damage control

V: I should have quit last week, I feel like I'm just dropping the ball at every turn and I'm so overwhelmed.
P: Well, you have one more week left.
V: *obvious despair and anguish*
P: I mean you have another whole week to get everything back on track, and feel good about leaving. Right? And then you're done and after that all you have to think about is the baby.

Somehow when he says "one more week" it sounds way more optimistic and hope-filled than when I say it.

confused

Yesterday was great, last night was less than great, and today I just want to curl up in a ball and cry. WTF?

twenty-seven

Day 27 - your worst habit since your child's death

I really don't think any of my habits could be called bad. But perhaps the one that makes me feel the worst, that I never used to do before, is when I calculate how old my babies would be, and then compare them to the children that I see out and about. I think about what my kids would look like, how they would smell, what milestones they would be achieving. I think about what it would be like, if I had someone to be strong for, to stand up for. Someone to teach how to be human. Someone to pass on my delights to, and to discover what their own delights are in return. I think about how if they were here, even if I had to work, and I missed them desperately while I was there, at least at the end of the day I would get to come home to them again.

I spot one particular child in a crowd, and I remember, methodically, everything I'm missing.

Havana

I dreamed I was packing -- getting ready to move, as I often do -- and I was very depressed. I was depressed because a few months earlier, I'd had another baby that died.

So I'm packing, alone, and I lift up a box and come across these two photos, lying on the floor. One is of my baby, being born, from my own perspective. The other is of the same baby, and me; a self-portrait. And I start to cry, remembering what happened that day.

I remember I was all alone when my baby was born, in the same shabby house where I am in the dream. I delivered him myself. But he was dead, and there was no one else around, and so I took these two photos to remember him by, to prove to myself and everyone else that he was really here, that I wasn't crazy or faking it.

But the picture of us together is bizarre, and makes me feel very strange. I realize, as I'm looking at it, that the baby has a huge smile on his face; he is lying on my chest, wrapped in a blanket, grinning away. His tiny face is so sweet and vibrant, right there next to mine; and yet I look crushed and bedraggled and desperately sad. And I slowly realize how weird this is, how he's so happy and I'm so sad. And I begin to feel a little frightened.

Then a friend of mine walks in and sees me crying, and asks me what's wrong, so I show her the photos. She says, "Oh. Oh, honey; your baby didn't die. We came, and we tried to tell you, but you were so upset. You didn't understand. But she's fine, I promise. She's here, and she's beautiful, and her name is Havana."

And that just floors me, for so many reasons, and I sit and gape at my friend, and all I can think is, "WHAT?!" because I believed my baby was dead, and also that it was a boy, and how could I be so very wrong, and what else was I wrong about, and what might I have forgotten -- and why on earth was my daughter named after a city in Cuba?! And where was she anyway, because I needed to see her immediately, this miracle baby who'd been alive all along.

pseudocyesis

I suspect my body of a hysterical pregnancy. My belly is all poochy, I am super sensitive to smells, hungry all the time, need to use the bathroom constantly. I can't suck in my belly, even when I try. It. won't. suck. in. And last week I felt a tiny fluttering, deep inside, which reduced me immediately to a puddle of tears.

The last few days it's only gotten worse, and today at the grocery store, my cashier glanced meaningfully at my belly several times, and then insisted on helping me with my bags, because she thought I was pregnant. Oh, god. I didn't have the heart to tell her she was wrong. (I guess my cute little dress wasn't as slimming as I'd originally thought...)

My counselor doesn't like the word hysterical. She said I'm "half-pregnant," which makes me laugh. It's so hard, because I could enjoy these symptoms if their cause were not so heart-breaking. I think my body just wants to relive those experiences, the ones I wasn't fully present for the first time around. The ones it never got to complete. I would love to be pregnant right now. Love. Love to accept help gladly from a grocery store cashier who thought I looked tired and needed a hand -- in my condition. In my condition! I do need a hand, really, in my condition. The crazy feels a little out of control.


On a partially related note, here is a song I am really feeling right now.

