Music speaks to me. It always has. I have always found solace and comfort in the words that other people write. I find a sense of peace in knowing that everyone has these deep emotions that they can't express with out the shield of music. I used to be a poet. I used to write song lyrics. I didn't share them with many. I have thousands. Thousands of pages of unheard words brought forth by a broken heart, a new love, feelings of insanity. I've always needed to get them out. I talk a lot. I talk too much. I talk in circles, I repeat myself and worse of all I have a terrible memory...so the stories change, get tangled and take on a life of their own, sometimes with a form that is far from the original. I loath this about myself, and am not in denial about it. But I have always been comforted by the fact that I can express how I feel through symbolism and story telling, even if at times it doesn't make sense or sounds corny. It is what it is and sometimes people express themselves in odd form. I mean, look at Picaso. Sorry but no. He was not a good painter. BUT, he was good at expressing himself and a lot of people were provoked by his work, that made him great! We are all artists in our own ways. Through words, through tangible media, through food, through decorating...and the list goes on. I don't compose poetry or song lyrics anymore. In fact, the last poem I wrote was for Logan. It's buried somewhere in this blog. I'm not sure when I stopped writing. I think it has been in the last 5 years or so, when life took on a comfortable and protected feeling. I married my long time love, we had a nice home, cars, toys...everything I could want or need (short of a child). Eventually I had a daughter. Things were perfect. How many poems can one write that are coated in bubble gum? The urge to write faded until I realized that I don't need to write anymore. I don't have these awful emotions to get out anymore. Life was just the way I wanted it and I couldn't have asked for anything more. Then Logan died. And suddenly I found myself so far over that chasm that I couldn't form a coherent thought. I didn't have the urge to make rhymes or even sublime thoughts. I just sat and stared. Any desire to produce anything was gone. Except the urge to write in this blog. I think this blog saved me. I still needed to talk, to get it out, but somehow the thoughts and heartache I had for my son seemed so much more substantial and important than any I'd had before. I couldn't degrade his memory with a hokey poem that no one would read. I wanted to be heard this time. I wanted people to know my devastation. I wanted people to know that my heart was irrevocably broken. And anyone who reads this blog, they know. My husband knows. But most importantly, I know. And in the end that's the only thing that really mattered anyhow. Admitting that my heart was broken. That this tiny little soul, with a blink of an eye life span, took a huge chunk of my heart with him when he went.
I don't know what it is about certain days. Why some days, even now a year later, I feel trapped, lethargic and inconsolable. Why I wake up and have him on my mind in that instance, and why it hangs over me like a storm cloud all day, pressing me down. Maybe its because its Thursday and my dd is at Grandma's. Thursday's are quiet and leave a lot of room for shadows to creep in. It usually starts with a song (this is where I go back to the whole music thing from earlier). I'm driving the Muffin to Grandma's and some song comes on the radio, presses me down. I drop her off, I drive home, thoughts churning, more music playing, more pressing down. It is easy for me to find Logan in almost anything. Someones words, a little blond haired boy, a break-up song, a monkey, food... I hate to say he haunts me, because that just makes it seem ugly and scary. I think its my mind that haunts me. My mind always whispering terrible thoughts into my proverbial ear. Thoughts I have no business allowing to stake claim and plant them selves deep in my subconscious, letting their roots dig deep and torturing me. I'm an avoider. I hate tense situations, drama and confrontation. I'd rather ignore it. Pretend it didn't happen. But I can't avoid what happened to me. I can't avoid that there was this little life churning away in side of me for six months with out a lick of problems and then BAM!! Dead. Down Syndrome is detectable, and we had no warning. I don't know, maybe its better that way. Maybe in my ignorance I would have wished him dead rather than to have a crippled child coming in and "messing up" my perfect little bubble gum world. Wishing, because I wouldn't have had a clue about the pain of loosing a baby. Because maybe a lot of people don't really think of a fetus as a person until they're here. I mean, I always thought a baby was a baby from conception...but it wasn't a person. It didn't have a life, or a personality or face. It was an enigma. I had trouble with that with my first pregnancy with my daughter. I couldn't connect. It never felt real. After her birth I was overcome with emotion and a love I couldn't fathom before. The months following her birth I was in awe of how I just loved her with every fiber of my being and that nothing else mattered. But while I was pregnant, I just didn't get it. When I got pregnant with Logan I was still nursing a 6 month old. I was exhausted. I was sick. I didn't have any energy to be concerned with anything other than the current moment and situation. I feel like I missed a lot with Logan during those six months. I took for granted that I'd have all the time in the world to get to know him and right now my very young daughter was my main focus. Oh the things I would change if given the opportunity.
These are just too many thoughts for a Thursday of little consequence.
So the song that sent me spiraling today was "Nothing Compares to You". You remember that song don't you? Late 80's early 90's? Sinead O'Conner in black with that stark white bald head and the single tear on her cheek. I loved the song then and found out years later that Prince actually wrote that song, and recorded it himself. But this part:
"It's been so lonely without you here. Like a bird without a song. Nothing can stop these lonely tears from falling. Tell me baby where did I go wrong?"
That was the one that got my head spinning like the chic in Poltergeist. Because that paragraph brought with it a million dreaded thoughts that I couldn't shake. It is lonely here. Even with my dh and the Muffin, its lonely. There is a missing life. There is a missing face, a missing voice, a missing personality that I wanted so badly to get to know. Would he have been like his sister, or a force unto himself that I can only guess at? And it leaves an eerie feeling in its wake. Silence, even in the midst of the noise and chaos that is my two year old, there is an eerie silence that should have been filled with his voice, his chaos and noise. And I can't help but to go back to the same old question, what did I do wrong? What did I do that would warrant not being able to mother Logan outside of the womb? Was I going to fail at it? Was having 2 kids so young and close together going to cause me to be a bad mother, so he was spared? And I feel like if I had that answer, even if it was one I didn't want to hear or know, would I be better able to accept this? The pathetic part is that I just assumed that by the time the year mark passed that I would have this greater knowledge. That I would have begun to accept that I have a dead child. Don't get me wrong, time has controlled the bleeding. I don't "lay here on the couch with my heart hanging out" (Garth Brooks) anymore. But its still very tender, and sometimes it still bleeds. I know I'm an impatient person. I expect fast results, and I want them now. And you can't rush grief. And if you ask around, these parents who went before us...years ago, when they're being honest and they don't think anyone is looking...it still hurts for them too. And I think that scares me. To know that I will always feel this ache. And in a way it comforts me and brings me some element of peace to know that this ache, this ache means that I had a little boy and my time with him was not enough.
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