Forgive Me, Anika

Yesterday at the grocery store, I'm minding my own business, and a voice next to me says, "You don't have children, do you?" My first thought was that I must look pregnant, but I know I'm not. And I don't know where that thought came from because I know I don't look pregnant anymore. Then I realized I needed to answer this woman's question. I thought that saying "Yes," may lead to other questions, so I said, "No." Turns out this woman just needed help buying diapers for someone else's kid and had no clue what she was doing. I told her I know a little about diapers, and helped her out.

I cried the whole way home - I denied my daughter's existence. Something I said I'd never do.

When I'm in a group of women I've just met, and they're talking about pregnancy and babies, I just don't say anything. When I was talking to the man painting our apartment and he assumed I had no children, I was silent. Some may say this is denial by omission, but I believe it's just keeping an uncomfortable subject to myself. I knew the day would come when someone would ask Andrew and I if we had children, but I had assumed it would be at a dinner party (or something along those lines) and we would have been talking with them already. In my mind, it certainly never came from some random woman at a grocery store who I hadn't even seen standing there.

I was almost mad at this woman - why couldn't she just have asked if I knew anything about diapers. That's all she wanted to know, after all. Lots of people know about diapers without having any of their own kids. Doesn't she know that for some people, kids are an emotional subject? What an idiot.

But I can't be mad at her. She didn't have much tact, but she had no idea that babies are a tough subject for me, let alone that I had already spent half the day crying about my daughter's death. To her, I was just some random woman at a grocery store.

I apologized to Anika in my head. I asked for her forgiveness. I know she forgives me, that she understands, but I still feel terrible.