Exposed

Last night I had a very vivid dream. I was in a bed in a hospital room, but not one of those nice private rooms like you see on the soap operas. It was a public room with two other beds in it. At first the two other beds were empty and I was just laying there, feeling serene and taken care of by the nurses buzzing around me.

But in the next moment, the empty beds were suddenly occupied by two very pregnant women in labor. They were huffing and puffing, doing all their lamaze breathing and whatnot and all of a sudden the nurses who had just been paying all of their attention to me started paying all their attention to them instead.

I was horrified and promptly curled myself into a fetal position on the bed, closed my eyes and covered my ears. One of the nurses came to me and asked What's wrong? Are you in pain? and I said No, I'm fine, please don't worry about me.

I was so grateful when she told me that she was going to move me to another room. Just follow me, this room is much quieter she said. So, I followed her down the hallway, so relieved at having escaped the terrible labor filled room that I didn't notice that my hospital gown was still open and billowing out behind me, exposing my entire backside to everyone.

I tried to fold the gown around me so that it covered me up in the back, but no matter how I rearranged it, I exposed some intimate part of my body for everyone to see. A thigh, a breast, my crotch. The gown just wasn't big enough and it had too many holes in it.

The hallway was crowded, and they all saw, and none of them said anything. They just stared and stared until they couldn't see me anymore.

I woke up feeling those eyes staring at me. It was unnerving and it took me an hour to get back to sleep. I think those two women were giving birth to my two embryos instead of me. And I think I am definitely having issues with the fact that so many people in my life know that I am going through this.

I thought telling them would be helpful. I thought it would be nice to get things off my chest and not keep everything bottled up like I usually do. But instead of whatever pearls of encouragement I had hoped to get from these people, instead they stutter and stumble over their words. They don't know what to say, and I can't blame them because I don't know what to say either. So they just stare at me, and I am left feeling totally exposed.