Not pregnant.

It sounds so harsh, cold, direct, without feeling.

Can’t the makers of pregnancy tests come up with better language—something less clinical? Instead of a plus or minus sign or one pink line or two, there should be a happy face or sad face, like an emoji, a symbol that better captures the mood of the occasion. Instead, we’re given: pregnant or not pregnant.

I remember a friend telling me last year how trying to get pregnant is like a roller coaster. Now I get it.

I was so sure I was pregnant this time. I had the classic symptoms, all of which mimicked the same symptoms I had the first time I was pregnant. It’s amazing how the body can trick the mind, the heart.

I had everything planned out. I’d announce the results to my husband on his birthday. What a gift. I’d share the news with my parents at Thanksgiving, maybe at the dinner table after my dad says grace and we’re all still holding hands.

Monday morning, as I was taking the pregnancy test out of its pink foil wrapper, my heart was pounding. It was 4:30 a.m. I could not sleep. When I saw a streak of red blood on the toilet paper, my heart sank. I had already set the timer on my iPhone. Three minutes. I brushed my teeth while standing over the test, sitting on the edge of the bathtub, and wishing that the pink double lines would appear in the window. Within seconds, a single line popped up. First Response wasted no time delivering the news to me. False alarm.

I slipped the test back in its wrapper and shoved it in the garbage under last night’s dinner scraps and half-torn junk mail. No tears came. I was just angry. Suddenly, I felt heavy. Before this morning, I felt lighter.

Life felt different the last few days as I carried around this hope, trying to stay positive. Andrew and I were both hopeful and certain. We laughed more. Something good awaited us.

The night before I was ironing clothes in our living room while Andrew was watching a marathon of “The Empire Strikes Back.” What if everything starts falling into place? I asked him. Smiling, he glanced over at me. I saw hope and excitement in his face.

I thought this was our something good.

That Monday morning I grabbed my notebook and laid down on the couch with my favorite gray blanket, soft like a lamb’s ear. In that moment, I just needed comfort. The only sound was our wooden chimes on the balcony rhythmically clinking together. I laid on the couch, emptying my mind into my notebook. It was 5:20 a.m. and still dark outside. The street light cast its amber glow on the parking lot, and I sat there contemplating my future, trying to make sense of it all, hoping I wasn’t going to break today.

I decided to go for a run. The moment my feet hit the sidewalk tears streamed down my face as I ran into the darkness and the quiet of the early morning. I didn’t feel like I was running to anything; instead, I was running away.

It takes an ocean not to break. – The National

Instead of a single line, or minus, or “not pregnant” pregnancy tests should say something like “I’m sorry” or “It’ll be OK.” And for those who don’t want to get pregnant, they can buy a different line of pregnancy tests that says: “Congrats, you’re not pregnant!”

Even my dog Molly was convinced I was pregnant. She was very clingy this past week, snuggling next to me on the couch, which she hasn’t done in months. When I was pregnant the first time, she constantly laid her head in my lap. Then I read that animals sense when you’re pregnant, and they like to snuggle up to you because your body temperature rises. Looking back, maybe it was just the cooler temps that drew her back to snuggling on the couch with me.

Held on to hope like a noose, like a rope. – The Lumineers

I told Andrew the other night that I cannot take anymore disappointments this year. That if one more bad thing happens, it’s going to crush me. My heart won’t survive it. I wondered how I was going to get through the rest of the week. But then, your best friend writes a post that speaks directly to what you’ve been feeling; a coworker sits with you as you cry at your desk with tissues bawled up in your fist because you just can’t hold it in anymore; your husband brings home Chinese takeout, you hold hands at the table and then curl up on the couch together and watch “Say Anything,” holding onto each other tight; you make cupcakes for your husband’s birthday, share a delicious meal and watch him make a wish; over a four-hour brunch your best friend splits with you a warm cinnamon roll drizzled in caramel and you laugh and cry and lift each other up. Tuesday bleeds into Wednesday, into Thursday, into Friday and you got through it somehow. All of these things, Addison says, are carrying you to the healing.

In the last couple of weeks, I felt like I had finally made peace with our loss. I surrendered and accepted that this was where I was at. And I was honestly OK with it, whatever the future held.

Every single day last week, people kept telling me how beautiful I looked. Friends, colleagues, even complete strangers. I thought maybe I had pregnancy glow and people could see it. Now I realize what people saw in me was contentment.

I woke up today to cooler morning temperatures. I pulled back the curtains in our bedroom and let the light shine in. I walked throughout our house and threw open every window and breathed in fall. It’s a new week, a new month, a new season, and I’m coming home to peace.

One day you’ll awaken to discover your life is all you wanted and hoped it would be. … You’ll wake up and notice that your past is just as it needed to be. You’ll see where you are today is good. You’ll notice that you laugh a lot, cry a lot, smile a lot.

You’ll look at tomorrow with peace, faith, and hope—knowing that while you cannot control some of what life does, you have possibilities and powers in any circumstance life might bring. The struggle you have lived with for so many years, the struggle in your heart, has disappeared. 

— Melody Beattie, from “Journey to the Heart”