The Space for Maybe

If I had to describe in one word what I tend to explore most in my writing, it would be “duality” – the existence of two halves within one whole. Opposites attracting, or in some cases, opposing. Darkness and light. Chaos and order.

From a purely scientific viewpoint, opposites are important, and they can help us make sense of an otherwise chaotic world. But humans need far more than just the scientific, and this is where black-and-white thinking becomes problematic. For example, what I didn’t realize until recently is just how often such thinking influences the way I experience my own emotions – in particular, grief.

I’ve been fortunate enough to not have much personal experience with grief, but my ongoing battle with infertility has morphed my understanding of the word in ways I didn’t know were possible. Grief was never a word I would have applied to the loss of an organ, for example. It was never a word I would have associated with a future I always believed I’d have, but now, never will. Grief was supposed to be something a person only felt when they lost a loved one, or maybe even a pet.

If you’ve experienced infertility or pregnancy loss, then what I am about to say might sound familiar: grief, it turns out, is a series of contradictions. It’s raging that someone else has what you cannot have, while resenting that anger because no one should have to go through the same thing. It’s withdrawing from everyone while also needing people to care about you. It’s suffering while wanting to feel joy for other people. It’s feeling guilty while rationally knowing that it isn’t your fault.

See? Duality.

We’re told that acceptance is the “final stage” of grief, and for so long, that seemed so far out of my reach that I couldn’t even imagine it. It was always my understanding that once we reached this stage, we were done with the grieving process, and for me, that just didn’t seem possible. But while I don’t advocate the use of an umbrella concept to explain the complexity of grief – and yes, the “five stages of grief” are largely debunked from a clinical standpoint – it does make me wonder why acceptance only happens at the end.

When I was at my worst, I was spiraling. I had just received the devastating news that my only option was surrogacy – which, really, wasn’t an option at all (who has $150,000 to spare?). I ended up connecting with a private practice that specializes in infertility and family trauma, and it was here that I met Chelsea (a pseudonym).

I’ve had therapists before, and I’ve never found them to be particularly helpful. I struggle with inorganic interactions, and there was always a high level of masking involved whenever I went into a session. Add on top of that my own inherent, crippling fear of judgement, and you basically had a recipe for nothing more appetizing than stale bread.

But Chelsea was unique. She helped me understand that “acceptance” is just as complex as grief is. And the forms acceptance takes, and the way it affects our daily lives, isn’t as simple as, “I accept that I will never have another child, and I am okay with that.”

The truth is, I’m not okay with that. I don’t know if I ever will be. And because of that, my understanding of grief transformed from a linear progression into a complex web – a web in which acceptance appears more than once, and doesn’t have any note of finality attached to it. A web that allows me to say, “Maybe I won’t ever be okay with this, and that’s okay.”

It might sound simple on paper, but for many of us, giving ourselves space for “maybe” is counterintuitive. We like labels. We like categories. We crave simplicity. “Maybe” doesn’t give us any of that.

What it does give us, though, is breathing room. It opens doors. It offers much-needed pause from all of grief’s contradictions.

A while back, I began a series of paintings that were stylized representations of the interior of my uterus, based on surgical photographs. These photographs were used as justification for my doctor at the time to stop offering me treatment – my intrauterine damage was just too extensive to be fixed, she told me. I couldn’t explain my reasoning behind painting these photographs, because I despised them. I loathed those grainy, circular images because it felt like they defined me as “unfixable.” I was permanently broken, and here I was painting the visual proof of that. And it drove me insane to not know why.

But “maybe” gave me a bit of room. Maybe I was trying to claim ownership over those pictures. Maybe I was trying to find beauty in the pain.

Or, maybe not.

The reason behind the paintings wasn’t important. What mattered were the paintings themselves. And I wouldn’t have understood that if I hadn’t allowed myself the space for maybe.

I’m not saying that it’s easy – in fact, it’s anything but. I’ve even found myself actively fighting against it at times. For whatever reason, I wanted to cling to my grief, not let go of it. But as time progressed, the unknown became a little less scary, and “maybe” has now taken up residence in my life.

I am still hurting, and I might carry that pain with me for the rest of my life. But maybe some days, it won’t weigh so heavily. Maybe one day, I’ll be able to talk about it without being reduced to a sobbing mess.

But if I do start crying, well…maybe that’s okay, too.