Feeling it.

The day started a little rough - overtired and in pain. It subsided after a while, but that was just foreshadowing for how my day was going to go. One workshop scheduled, no students showed up, so it ended up as a really fun catch-up period with a couple of coworkers (my partner and another staff member we don't see often cause of the pandemic). Catch up turned into office gossip, naturally, which turned into my coworker almost outing my miscarriage and apologizing. It was part of a story about another outrageous coworker of ours, an honest mistake. I dismissed it, said it was okay, and briefly recapped that I had a miscarriage at 10 weeks, prior to spring break. Her reaction was genuine, and sweet. Then we talked about our coworker complaining about contributing to an office gesture of support (a gift card to my favourite nail salon) - because in all of her office jobs, she's never seen someone get a "miscarriage gift". Courtney was outraged and it felt good. She declared that women should get miscarriage gifts, and hugs, and love, and flowers, and everything they could ever need. "You had another human in your body DIE" and it went on like that for a bit. She was ravaged. It felt good. For once someone acknowledged what it meant. It wasn't just an unfortunate medical emergency. I wasn't just sick. I lost my unborn child. It died IN MY BODY. And I returned to work after a couple days, to not put anyone else out. She was shocked to hear that - I put everyone above myself. At the time, I think I needed that though. So now, I'm feeling it. I'm feeling her words, her raw truth, her unfiltered support. She acknowledged my pain like no one else has. And she apologized for talking about it, but she helped me today. Now I'm feeling the emotional hangover, I've been exhausted since. It was a lot. 

Tomorrow I have Counselling - I'm going to fight the urge to dismiss the two weeks as easy... They were hell. Journaling has been great - it's an outlet for it all so I don't have to carry it, but it doesn't mean the pain didn't exist. Today I felt the urge to take narcotics again... I need to bring that up. Declare it as the reason I booked in the first place, the desire to escape, but the strength to not. She should know though... Admitting that is going to be hard.