Just wondering how to take it day by day...

Something I hadn't said yet was about last weekend.

Last weekend, we went to Carolina Renaissance Festival. Enough people knew I hadn't "felt well" the week before, and I specifically said something in both my LJ and my FB that said I don't feel well, please don't ask, if I'm not talking I just don't feel well. So of course, everybody and their uncle has to f-ing ask how I'm feeling, what happened, etc. Good lord, do people not understand when someone says "please don't ask" it doesn't mean "please drag it out of me"? Again, I got away with telling people that I'd had tummy troubles and hadn't eaten for 24 hours at one point, so people just really stopped asking anything further after that. For the most part people left me alone (with a few notable exceptions), and nobody questioned that I was sitting down a lot, but they all know I have MS anyways, so it wasn't as big a deal as it could have been.

But what got me was really going to see my niece.

Saturday night, my brother said she'd gone to sleep right before we got there. His wife was eating her dinner, and told us to go out, since the baby would probably wake up around 10pm anyways. We went out to dinner, and they actually tried to wake her up to say hello, but she was acting like drunk baby, and I was actually kind of glad they couldn't get her to wake up much.

Sunday evening really got to me though.

I got back early enough for us to still see her awake (after her mother fed her and Joe and I cleaned out the car from the festival, in preparation to get back on the plane). She wasn't in the happiest mood, and neither was I to be honest, but I held her when she was handed to me. Fortunately that didn't last long, she started fussing and I handed her back to her mother. Don't get me wrong, my niece is cute, but it's kind of tough to handle right now. I ate my pizza, and my brother and his wife tried to make her smile. I finally leaned over the couch and was making silly faces at her to make her smile, or at least not cry, which worked to an extent. I suppose all my energy at that point was being put into making her smile, so I really didn't have to think about what my own system was going through.

When we left the house, I started to tear up, but held it together at least somewhat.

It was when we got back home after the plane trip that I just totally lost it.

I had slept in the car on the way back from BWI, and so sleepily made my way up the stairs and into the bedroom. As is my usual, I went to use the restroom before going to bed. And that's when I spotted the positive pregnancy test (no, I hadn't thrown it out. It's one of the few tangible bits of proof that the baby existed). That's what broke the dam. That's what just suddenly caused everything to break loose, and I just threw myself down on the bed and sobbed for about twenty minutes. I couldn't stop it. It's like all the emotions had been bottled up while I went to see my niece over the weekend, and I just couldn't stop them all from coming out. Joe came upstairs when he heard me, and just started rubbing my shoulder and holding me. I just couldn't stop it, it's like it all kept flooding out in a giant gush. I at least stopped long enough to let Joe go feed the cat (who was by this time crying herself, she wanted her canned food), and once he got down stairs, just started crying again.

A part of me wants to be able to tell the family, but I don't want the pity I'd get from some, and the insensitivity I'd get from others. Ironically I think I'd get more sensitivity from my SIL than I would from my brother or my mother (when we got to their house on Saturday night, she asked me how I was, and I said "hanging in there", which is typical of me. But she got this concerned look on her face, like she knew something happened. She started to ask me what's wrong, and I forget what happened that just distracted the whole conversation. I'm kind of glad it was distracted, because I really didn't want to have to say anything at the time. My brother wouldn't quite know what to do with it (although I've since figured out he's more emotional than he lets on. The last time I was visiting and we were up until untold hours of the morning, I was telling him I was upset about something, and his *stomach* was reacting... I asked him if he was hungry, and he said what I was telling him was actually tying him up in knots because he didn't know what to do. So I know he's more sensitive than he likes to let on).

But I don't want to tell my mother. Ever, if I can help it. I don't think she'd ever understand it, she rarely understands anything that hasn't happened directly to her before. When I got my MS diagnosis more than 15 years ago, while I was crying because I'd just smacked myself in the face with a piece of hot chicken three times in a row, and then dropped my birch beer on my MRI films, my mother said "Why are you crying? You have no reason to cry!" Yeah, this is not the woman I want to let know anything about what's going on, because I'm pretty sure I'd get a similar reaction: get over it and move on. But I don't want to get over it yet. It may have only been 11 weeks, but that was a child growing inside of me. It's like losing a hand or an arm, it may not have been a fully fledged person on its own, but it was part of me.

A part of me wants to tell my father... But when I originally told him we were trying, but that we hadn't quite gotten there yet (the month before I got pregnant), he said "just relax, it'll happen. Look at all of those women out there who adopt because they think they're infertile, who eventually go on to get pregnant because they don't think they can? They just relaxed and it happened." *sigh* I realize he was trying to comfort me at the time, but that isn't something that comforts a woman who's trying to get pregnant. It just makes her more frustrated. I will at least admit that about a month later (ironically after I was pregnant) he apologized when I said that it was why I'd gotten so peeved when he said that... He didn't remember saying it, but he apologized because he realized what it sounded like afterwards. But I hate to say it, I don't really want to tell him, either. I hate to say it, he's a guy. They don't really understand it the way a woman would (and my mother's not even inclined to understand it. If she's never been through it, she won't understand it).

And what makes it harder is that the day they came to visit was the day I was supposed to tell them... And it turned out to be the day I miscarried instead. By now, my half of the family was supposed to know I was going to give birth in May or June.

And what really gets upsetting is realizing that on Thanksgiving I get to spend the day with my MIL. And she wants to come by our house the next day to help with decorations for the Dickens tea.

The last time I spoke to my MIL was what went from asking her to stop nagging me about grandchildren to her going off the deep end to finally a bit of an understanding between the two of us... But she flat out said that she didn't know if she could stop her reactions when it came to saying anything about her eventual grandkids. And I'm afraid to be around her now, because all it's going to do is hurt, where either I'm going to have to throw up the mask that allows me to survive long enough to wait until either she or I go home (at which point I will soak the pillows again), or I'm going to turn around and lash out at her (something that she will semi-deserve if she brings up the idea of grandchildren again after I've asked her to stop. She just may not deserve it quite as much as it may likely come out).

I honestly don't want to go to Thanksgiving. I don't want to go to Christmas. I don't want to have to talk to family at all. I spoke to my grandmother on the way home from work the other day, and had to bite my tongue because she was talking about my niece the whole time. I cried once I got home.

I don't want to have to talk to any of them right now, whether it's my family or Joe's. I just want to have the bare minimum contact I have to and then leave. I just don't want to be around any of them. I don't want to have to explain things, I don't want a pity party, I don't want any of it.

I just want it all to be normal again. Only it's not going to happen for a while at best.

I hate to say it, my uterus hurts. And it's not just cramps.