Counting Down, God and the Holidays

I feel like I'm counting down.

38 days...

Thirty-eight more days and it will be a whole blasted year. 365 days. Gone. Things aren't that different, not really. Christmas is still coming. Its still winter. I still get up every morning and go about my day. Except now I think about the box of ashes still sitting on the top of my armoire where I put them so many months ago, trying to forget about them. That didn't work. I think about how different life would've been. I think about what I'm missing. I think about the life that he should have been living. I'm not much different to look at I suppose. I'm ten pounds heavier, my eyes are perhaps a little clouded, distant, sad. You wouldn't know it, unless I told you. You wouldn't know that there is love for two children in my heart. You wouldn't know there are two realities to my life. The one everyone sees, and the one that has Logan in it.

I got my hair done today. I've just really been needing a change, some improvement, something different. For the love of my husband (and the unrealistic fear of him not wanting me anymore) I didn't hack my hair off. But I changed it. I've always done that. Something bad happens in my life that I can't control and I hack off all of my hair. Like its the one thing I can control, so I do. Seems insignificant and pathetic, but pain and confusion and helplessness manifests itself in weird ways. The stylist ask me about my daughter. I've stopped telling most strangers about Logan. I never thought I would, but I have. Early on I took pleasure in seeing the shock and horror. Like maybe they felt a fraction of what I did. And early on I was so scared of loosing his memory, his proof of existence that I wanted to voice him constantly. I wanted to scream "Hey!! There was a child here!! He was real!" But mostly now days I feel like its a cheap way of whoring him around. Like he is too special to me to put out on display. He is mine. My private memory. No one deserves to see my love for him. No one deserves to know him. He was mine, mine alone. And no one could love him like I do. Obviously my husband does, but random people do not get that privilege these days.

I keep thinking about that ornament. I want to go buy it, but I keep putting it off. Part of me thinks I need to let go. Ornaments and trees and knick nacks are not going to keep him here. Part of me is afraid that I'll forget about the ornament and next year I'll be sitting around decorating my tree, feeling jolly about the holiday...and BAM! I'll find that one. And I'll remember it all over again. Humph. Like I'll ever forget this. Like I'll ever forget him. And then part of me wonders, will it just make me sad every year to look at it? Like I won't be sad enough, and this will just be more salt. But part of me thinks Logan deserves a spot on my tree just as much as Aubrey. And that ornament just fits. It says "Rest in Heavenly Peace" and not "Baby's first Christmas" because, after all, it is not and I'm hoping he is. Its astounding the amount of emotions that a dumb little piece of plastic can bring forth.

Tonight I am sad, and I am not sleepy. A bad bedtime combo around here. My dh starts his 16 day vacation tomorrow. And we're making room in the basement for a pool table. And we're turning what was supposed to have been Logan's room into a shipping center for my eBay crap. And I desperately wanted change, and yet it makes me sick to my stomach to go through with it. Like if I left it a half torn up guest room, and never changed it into anything. Not a little boys nursery with little blue and green fishies, not a shipping center...than maybe it'll be like nothing happened. "There never was a baby, see!! Its just a guest room." Damn that room that sucks the wind out of me every time I walk through its wretched door. Tonight I just want to lock the door and pretend that room was never even there. That stupid room that I stood in so many times and considered how I would set it up. That I would put the crib in the far corner like I did in Aubrey's room. That the built in shelves would have nice little baskets stuffed full of all of the baby needs. Green walls, blue curtains...little comical fishies floating across the far wall. I hate that room. I should paint the walls black.

