Tiny Beautiful Things Read Free Page A

are withheld crazy and desperate and incapable of knowing what they actually feel.
    So release yourself from that. Don’t be strategic or coy. Strategic and coy are for jackasses. Be brave. Be authentic. Practice saying the word “love” to the people you love so when it matters the most to say it, you will.
    We’re all going to die, Johnny. Hit the iron bell like it’s dinnertime.
    Yours,
Sugar

HOW YOU GET UNSTUCK

    Dear Sugar
,
    About eighteen months ago, I got pregnant. In a move that surprised both my boyfriend and me, we decided we wanted to keep the baby. Though the pregnancy was unplanned, we were excited to become parents. The child was very much loved and wanted. When I was six and a half months pregnant, I miscarried. Since then, I’ve struggled to get out of bed
.
    Not a day has gone by when I haven’t thought about who that child would have been. It was a girl. She had a name. Every day I wake up and think, “My daughter would be six months old,” or “My daughter would maybe have started crawling today.” Sometimes, all I can think is the word “daughter” over and over and over
.
    Of course, it seems that everyone around me is having a baby and everywhere I go all I see are babies, so I have to force myself to be happy for them and swallow how empty I feel. The truth is, I don’t feel much of anything anymore and yet everything hurts. Most of the people in my life expect me to be over my sorrow by now. As one person pointed out, “It was only a miscarriage.” So I also feel guilty about being so stuck, grieving for a child that never was when I should just walk it off or something
.
    I don’t talk very much about it. I pretend it never happened. Igo to work and hang out and smile and act like everything is fine. My boyfriend has been fantastic and supportive, though I don’t think he understands how badly I’m doing. He wants us to get married and try for another child. He thinks this should cheer me up. It doesn’t. It makes me want to punch him in the head for not feeling the way I do
.
    Then there is the reason I lost the baby. In the hospital, my doctor said he wasn’t surprised I lost the baby because my pregnancy was high risk because I was overweight. It was not an easy thing to hear that the miscarriage was my fault. Part of me thinks the doctor was a real asshole, but another part of me thinks, “Maybe he was right.” It kills me to think that this was my fault, that I brought the miscarriage on myself. I can’t even breathe sometimes, I feel so guilty. When I got out of the hospital, I got a personal trainer and went on a diet and started losing weight but I’m totally out of control now. Sometimes, I don’t eat for days, and then sometimes I eat everything in sight and throw it all up. I spend hours at the gym, walking on the treadmill until I can’t lift my legs
.
    My friends and family think I’m doing just fine, Sugar, but nothing could be further from the truth. All I can think about is how I fucked up. Everything feels like it is more than I can handle. The rational part of me understands that if I don’t pull myself out of this, I’ll do serious damage to myself. I know this, and yet I just don’t care
.
    I want to know how to care again. I want to know how to not feel so guilty, how to not feel like I killed my baby
.
    My daughter, she had a name. She was loved. I feel like the only one who cares. Then I feel like shit for mourning “just a miscarriage” after nearly a year. I’m stuck
.
    Best,
Stuck
    Dear Stuck,
    I’m so sorry that your baby girl died. So terribly sorry. I can feel your suffering vibrating right through my computer screen. This is to be expected. It is as it should be. Though we live in a time and place and culture that tries to tell us otherwise, suffering is what happens when truly horrible things happen to us.
    Don’t listen to those people who suggest you should be “over” your daughter’s death by now. The people who squawk the