one small corner of the universe

It’s been boring here lately. Even I am bored with my blogging, or not blogging, whatever you want to call it. It would be easy for me to tell you that I’ve been quiet because I’ve been busy with work (which is true) and graduate school (also true), but I wouldn’t be telling you the whole truth, and the whole truth is something I’ve been struggling with lately.

Four months ago I announced my pregnancy on this blog. That announcement followed a long period of silence and short, silly nothing posts, and not much of significance has followed since. Or perhaps more accurately, not much mention of the pregnancy has followed. I know that some women resent the sudden cease in blogging when a fellow infertile or TTCer finally gets pregnant. I don’t remember the blog where I read it, but I remember reading that just disappearing after you get those two pink lines is inconsiderate, a snub to your comrades who supported you through all the RE appointments, negative HPTs, painful IUIs, hormone tests, HSGs, HCG blood draws, and crack-of-dawn temp checks. On one hand I agree. But I also know that some women, the ones who are still trying, don’t want to hear about every pregnant woman’s expanding waistline, cravings, morning sickness, first fetal movements, baby showers, nursery preparations, doctor visits, and name deliberations. I’ve been racking my brain to figure out the middle ground.

Right after my miscarriage last July, I discovered that some of my favorite people were pregnant. I was immensely happy for them–and immensely sad for me. I would go days without reading their blog, and then I would spend an hour catching up, and at the end of that hour I was still both happy and sad, but life went on, and by the time the Cutest Baby in the DC Area was born, I was newly pregnant and scared shitless and happy beyond belief. I wanted to tell everyone–and no one. I was afraid that putting it out into the Universe might jinx me somehow. I still have this creeping fear, even now at this moment as I type these words with my child’s foot planted firmly in my ribcage. But lately that fear, that something-could-still-go-wrong voice that nags me daily, is not why I haven’t mentioned the pregnancy much.

When I was in high school I got lots of positive attention from my instructors because I was a good writer. Writing has always come easily to me, much like playing sports comes easily to some people and music comes easily to others. My friends always wanted to talk about why I got As on my papers and they got Bs and B-minuses and Cs. I avoided these talks, which made me feel bad, guilty, like being good at writing was wrong of me and I should stop it and be more like everyone else. Never mind that I got Cs in math and later almost failed college calculus AND college biology. Hell, we can’t all be good at everything. But for some reason my being a good writer irritated my peers. I made it a permanent practice never to discuss papers with my classmates–I was afraid of alienation, and making friends was hard enough for me already, so I kept my grades to myself, pretended they didn’t exist.

And now I find myself doing it again, except now I can’t exactly slip the evidence of my success discreetly into my bag and slide out of the classroom. I’m pregnant. Eventually, if I’m lucky, there’s going to be a baby. I’m going to have to talk about the kid because it’s going to take up all of my time, my energy, my attention. I’ve been deliberately talking about other things, or talking about nothing at all, not because I’m so wrapped up in my own good fortune, but because I don’t want my good fortune to pain others.

Let me stop now and say this: no one has made me feel this way. I feel this way all by myself without assistance or influence from others. It’s just who I am. I worry about these things. I internalize everything. Many things are my fault (or so I say). If someone I know and care about is acting strangely, I wonder what I’ve done. If I don’t hear from people, I start wondering if they’re avoiding me. So. I’ve been practicing a form of self-censorship, the act of deliberately omitting subject matter in order to avoid conflict or distress from other parties. (Sad, isn’t it, how work and school creep into everything?)

And all of that is a preface to this: my period of self-censorship is over. I have allowed myself to be silent about something really big and important, something I want to remember always, and I have only myself to blame. This is not going to become a pregnancy blog, but from now on I will blog about my pregnancy. I plan to go back to the beginning. I want to have a record of these months in some form other than the scribbles on my weekly planner. I realize that some of you who have been gone might come back, and some of you who have been around might drift away, and some of you will be firmly where you’ve been all along, right here reading whatever inspired or incredibly dull drivel I post. In the end, though, I’m doing this for me, so that I might remain here; this is, after all, a corner I created for myself, and I need it to be an honest place where I can say whatever I need to say–or not. Many of you have let it be that kind of place all along–for me, and for the countless others on this road–and to you I am eternally grateful. I’m glad to finally be catching up to your bold wisdom, your integrity, your beautiful, funny, graceful, souls (and also yours and yours and yours and yours and yours and yours and yours and yours). And also Lorem’s. Thanks for the support, chicas.