A week or so after the miscarriage, we told all our respective family members about it. I guess they would have been upset if they’d found out later. Sometimes we exclude them from our lives enough as it is.
Anyway, so they all know that we’re going to be trying again in a few months’ time, I suppose. Might serve as a useful excuse to get mum off the phone when she’s yapping on, actually.
“Must dash, mum – Karen is ovulating RIGHT NOW!”
I hold pens in a slightly peculiar way. I’m not about to go into detail about the exact way that I hold pens when writing, but suffice to say that it is a little peculiar. Not as peculiar as if I held them between my buttocks or if I bit the blunt end off and held them back to front between my middle and ring fingers, but it’s slightly peculiar regardless.
I’m not sure when it started. I guess I must have pretty much always held pens in a slightly peculiar way, though over the course of my life I’ve gradually used a computer more and a pen less, so it’s less of an issue.
Just now, I was innocently writing something in a notebook, and was suddenly hit full in the face with repulsion at myself. I looked at my hand in disgust, as if it were a slipper full of dog vomit and banana skins. I manipulated my grip to look more human, and tried to write, but it just came out all messy.
And so I’m stuck with this offensive grip and I don’t think that it will ever go away. I’m cursed. Cursed, I tells ya.
I’m going to go and Google a bit and see if there are any support groups in existence for people with my affliction.
While Karen is away, I’m kinda pottering around the house, a bit of mooching, a bit of moping, a bit of mehing.
It’s more than two years since I last did this. Please excuse me if I act a little oddly.
This afternoon I’ve re-read my diaries from my youth – there’s a 1988 volume and then a void until 1992. Since then, there are no gaps. And let me tell you, it’s heartbreaking. Falling in love with a different girl every day, and being destroyed when the feelings weren’t mutual. Then, when my luck changes, I am completely indifferent and treat them all like shit.
I’ve started reading the diaries from my university years, but it’s much less horrifying. The pace of life picks up a lot, and it’s clear from the style of writing that I mature a lot in just the first term. I know from memory that in the second year I starting using the diary solely for appointments and reminders, and I used a separate notebook for more thoughtful writing.
This is a bit of a shame, as it makes it harder to correlate what’s going on with what I’m feeling, but it was necessary as I started going into much more depth, and it wouldn’t always fit in the limited space available.
***
It’s later in the day, and I’ve now read all the diaries up to the end of 2002 – ie, just before I met Karen. As predicted, the latter few were very factual and to-the-point. Actually, the second half of 2001 and all of 2002 were very sparse indeed. As memory serves, I was keeping myself busy.
The result of all this reading is that I’m reverting to how I was before I met Karen, though the knowledge that it is only temporary means that I’m watching it from the outside rather than the inside. Even so, it’s horrid.
For one thing, I’m spending a lot of time thinking. Which sounds like a good thing, but really it’s not. I spent most of my formative years doing nothing but thinking, and I was consumed with foolish, unhelpful and paranoid thoughts. And oh looky, here they are again.
Re-reading the diaries has also reminded me of the trail of devastation that I’ve left behind me. I feel the need to write a pile of letters to all the girls who I’ve treated badly over the years, to expunge this guilt that’s preventing me from going to sleep. But what would be the point? They’ve probably completely forgotten about me by now, and if I were to reopen old wounds then I’d be just making it all worse.
I really thought that I’d be able to deal with all this a little bit better than I have.
I was stood in the back garden with my woman nestled deep into my chest. The sun was setting, and glistening off of her hair in a beautiful fashion. I had to fetch the camera.
We had a miscarriage today. It happens, I suppose, and we were just unlucky.
We’re very upset, but it’s not going to be the end of us. We can see that it’s just one of those things that happens, and we have to ride it out. We’ll be pregnant by the end of autumn, and don’t you just know it.
So Karen is getting very happy in her new role as mother-to-be. She’s reading enormous pregnancy books, complaining that she hasn’t got a bump yet, and trying to get out of household chores wherever possible by saying “My book says that you’re supposed to take care of me while I’m pregnant.” My retort is usually to invent a quote, supposedly taken from my book, which says that I shouldn’t take any shit from her.
Contrarily, I’m aware that once the baby is born, and indeed in the months leading up to it, I’m going to be so incredibly busy taking care of a round, screaming monster, that I won’t have any time to myself. So I’m immersing myself into my usual hedonistic and selfish pursuits with gusto – a kind of farewell to Quality Me Time, if you will.
As a result, occasionally she’ll interrupt me when I’m concentrating, and say something random and baby-related. I won’t instantly make the connection, and subsequently I think I possibly come across as being a bit forgetful.
“A what? A baby? Oh, yeah, I forgot about that.”
I’m looking around the house at all the junk that’ll need clearing. Fragile items eventually need moving to higher locations. Entire rooms, or portions of them, need clearing to make way for baby crap. I don’t know how we’ll manage.
Not too much else has changed, really. Most noticeable is that Karen is paying a lot of attention to what she is eating. Some foods are apparently completely forbidden, innocuous things like feta cheese. Obviously I’m trying to be as supportive as I can, but I can only go so far.
I may have to maintain a stash of unhealthy and dangerous foodstuffs, perhaps locked in a box in the attic where she won’t find it. Then I can maintain the illusion of supportiveness whilst simultaneously gorging myself silly on all the things that I never really used to be fussed about, but which suddenly seem so alluring.
I’m determined to stay off the cigarettes though.
Since we decided that we were going to be parents, my perception of other families has changed a lot. When we’re out for dinner, or walking down the street, or even when I’m just staring out my window at people walking by, I am analysing the families walking by. I suppose that specifically I am looking at fathers with their young children, trying to figure out what they are thinking and what their lives consist of these days.
On another note, I’m not a complete fashion slave, but I try to look my best. Once I’m a parent, I guess that the importance of looking smart takes a backseat. Instead of wearing clothes that look tidy, I’ll be wearing clothes that hide the vomit stains, I guess.
Ah well. It’s just another thing that changes, I suppose. Not better, nor worse, just different.
Karen returned from the doctors under a pile of pamphlets and junk. She’s got a pack of little tablets and is ordering books from Amazon, and indulging herself with sleep whenever she feels like it, because she’s pregnant, and so she can. What a life.
For me, she brought back one leaflet from the doctors – yes, just one. It’s called “37 things every man should know before he becomes a dad” and it is very concise. Some of it is a little patronising, and there’s not really much that a gentleman of average or better intelligence couldn’t work out for himself, but there were a few surprises in there for me. Especially point 30: apparently newborn baby poo doesn’t smell. I’m planning on training it to change its own nappies sometime in the first week.
Reading books is all well and good, but there’s no substitute for practice. I AM VERY EAGER.