Miscarriage Melancholia

I'm clearly in a funk or some phase of miscarriage melancholia. Here are 10 reasons I may be in a funk...

1. I might be paranoid but it seems that when I make a joke about pregnant women or female reproductive health in my usual sarcastic way, everyone looks at me with pity or with that deer-in-the-headlights look that seems to say "What am I supposed to do now? Laugh? Cluck sympathetically? Excuse myself to the bathroom to avoid dealing with this miscarriage shit?"

2. I started my period last night. I know I'm supposed to start my period because I was on The Pill for a month to reduce the cysts in my ovaries and have finished the pack, but it is really a let-down to bleed.

3. I have to get my ovaries checked on Monday, and I'm not at all confident that the Monster Cysts are gone. I wish I had faith, even blind faith, that everything would be okay, but I'm not wired that way.

4. I'm comfortable, even happy with my decision not to get pregnant for a while, to take a reproductive breather. But I'm also feeling like a quitter, a failure, a loser. Talk about a contradiction. I know I'm doing the right thing right now for my head, but my heart has mixed feelings.

5. I think my perimenopausal symptoms are getting much more pronounced, each one screaming "Your Time Is Running Out!" I try to ignore them, but they won't let me.

6. I'm having really bad dreams at night and actually sweating. I've heard of night sweats and wonder if that is what I'm having. I wake up drenched and smelling foul. Maybe this is another perimenopausal symptom. Welcome to Middle Age.

7. Everywhere I look is another pregnant woman.

8. Everywhere I look is another baby.

9. I just heard that a woman I know - around my age - is going to have to get a hysterectomy because of uterine fibroids, the same thing her mother had. At first, I had that shameful feeling of relief that it wasn't me going through it. Then I remembered that this was the same thing my mother had. So besides realizing I'm going to hell for thinking "Thank God it isn't me," I'm also going to have the same thing happen to me at any moment. For all I know, the fibroids are growing as I type this.

10. This may seem totally unrelated, but I don't think anything is unrelated. I'm thinking about September 11th. Where were you on September 11th?