by Band Back Together | Sep 6, 2010 | Anxiety, Baby Loss, Child Loss, Coping With Baby Loss, Coping With Losing A Child, Fear, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Jealousy, Loneliness, Loss |
I’m turning into a hermit. Not in the traditional sense, exactly. I leave my house almost every day. But I hate leaving. When I leave, I can’t wait to get back. I can’t wait to put on the same clothes I’ve worn for twelve weeks, even though they stink and have stains on them. I long to lay on my couch and stare blankly at the TV.
I’m not finding comfort in anything anymore. Flipping around on the internet, my surefire way to escape, now makes me tired. I have thousands of unopened emails, dozens of unread text messages. I want to look at them but I just don’t have the stamina.
The only things I seem to have energy for? Envy and crying.
When I was on bed rest with Madeline, the only time I was allowed to leave my house was to go to the doctor. I remember sitting in my OB’s office, seeing happy pregnant ladies with their growing bellies, and being overcome with jealousy. Or when Maddie was in the NICU, I would constantly see happy parents going home with their new babies, and my body would become hot with anger.
This is so much worse.
Everything sets me off now. Seeing a child walking down the street with a parent, or a man buying diapers, or a plastic toy in the grass turns me into an ugly, hateful shell of my former self. I say that I wouldn’t wish this on anyone, but that’s not entirely true. If it meant I could have my little girl back? If a magical genie said, “OK, pick another family and they’ll lose their child instead,” there isn’t a single person in the world that would be safe. Even the people I know.
I felt guilty about this at first, but I realized that everyone who knows me or reads this would feel the same way. And everyone who knows me or reads this has already had a similar thought. “Man, that sucks, but better them than us.” Who WOULDN’T think that way? I know that, before Maddie passed, when I heard about a family that lost a child I would be so relieved it wasn’t MY baby that was gone. It wasn’t MY family whose worst nightmare came true.
So I’m slowly becoming a hermit, because I’m afraid soon I won’t be able to keep it in. So that the next person that says something well-intentioned won’t get me screaming in their face. So that the next person who rightfully complains online about their cranky child won’t get an expletive-filled email or comment. So that the innocent man buying diapers won’t have to see me glaring at him with my swollen blood-shot eyes.
Am I protecting others, or myself? I don’t really know.
by Band Back Together | Aug 15, 2010 | Baby Loss, Child Loss, Coping With Baby Loss, Coping With Losing A Child, Loss, Marriage Problems, Pregnancy, Sadness |
again. my spirit, that is.
its one of those days where i have to consciously push against the gravitational pull of grief.
it has been a week since T left. it has been almost ten months since i was pregnant with my babies
by accident i typed ‘ten weeks,’ realized that it has been so much longer than that and just crumbled.
where did all the time go?
i have never been prepared to not realize my goals or get where i want to be in life. i am intelligent and capable. i am kind and helpful. i go over and above in almost every exchange and interaction.
but none of that means anything, and failure could be here to stay.
i feel very alone, and not because T isn’t here, i have felt this way even while in his arms.
i’m not the person i thought i would grow up to be and i’m not sure how to live as the substitution
by Band Back Together | May 3, 2010 | Baby Loss, Coping With Baby Loss, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss, Sadness, Stillbirth |
i don’t cry anymore.
no, that’s not quite right. i don’t let the things that used to make me cry, cry anymore. i don’t lose tears over hallmark commercials, touching moments in sitcoms, the trials and tribulations of people and their misfortunes du jour. sure, i feel for them. this life is not an easy one.
this LIFE, if you are lucky enough to be living it, is not easy at all. but i can’t feel for everyone anymore. i hurt for the helpless, for the children and the animals, for the voiceless, the homeless, the man i saw last week with sweatpants torn and fashioned into shoes. i ache for them and sometimes, i will cry for them.
but on the whole, i am selfish with my tears. my tears are for my girls. my beautiful perfect sweet little girls. my tears are for me and T and our families who waited forever for those gifts, and were rewarded by their too-soon arrival. maybe it’s because i never knew pain like this even filled our world, my old world of choking up at a sweet greeting card advertisement, of welling eyes at a sentimental tv moment. now as i sit and watch or listen to a sad story, i am sympathetic, i wish things were different, but i don’t cry.
it’s true that i didn’t have any idea what horror a life could hold. not a sliver of an idea of the opaque screen which separates the mundane from utter torment; ignorant that the passage would be so easily and unwillingly breached- that i would be forcefully thrown into the revelation of the world’s true sorrows, previously and so gratefully unbeheld. that my family would come rocketing in after me, each of us reeling and wounded.
i was naive, i was innocent and happy. bits and pieces of these affects remain. but i will never be that girl again, the one who cries for everyone, even as i understand that most do not know what i wish they will never know. what the ones of us who live and have become would do anything to forget.
i cry for families who have lost their children, i cry for the sick, for the old and unloved. but mainly i cry for them, and for their mother. selfish, hot tears for the lost innocence of not only the three of us, but too many more that i love and care for. we lost so much more than our babies that day. we lost our wide eyed view of the world, our trust in what should be. the belief that life is fair.
by Band Back Together | Apr 10, 2010 | Baby Loss, Child Loss, Coping With Baby Loss, Coping With Losing A Child, Grief, Help For Grief And Grieving, Loss |
wet, hot, sobs. these are the tears i cry when i’m alone. unrestrained wails and moans for my babies.
but when i’m around others i clench up, hold my tears in. my eyes and my throat burn with restraint. my heart screams louder than my voice could ever take me. when does it end?
never, friends. this is my life. i must live forever knowing that those beautiful girls i planned and hoped and lived and labored for were never meant to dwell in my arms or my home. the pain is still becoming real, and i hurt so much more that i ever knew i could.
my heart their crib, my memories their own. this is all they have, all they were. they are at once the light of my world and the heavy weight i carry. they are my everything but if i did not write their story, they would be nothing to you or to the world. me and T’s little sad story, our beloved secret, our greatest pain and joy and grace.
this conflict of love, this hostile daydream of wonder and ruin has me at a loss. where am i and where in the world do i go from here? i didn’t ever think i would live in a world where babies die, freshly born, pink and lovely, die. born of me but not mine to keep.
by Band Back Together | Feb 9, 2008 | Addiction, Alcohol Addiction, Anger, Cirrhosis, Coping With Losing A Friend, Grief, Loss, Sadness |
One of my oldest friends died last night.
She died and I am angry.
I want to kick the dog. I want to scream at the baby. I want to pull out my hair and punch holes in the walls. I want to ram my car into something, anything. I want to choke the birds who are singing and tell the Universe to fuck off because how dare it be a sunny and beautiful day today. How dare the world keep spinning now that two little boys are to grow up without a mother. I have this untapped chasm of rage that I didn’t know I could possibly feel.
I’ve never felt so angry in my entire life.
My oldest friend died last night.
She was 26.
