I’m just sitting here sobbing.
I have fallen into the deepest abyss.
And I can’t see the light.
It’s not “just” the loss of an unborn baby. It’s much more than that.
I don’t know where to start.
What is the meaning of life? What is the meaning of my life?
I have so much pain inside that I can hardly stand stand being in my own body.
I just want to get out and leave. get away from it all. Start over.
My soul, my mind and my body are completely shattered.
I’m self-employed, so a lot of my life involves work. Way too much work. I never have any free time. I’m always at it. I have to answer emails. There are constantly things I have to decide on.
When I’m sad, I can’t let it affect my meetings or my correspondence with my clients. I have to act like nothing has happened, emails still need replies with smileys, advice and guidance have to be given to potential clients, estimates have to be drawn up, websites need updating, and “interesting news” posted on social medias, because if I don’t do these things I can close my business within a month.
And I do all these things. In spite of being – mentally – way down in a deep black hole that I can’t get out of.
And it takes a lot of my time and leisure time. I am never off. Not even when there’s not that much to do. Of what puts food on the table. There’s always something to do. I have a mile long to do list that gives me a guilty conscience every single day.
I’m experiencing one of those periods, with not much – of what makes a living – to do, as I’m writing this. It’s extremely frustrating. Especially with all the grief and disappointment of the – now fourth – abortion.
It makes me so sad.
Unbelievably sad.
Am I not good enough?
Is what I do not good enough?
Am I not tough enough?
My stomach hurts.
I become unhappy.
I become scared.
I can’t pay myself wages.
I can’t lie down on my bed in fetal position and cry all day, and just shut the world out, even if that is what I really feel like doing.
I feel like calling in sick and take some time off to collect myself until I’m back on top, but I can’t, because then the business won’t prosper at all. The business is all me. Everything rests on my shoulders.
I’m so sad that I don’t feel like doing anything at all…
Other than sit here sobbing…
My business is crumbling and so am I…
If we weren’t a couple, I would have to give notice on my apartment and move back home to my mom. I’ve had to do that before. It was during the financial crisis. From one day to the next, there was no work for me to do. For months and months. I had no boyfriend so there was no one to help contribute to the household and in the end, I had no choice but to give up my home.
That meant I had to leave all my belongings behind, sublet my apartment, pack some clothes into plastic bags, move in with my mom and live in an 8 square meter “large” room with a mattress on the floor with my two cats and a litter box. I lived that way for five months. I was 35.
It was so humiliating.
After five months on those 8 square meters – with cats and litter box – I had the opportunity to rent my younger brother’s apartment. So I did for about a year and then finally I got my own little apartment in social housing.
A total comedown.
The apartment I had to leave and sublet to strangers had been my home in more than ten years and all of a sudden, it was the root of all evil. If nothing else then of economic ruin. I had just put it together with the apartment downstairs the year before and now that I had no work coming in, I couldn’t afford to live in it, and I couldn’t sell it. It was an expensive share and there was a financial crisis in Denmark.
It was pure hell.
An economical nightmare.
It took more than two years for me to sell it with a huge deficit. That meant I contracted substantial debts and that was – even if it originally was a housing loan – splendidly converted into a consumer loan when the apartment was sold.
Congratulations with your new “consumer debt” at only 11.75% interest.
The fairness in all of this is hard to find.
But I survived and so did my business.
Today I’m free of my debt and I’m not gonna end back up in my old room at my mom’s, because luckily now we’re two…
Speaking of being two…
I had a notion that if I was to abort again, as I did in 2011, then it would be much easier now that I have a boyfriend than it was when I was alone.
It’s not…
Far from it…
I’m unable to explain to my boyfriend what I need…
And he is unable to understand/sense/guess what I need…
He is nowhere near as sad as I am.
If he is, he doesn’t show it.
When we arrived at the control scan (a form of safety scan I had asked for) on Monday February 16th 2015, my reaction probably was a little strange when I think about it…
I was in week 10+5 and the scan showed that the fetus was dead, probably in week 7+5 (at the scan in week 7+1 everything looked fine).
