A Small Bit of Closure*

I’m going back to work on Monday.

Part of me is nervous that physically, I’m not ready yet. I think I am. I hope I am. My iron levels and blood pressure are still really low, but I can finally move around and walk without pain. I can also be on my feet for decent chunks of time without feeling woozy, and I can almost move from sitting to standing in a fluid motion. I still need my special tailbone pillow, and it might be the fluid motion of an 80 year old with arthritis, but I can stand up without too much pain. That’s a win.

The bigger part of me just really, really needs the normalcy of regular life and routine of our weekly chaos. It’s insanely busy and exhausting, but I love my job. I also love my hilarious, kind and often slightly inappropriate coworkers who keep me laughing on a daily basis. I also want to reassure my students that I’m not dying– my lovely friend who was in covering my classes for me told me that my students had hypothesized that I must have some type of terrible disease like Malaria to need to be away for so long.

In preparation for going back, I finally did the thing I’ve been dreading and putting off for days: I put my maternity clothes away. They’ve been there staring at me from my open-concept closet and shelves for days, and I just couldn’t look at them anymore. So, while I waited for P to settle for his nap today (which, for the record, never happened) I started making piles on my bed. I usually love this chore–putting my maternity clothes away usually signals that I’ve lost my baby weight and I get to pull out and see the clothes I haven’t seen in months and months.

Today I put them away not because I’ve lost the weight, but because I lost our baby.

I slowly pulled out all my “regular” clothes I had just put away a few weeks ago. I’m sure that almost none of them will fit yet, but I don’t care. It’s better than staring at my shirts meant to cover a growing belly that I no longer have.

While my heart was heavy packing them away, it helped somehow. Folding them all and tucking them carefully away in my tote provided me with a small sense of closure. I know that probably sounds silly, but the idea of packing those clothes away was like this small mountain I couldn’t bear to face before today. Now that it’s finally done I feel a little lighter. It’s good.

So, I may have to wear the same two pairs of pants for a while, but it’s better than the alternative. Thankfully it’s almost skirt and dress weather so I’ll sort it out somehow.

I promise I won’t talk about this forever… I feel a bit like I’ve been in hiding and I’m looking forward to inching back into the world a bit.

And when I say inching, I promise I mean inching. My doctor and family have been (lovingly) watching me like a hawk, so if I can’t handle work (yet) physically, I won’t be an idiot about it.

But I do want to try.

So, that’s sort of where I’m at. I also ate three microwave s’mores today which helped with the clothing sadness immensely. It’s not going to help my old clothes fit any better, but in the words of Scarlett O’Hara:

“I’ll think about that tomorrow. “