I've never seen the time 10:07 on a clock since that day. Maybe its the single ounce of kindness God is tossing down at me, maybe its my subconscious being fearful around that time every day, so I just don't look. Who knows? My mom would say its God. He loves me. He doesn't want me to be sad. Someone posted on a friends wall on Facebook today (on an unrelated topic) "Its like praying for God to take away someone’s hurt when maybe its the hurt that will bring them closer to him." Why do people even begin to think they understand God? Why do people feel like they have the right to interpret God. Why do people assume they know what God wants, feels, thinks? I don't get it. And I hate it. I hate that people preach to me, at me, about how God feels about me, what he has in store for me. To be honest, when people around me even mention the name God, it makes me recoil. It makes me shut my ears. It makes me want to punch them in the face. Maybe its not about God at all. Maybe nothing is. Maybe its just the way it goes sometimes and it sucks and it hurts and its ugly and it is what it is. Maybe its not part of God's plan. Maybe God didn't have a thing to do with it. As a protestant I grew up believing that God's hand is in everything. My husband, as a Catholic, grew up believing that God's hand is in the big stuff, but not the day to day menial stuff. That used to blow my mind. Why would he plant a garden and then not tend it? Now I just think that people try too hard to find God in everything and that maybe he created us, and created life, and let us have our way with it. I mean, that's free will and all. If my having created a baby was anything, it was a result of sex. A consequence. There's an egg, the sperm finds it, bam! There's a baby. Mine didn't work. Throw it out, try again later. Sigh. But the thing is, I don't even buy it. Only God can breathe life into existence. How many women try and try and try for a pregnancy only to get nothing? God chooses when life happens and when it does not. An he CHOSE to create life using an egg that he KNEW wasn't suitable. And he did it anyway. That's what I can't get my head around. I know why Logan died. I accept it. Not compatible with life. Fine. Got it. He wasn't compatible because the egg didn't split right. Fine. Got it. But why life that month? Why not the month before? Why then? A year later and I still can't get my head around it. And I hate that people say that God uses all things for good. All things?? How is this good? Because I wrote a blog that might have helped someone else cope? No offense but I could give a crap. I mean, I'm sorry for your pain, but I wouldn't have volunteered for this or anything. Given a choice, you'd have lost. How can you take a rape, or child molestation and make it into something good? How can you take these horrible sick cases of these grown men raping and torturing and mutilating a young child and make it good?? HOW?? Where is the good in any of that?? And why? What's the point? Why give me something that brings me an unbearable sadness so that he can make something good out of it? Why couldn't me make something good out of nothing? He's God after all. My questions go unanswered. And you know why? Because NO ONE has these answers. I get responses like "well we can't understand God" or whatever. But that's the lame answer you get when people don't want to look the horrible stuff in the face and call it what it is. It sucks. Its ugly and there is no answer. The human interpretation of God is not the answer, not to this. Sure, he might help me to learn to cope, learn to heal, learn to move on...but it will always still be there. The big black gaping hole that contains the minuscule memories of my sons very short life. He can't take that away. Or at least he won't. It makes me miss my Gramma. She always seemed to have the right kind of answers when it came to God, or anything. She is in a nursing home, 200 miles away, and incoherent. Alzheimer's. Explain that one to me too while you're at it. On second thought, no, don't. I'm tired of explanations. I'm tired of ignorant people yammering at me about their insignificant knowledge about God.

I don't realize how angry with God I am until I start typing these posts. And I'm not trying to start some theological debate, and I don't want anyone witnessing to me, I get enough of that already. I grew up Christian. I already know. Doesn't change what I feel. Doesn't change the facts.

I miss the desire to celebrate. Birthdays and holidays come and go and I find that for the most part I just drift through them and try to get past them. I yearn for that old care free innocence of celebration. Not that I don't think I deserve to celebrate. Not that I don't think I deserve happiness, smiles and good times. I just don't care about them anymore. It doesn't feel right. Like there's something just a little bit off. Like when there's a dinner after a funeral and everyone's hanging out and chatting like nothing happened. Like its just some big reunion, and that they’re not all there because someone died. That always felt weird to me. Someone died. "HEY! I know, let's go eat!" Weird. Christmas Eve marks 11 months. Its like a mile marker in a marathon. One mile to go. Seems so dramatic doesn't it? And I know it will be like every other milestone I've encountered thus far. The hype and build up to the day is far worse than the day itself. I've had several weeks of numbness and being able to hide and this week I feel like its coming front and center again.

I just get so bummed out. Life isn't supposed to have been like this! I should have the house decorated to the nines. I should have pictures of my two kids with Santa. I should be shopping for a little boy. We should be taking great home movies and laughing and building nice memories. But we're not. I don't want to decorate. I don't want to celebrate. I don't want to do anything. I don't want to remember. I don't want to think about what isn't happening, what's missing, what went wrong, what life has become or hasn't. And for some reason the holidays are really kicking my butt about it all. I hate it. I want it to go away. I want to feel the sun on my face again.