PS: I think the writing prompts are working.

loose

I can feel the edges of my sanity fluttering loose like a tent flap in the wind, and while I think I should probably peg them back down, and soon, there is a part of me that says, Let fly! Go ahead and cause the world a bit of discomfort, for once. Really, what is there left to lose?

the frightful symmetry of numbers

Ailis Evelyn, today it has been 3 years, 3 months, 3 weeks, and 3 days since we said goodbye. Noah Griffin, it has been 1 year, 1 month, and 1 week since we said goodbye. It is my hope, however, that even though time is passing here, for you everything has been suspended, and when my turn comes to finally leave this life, we will walk into heaven together, in the space between one breath and another, as if we were never parted at all...

I don't know why I'm so sensitive to patterns and numbers. I don't know why on some days, the dead are simply dead, and life goes on, but on others... On others I look at the time ticking by or the calendar's date and I feel like I'm breathing glass, because this is all wrong; it is all so very wrong, the way I have so much free time during the week, and all my clothes are neat and unstained, and there are no crayon marks on the wall, no toys spread on the floor. All my laundry is just mine, and I swear out loud (especially when I'm tired), and if I want to eat ice cream for dinner I can. And this is all wrong, because I'm a mother of two, and that's not at all how things would be if my kids were here.

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I feel like a bad mom sometimes, when I am able to focus on a project for hours at a time. When I say yes to extra shifts at work. I feel like I'm not paying enough attention to them. In the back of my mind, I feel guilty. But they're not here, to pay attention to. They're not here to change or grow, to be taught new things or marveled over. They don't need me anymore. And therein lies the problem, doesn't it?

I'm 26 years old. I have two beautiful children; they're just not here right now. They're never going to be here, so you needn't wait around to meet them. I'm not actually crazy, I swear! Or maybe I am, a little; just not dangerously so.

I can tell you one thing: This is not at all how I imagined my life would be.

scarce

I wore my elephant necklace today. A woman said she liked it, and I got to tell her that it was in memory of my daughter. It is so great to say those words out loud: my daughter.

Because I have a daughter, you know.



I write about her, and I think about her all the time; but nobody wants to talk about her with me. I've probably only said her name out loud a handful of times. If she was still here, I'd have said it a million times by now. Ailis! Ailis, Ailis, Ailis, Ailis, Ailis. Lissie-doll. Baby A. Lissie-my-Lissie. Li Li.

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I don't get to hold her, or brush her hair, or take her picture. I don't get to dance with her in the living room or sing with her in the car. I don't get to read her favorite books aloud, or watch her play.

I just wear this necklace with an elephant on it, a necklace I bought for myself, and hope that someone asks me why.

the crazy

I think the things we do, we do to keep ourselves sane. Even though we feel crazy when we do them, they are really keeping the crazy at bay. Because there is a way that things are supposed to go.

Pregnancy, for instance, is supposed to lead to a baby; a real, warm, breathing baby in your arms. And a baby is supposed to become a child and then a teenager and then an adult with kids of his or her own. That is what is supposed to happen, and we know this. All of us know this. All of this unfolds behind our eyes in a flash the moment we see that double line appear. So when it doesn't happen, we sense that something absolutely fundemental in the universe has been tampered with, which should not, in fact, be possible -- and that is scary as all hell.

So when you dissociate, or go numb, or pretend things are different; when you cry for three or five or eleven days straight; when you write letters or speak aloud to someone who is not there; when you attempt to explain, again, the immense, contradictory emotions that you feel to a friend who doesn't understand; when you buy baby clothes or knit blankies for a baby who isn't a baby anymore or, conversely, who will remain a baby forever -- don't feel bad. Don't feel ashamed. Don't think you're crazy. You are keeping the crazy at bay. Just imagine a person who didn't seem to care at all about the awful events that had befallen them. That person would be insane. And would you not be much more afraid of that person, than of the person who finds a way to get through?

You are not scary. You are not wrong. You. Are. Not. Crazy. You are sad. And you are allowed to be sad.


Peace and love to you all, from the bottom of my heart.
I need these words as much as anyone. --vk