The only thing I said was: “I just knew it!”
I could feel the blood pounding in my body making my face all warm.
I could feel a giant lump in my throat, so I didn’t say anything else because people would be able to hear that I was on the verge of breaking down.
I said absolutely nothing.
I just froze.
Became unapproachable.
I probably seemed more angry than sad, but in reality, all I wanted to do was to break down and cry. Right there. On the spot. I wanted to howl.
But I didn’t. I said nothing except “I just knew it!”
My boyfriend, who calls himself an optimist, looked at me with a crooked smile and said something like: “How did you know?” or “What do you mean?” in a tone of voice that sounded like he thought I couldn’t possibly have known in advance.
I just looked at him crossed and told him that he shouldn’t sit there and fucking smile!
I was so sad, I was falling to pieces, and he just sat there with his stupid optimism. I couldn’t cope with it at all.
We have never really talked about it. I have a feeling that he has moved on by now. It’s been a few days now anyway so no reason to keep bringing that up.
He doesn’t say that of course. But it feels like he’s thinking it. Not that I know what he’s thinking what so ever. He’s not sharing it with me. I’ve tried to share some of my thoughts, but I don’t think he understands them. I certainly don’t get the reaction I expect to get from him.
I haven’t moved on. I haven’t moved on at all. I don’t need to talk to a psychologist (I wouldn’t put it past him to suggest that with the very best of intentions). I need to talk to him and I need him to understand me. I need to know how he feels too.
…Unless he’s fine…then I don’t think I want to know. Because then I’m all alone…
I talked to a girl friend of mine about it on the phone.
She said it would have been best if he had broken down and cried after the scan on Monday.
So I could tell that he was sad. That it touched him. That it was his dream shattering too.
I believe she’s right. It would be nice if I could feel that this is hard on him too.
It feels like he feels sad for me. But doesn’t he feel sad at all??!
Today, Saturday, he’s at work all day and after work he’s going to the movies and out with some friends.
I don’t get it. I don’t understand anything. And I’m unable to express how much I think it sucks.
I don’t want to sound reproachful.
I don’t want to be the pathetic girlfriend..
So I don’t say anything…
…I just don’t understand why he wants to…
He comes home after being at work all day. He sees me sitting on the couch, completely broken. He comes over, sits beside me, and holds me for a little while…
…But just for a little while….then he leaves to go out on the town…
I would never have done that if he was the one who was so miserable. Never. That’s what’s so hard to understand. How can he? Doesn’t he care?
I don’t get it. I just don’t understand.
I’ve stopped answering the phone. I don’t want to talk to anyone.
I feel ungrateful.
I have so many amazing girl friends who are waiting in the wings.
They want to hear how I feel.
They want to help.
They want to talk.
They want to be there.
But I can’t receive…
I can’t stand myself.
I can’t stand my existence.
I’ve fallen into a deep abyss. I can’t see anything ahead of me.
I’m completely surrounded by a thick fog of self-pity.
Some say it helps to cry it all out.
But when are you done crying?
When does it end?
And why does it feel like I’m only getting worse?
My life is just work, work, work and never any freedom.
When it’s finally quiet and I can relax, then I can’t pay myself and I can’t contribute to the household.
I’ve spend all my savings promoting my business but it hasn’t worked.
Monday I get bad news at a scan.
Tuesday I have a surgical abortion.
Saturday my boyfriend goes out with his friends.
I don’t want to live like this, but I have no idea how to change it.
I don’t want my work to take up so much time and be so demanding and at the same time result in a resounding deficit.
I want to turn it into a business with profit that doesn’t need me to work more than 37-40 hours a week.
How I don’t know.
I want a family with my boyfriend so bad, but as it has turned out, now I might never know that joy.
I wish I were able to express to my boyfriend what I need from him, and I wish that he too could feel the grief that I feel. Not because I want him to feel sorrow and pain, but because I need to know that both of us are in this. Together. That I’m not alone. That I’m not the only one who’s sad.
I feel like I’m sitting in a pitch-black dungeon that I can’t get out of…
/Hanne ❤
Heart In The Making 