for the first four tries.

I don't think I ever managed to mourn. It hurt so much, and all I could think about was the child I would never see, hold, feed, smile at. I'd never hear it's laughter. The surgery was on the day of an exam. I never retook it. I couldn't get myself to hand in the slip from the clinic where people went to get their healthy, living babies removed. I couldn't bear to say the words out loud.

I quit university a few months later. There was just no way I could finish anything without that exam, and retaking it was more than I could handle. I'd been studying for it at the doctors office just before hearing the news I didn't understand.

Well, now I'm a little depressed. I had my beautiful daughter a year later, and seeing her every day has taken away a lot of the pain. But I still can't handle it. Not really. It's more than anyone should have to handle.

I made myself a black bread sandwich with pickled herring for breakfast to cheer myself up. I think I deserve something nice, and the people I was planning to share the herring with wouldn't eat it anyway. I was thinking to serve it a my baby's birthday party. But people would take a bite and leave the rest. And I'd rather just have it myself then. 

Mmh, herring.

Other people

I'm no good with people. Normal people confuse me, and people I understand (there's about three of them that I know of) cause me to go a little more insane every time I see them.

Normal people do things all the time. All kinds of normal-people things. Despite having been exposed to them very often (at least for the past ten years or so), I have yet to figure them out. What is the point of all those little things normal people do?

I mean, body language for a start: Why on earth can't they just stand still with their hands hanging down and speak with mouth-words instead? Why do they need to perform little dances that I have to interpret with my poor, confused head?

They touch a lot, all kinds of friendly pats and handshakes and things. And it's not like they give you a warning, or even ask, no. They just move their arms and touch you, and they expect you to do the same. But if you do it too much or to weirdly, they take offence. Pfft.

They ask you clever questions about your life, designed to get to know you, but they don't hand out the same information unless you ask. And if you haven't prepared a list of questions beforehand, they'll ask all theirs and make you look like the ass, asking “...how about you?” all the freaking time. Like you don't care. And when you forget all the information, they assume you still know it and tell you more things that would only make sense if you could remember who they are.

They don't tell you if they consider themselves your friend (or vice versa). They assume that there is an understanding that you are friends, no matter how confused you are as to why they are still talking to you. Or, just to make it more confusing, they aren't your friends - even after you have made absolutely sure that you know you are friends with them.

Now on the other side there are the people I understand:

If we follow the norm of touching, like for greetings, it's short and awkward. Nobody tries it twice. We don't move about in confusing ways, we just say things. We don't ask all sorts of complicated questions about trivial facts of life, we just say things that are in our heads. We state clearly what the point of our social gathering is, and there is no doubt as to what anyone is expecting.

I love being able to be my weird self, not only without insulting someone, but while actually being allowed to communicate like a normal person, except with a person who isn't so complicatedly normal.

My closest friend is so much like me it's scary. The problem is that she is like me in too many ways. I visited her for several days this month. She lives in Denmark, so it's very rare that I get to see her. I feel sad about that. But maybe it's not as bad as it feels to have the distance. When I have spent time with her, it's impossible for me to act normal for weeks and weeks.

She makes me forget all my normal-tactics. We sit down together and speak about something strange, often “how to tell if a normal person is your friend or hates you” or “I think I might be a norse god, because where else would they be?” and with those conversations still fresh in my mind, I get paranoid and weird around the people that know me as pretty normal.

Just two days ago I went to church (if you are an American reading this: not that kind of church), where I think I have a few “good friends” or at least “people who smile at me”. I entered the door, looking forward to seeing everyone. That's how I want to feel about it, happy. But then I realised that I was in a group of three hundred people, none of whom would think it would be logical if I turned out to be the actual Fenrir wolf.

And the worst part is that the part of me pretending to be normal turns against me in those moments going “What? Why would that be logical? Are you insane? You aren't even into Asa-stuff!!”

I started hyperventilating, pressing the wrong buttons on the lift, making weird faces at people, walking funny (I can't walk straight when I'm nervous) and drinking a large cup of hot coffee too quickly just so I could hide my face behind something. I got red as a tomato every time people spoke to me, somehow certain that they could sense the fact that I am actually really weird, and started stuttering. Now I don't know if it will be weird when I go next sunday and am back to normal-normal.

The problem is that I can't avoid all normal people. And I don't want to avoid the people who get me. So pretending-to-be-normal me and is-probably-actually-a-norse-god me will just have to work out their differences, I guess. I just wish they'd leave me alone while they do so.