Tuesday, August 19, 2008

I'm at a mental blank. I've hit the wall. Do I dare even think .. writer's block? I can't even get my butt into gear to write the things I've scribbled down in the past.

I can't even write pure unadulterated crap as I usually do. What's wrong with me??

I figure I'm still at those crossroads. In fact there are a few crossroads, actually a couple of them look like cliffs I have to dive off. I'm not good when it comes to jumping off heights. That last step is always a doozie. Will I choose right and fly, or will I choose wrong and plummet to the jagged rocks below?

Do I really mind which way it goes? Have I decided that it's all about the journey and the destination is so far away that it's not even worth contemplating any more. Not even I can answer that question, I just don't know right now.


I think I see where this has come from. Friends of mine got married a year or so ago and they have been considering ruining their financial future by having children (I don't really believe that, but it made you think). Well, the wife fell pregnant a few months back. Got through the morning sickness, etc. Then had a miscarriage last weekend. The weekend before her birthday.

Understandably they both are shattered. Perhaps I'm a bastard for saying this, but the name they picked out was horrible (I hope that name is now scratched off the list) and the whole fiasco about getting a bracelet with the picked name engraved on it and writing a poem (which wasn't bad, but forcing everyone to read it at her party was a bit over the top).

I understand people have different ways of grieving and that's cool. Just seems to me that they way this particular girl is doing it is a little too ... clingy. A little too much holding onto the past and not willing to move forward.

Am I a bastard for thinking that she's going over the top? That really, the first pregnancy is very unlikely to go full term and committing so much seems a bit wrong. What happens the next time? Hell, my mother had a number of miscarriages and while she grieved for them each, life moves on, a material reminder of things isn't always necessary.

In fact a material reminder of things past can be the worst possible thing. Is the next pregnancy going to have a negative stigma because it survived where the first one didn't?

Is everyone around me growing up and having "real" adult lives - while I stumble my way through it all attempting to catch up. Or at least work out what the hell I'm doing?

I don't even know what sort of Dad I'd be ....

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Its too soon, let them grieve a bit, if its 12 months later and they're still carrying on then give them the old kick, but just give them a few months.

imho, we are all just that little bit spoilt and arent used to failing. This is a failure, so its grieving over loosing the baby (which is natural) and grieving over the failure to stay pregnant(which shows a lacks emotional intelligence).

And on your last point, you are an adult, your life is real, it might look different to people that you know, so what, theres no right or wrong, be what you want, when you want - life throws enough curlies at us without worrying about things you dont need to really be worrying about.

Mr Subtle said...

Anon - I can see this couple "grieving" for a long time to come. The husband will get out of it, but the wife has a long time to go until maturity kicks in.

I guess I was expecting some grieving (natural) but the whole bracelet, etc has a permanent feel to it. Eh, it's their life.

On that last point - I agree. But sometimes I just need to vent. Without getting called sappy for doing it.

Anonymous said...

Hey Sappy Sublte, I like that.

The bracelet thing sounds like she has been watching Oprah on how to handle loosing a unborn, or someother self help book on that topic. If it works for her......

Just stick her in the bucket of people you know who read the Da Vinci Code and thought it was non-fiction.

Mad Cat Lady said...

*ahem* when my first solo pet cat (as opposed to family pet) got hit by a car and died, I wore it's name tag on a necklace and didn't take off for something like four years. I didn't bore on about it or anything though (and I shaved my head, but I had a number four hair cut at the time anyway, so it wasn't like a dramatic change)

Mr Subtle said...

Anon - Don't you start!
Yes, that's EXACTLY the sort of person this girl is. Oprah watching Da Vinci Code believing country bumpkin. Although not all that bad.
I guess all I can do is wish her luck and send her on her way. Better them than me.

Trin - 4 years? The head shaving I can understand (I did that once too) but 4 years? Seriously? I guess if it was something in the background, then ok. But 4 years? Did it even have any feelings attached by the end of those years?

Anonymous said...

Hey Sappy Subtle (new nickname will stick - hehehe)

Once you realise that 95% of the people in the world are just plain idiots and there is nothing you can do about it, life becomes a whole lot easier.

Mr Subtle said...

anon - shut up you! It'll catch on and I'll have to kick someone's butt!

As for the 95% mark, I like to think it's closer to 99%. The rest of us get to try and run the world while keeping the others paying tax. I mean alive. I just have to get over that sticky problem of assuming more than 1% actually have a functioning brain.

Cath said...

Where do I start...... Firstly, I think the fact that they want to acknowledge this pregnancy in such a way, it strange. Perhaps if it was close too term, it would be different. So I agree with you there. But one thing you don't really know about is the strange things that your body goes through after a miscarriage/termination... the hormones coming out of it are awful and are overwhelming. As a child I doubt you would have known much about what your Mum went through... good on her for being able to keep a brave face up and continue on.....

Mad Cat Lady said...

Gus was a good cat and overall I like cats better than people.

I used to know a lady whose baby died 4 hours after she was born. She can't bring herself to speak/see ANY people she used to know from the time before she was pregnant.

Mr Subtle said...

Cath - I'm allowing for the hormone swings and all, but I'm also taking into consideration this particular couple and this particular person. I know it won't stop at the bracelet or the poem. I just hope it won't happen for too much longer!
And you'd be surprised what I know about the adults around me when I was a child.

Trin - Cats can be better than some humans. Although with cats one can always blame the owner. Perhaps slavery had it's positives? mmm, perhaps a bad topic. Dying after the baby was born, now I can understand all sorts of "crazy" happening after that. And I don't mean "crazy" in a bad sense, just a term to describe the things that anyone goes through in those situations.