The Facebook

One of the very first things I did when I got home from the hospital after Eliza was to deactivate my face.book account.

The last profile picture I had posted was one of me standing at our front door.  It must have been just before Thanksgiving.  We were getting ready to go shopping and at seven and a half months pregnant, I felt enormous.  And emotional.  My feet had gotten to the point that shoes that fit me at the start of the day were too tight by the end of the day, so I'd bought two pairs of ballet flats a half size up to get me through December and the start of January.  I remember that I was having a bad hair day.  I pulled it back in a ponytail and then I just started crying because my face looked so fat and I couldn't bend over normally to pick up the hairbrush I had dropped and the semester was still going on and I was tired and I just wanted school to be over so I could lounge around my house and wash all of the baby's stuff and organize the nursery.

But if I'm being honest, mostly I was crying because my face looked so fat.

David gave me a big hug (although I think I caught him rolling his eyes).  And he said, "Think of it this way--you could be not pregnant."

That shut me up.  Yes, of course.  This was the baby we wanted so much, the girl we already loved.  What if I wasn't pregnant at all?  What if we weren't able to have a baby?  What if something had happened to her?  Was I really sniveling because we're getting ready to go to Target and I have a double chin?

I put my hands on my belly and felt her squirm around in there, and I said a little prayer of thanks that she was safe in my belly, and I told David to take my picture, double chin and all.

The bundle the stork is carrying says "January."  Eliza's due date was January 15th.

I had announced my pregnancy on fb but kept the pregnancy chatter to a minimum because I was trying to be cool or something and even in my excitement, I knew that not everyone was fascinated by my gestation.  This was one of few pictures I posted during my pregnancy, and the only deliberately posed "belly-pic."  People commented right away:  "You look so cute!!!"  I remember smiling at that because obviously I was not feeling cute at the time, but I ended up feeling so happy that day, shopping with David and planning for the baby.

I couldn't bear for fb to become a forum for condolences.  I had cringed in distaste when a high school teacher had passed away and someone had created a page for him called "R.I.P. Mr. [Name Withheld]."  It was done with the best of intentions, I believe, but it felt inappropriate to me.  FB is the land of jokes and funny stories and "TGIF!!!"  I refused to let people post condolences about my daughter on facebook.

But I also couldn't bear it if they didn't.

I couldn't log on and look at 200-ish people who were supposed to be my "friends" and watch their lives continue, hilarious, mundane, or delightful, while my world came crashing down around me.  I returned home from the hospital empty and numb and in shock, but I knew even then that I had to get out of what a friend of mine has called "happy happy land."  Because if I had to read about how much one person is "lovin' life!" or is "so blessed!" I would scream.  FB was fun and light-hearted and silly.  And those were things I thought I would never be again.

Plus, if I am being really honest here, I sometimes used fb for a kind of bitchy reason.  Like to compare my life to other people's and feel happy and smug about my own choices.  (Am I the only person who used fb for that reason?  Seriously?).  Of course, now, suddenly, I had nothing to be smug about.  I was the most pathetic person I knew, and I couldn't handle all of the pity I imagined was being directed my way.

Facebook wanted to know why I was leaving.  There's a list of reasons you can choose from.  I selected "Other."  But if you select "Other," then they make you explain:  I am suffering debilitating grief following the death of my baby and seeing other people be happy is simply beyond my capacity for survival at this time.

I didn't write that.  I went back and clicked "Privacy Concerns" instead.

* * *
A couple of weeks ago, I decided maybe I was ready to give it another go.  I wanted to keep in touch with some good friends who are moving for new jobs.  And I've met a lot of bereaved parents online whom I know are on facebook.  And I missed some friends from high school that I kept up with only through fb.  I thought I could go back on, purge my friend list (removing everyone who had a small child, posted pictures of small children, liked small children, did not send me a sympathy card/email/text, or simply was not interesting enough for me still to want to voyeuristically spy on), and add some new friends.  But many of my real-life good friends fit at least the first two or three of those categories.  And then there was extended family...  and some sort of random connections...  Should I just hide people instead?  Purging friends was stressing me out.

As I scrolled through posts, it turned out that I hadn't really been missing all that much.  Anything that was important had been communicated to me in some other way and although I'm sure there were some interesting articles linked that I will never read, it seemed a small price to pay for not having to read the gleeful announcements of people who are expecting babies with the kind of certainty that I had when that last picture was taken.

And then I saw that on December 3rd, a friend of mine had posted on my wall.  She was a friend from grad school who has since moved far away, but (through fb) we kept in touch.  She had a baby girl in October, so we'd talked pregnancy/birth plan stuff.  "Next month!" she wrote, "When's the due date?"

I deleted that post.  I couldn't look at that message I never saw and never answered, the day before Eliza's heart stopped beating, the day before she was born, five weeks and four days before her due date.

In short, my heart is still too broken for facebook.  I managed to post something stupid on my brother's page and he posted something stupid back.  A few people posted on my wall that they were glad to see me back, which was nice.  But I just can't do it.

I deactivated my account again this morning.  Because it's too hard, because I'm still too sad and mean, because the people who care about me will find another way to reach out to me, and I'll do the same.  I don't need facebook to keep in touch with my good friends, and I'm too raw and sad and broken to be able to keep in touch with my second degree friends and friendly acquaintances.

* * *
One of the hardest parts about losing Eliza has been returning to our regular lives.  As we were before.  No nursery, no baby, no nap schedule, no changes.  It's still just us and our dogs.  Doing what we want, when we want.  The problem is there is so little I want to do without Eliza.  What does it mean if my baby died and nothing changed?

I think maybe I need to stay off fb because I need something in my life to be demonstrably different.  FB was perhaps only significant in regard to the amount of time I spent on it (doing nothing productive can take a long time!), but it was certainly significant in that way.  I checked it at least once a day, every day.  Probably more like 3 or 4 times a day once I got it on my phone.  Posting, commenting, liking, connecting.  Effortless and easy.  I was part of that network, and I'm just not anymore.

At this point, of course, things are easier than they were.  Life is not simply an exercise in surviving the darkest misery I could imagine.  I now have good days, great moments.  I'm doing pretty well most of the time.  But I am not "better."  This will never be fixed.  Time will make it easier, the future may bring more happiness our way, but you don't rally from the death of a baby.  You're changed forever, in good ways and sad ways.

I need to mark a measurable difference in my life, something that was there before and is there no longer (besides, you know, my optimism and abdominal muscles).  Giving up FB is not really a huge sacrifice now (although it felt that way one year when I gave it up for Lent) but it is a kind of symbolic thing for me, I guess.

Although the old me is still persisting in ways that are both a surprise and relief, I am not exactly the same person I was when I posted that pregnancy picture on facebook, when I shook a Tennessee pom-pom at my best friend's wedding, when I held David's hand and grinned in front of Stonehenge.

I no longer dwell in the world where babies are sure things and life works out the way you planned and how far you ran today merits reporting.  It was nice while it lasted, but I just don't live in Facebookland anymore.

Now I'm figuring out how to live in this world, in this life, how to honor Eliza's life, and come to terms with her death, without being entirely defined by it.  It's a struggle here, exiled from Facebookland, but I'm grateful for the company.