Another rough day

Today was another rough day. Another one. I'm not sure why I seem to have found my way back into the pit. Usually I can blame my hormones or something, but this is just good old fashioned, kick me in the gut, grief coming to pull me under yet again. I can't lie, these days seem to be less frequent, and I'm not sure why I always seem so surprised when I have a bad day, or in this case...a bad few days. I guess, just like the general population, I feel like it's been long enough (you know, the logical part of my brain) and I need to start to move on. But, every other part of me disagrees. So... Here I am, crying again today. My DH came home early today, and brought me a Slurpee, a back up pop that he knew I'd spike later in the evening, and a jar of peanut butter. I cried then too. I cried over a jar of Peanut Butter. Seems silly I guess. But really I just got overwhelmed. I don't feel lucky. I don't feel blessed. But I am, and I should. It's just hard. I have a great husband, and that jar of PB was just a nudge of a reminder. I mentioned the other day that I was out of PB. I hate being out of PB. It's a staple for me, I like it, it makes me happy, and I've been out for a couple of weeks. And at the 7-Eleven, he remembered, and he bought me a jar, and a Slurpee and a Sunkist for later. It's those stupid little things. I am lucky, I am blessed. But, sometimes I get so blinded by my sorrow for my son that I can not see the sunshine and rainbows in my life.

I've gotten to the point where I feel obsessed to move. I don't want to be here anymore. I don't just mean here, in my home, though I'll start there. I mean here! I want to go away. I want to find a new life, a new culture, a new everything. I want to start over, I want a second chance. I know that moving away and getting a new life won't change a stinkin' thing. I know that, in my logical brain. But the illogical side of me seems to be the one in charge nowadays. I don't want to be here. It makes me unhappy. It makes me sad. That room, it was meant for my little boy. This couch, this is the one I should be sitting on nursing my son while I watch my daughter tare up my house. These floors, these are the floors I should be fussing about the dog hair over, like I did before. Everything in this house reminds me that the plans and hopes and dreams I had are ridiculous now. Irrelevant. I want to leave, and I don't want to take anything with me (ok, maybe my scrapbook room and my laptop...let's not be crazy!). I want new furniture, I want new clothes, I want new decor, or different. I want different everything. I want to live in someone else's home, or someone else's life perhaps. It feels weird to be sad all of the time, to want to avoid my home...that should be my sanctuary. The one place I used to feel safe and comfortable against the crazies in the world. Not anymore. These days I try to think of reasons not to be home. Unfortunately their aren't many, which leaves me to sit here. Here! Here on this God forsaken couch, in this God forsaken living room, staring at the same God forsaken window where I used to sit and dream and wonder and plan. I don't want to be here anymore. Logan was a chapter of my life that God tore the pages from, I just want to start writing a new one. A sequel. But I want it from a new location, a clean perspective. It's not gonna happen, and I think that makes me feel hopeless, and a little more sad. I know I can't run. I know I can't hide. Trust me, I've tried. But grief seems to have taken the spot where my shadow once was. Attached to me, following me where ever I go. I just wonder if grief would look a little different under a different sky. If I would be so consumed with moving and starting over that maybe, perhaps, I wouldn't be so consumed with the truth. The reality that just won't go away. The reality that doesn't seem to want to give me a moments peace. I just don't understand. I've accepted that he's gone, that he's never coming back... So what is this that I am dealing with? They say the truth hurts. People run from it and hide from it and deny it all the time. So what is this then if I stand here and shout at the top of my lungs that I've accepted it? And yet, I am still being drug under by forces I do not understand, a sorrow that I still can not comprehend, and a grief that will not go away. What am I to do but stand here and let it beat me down until there is nothing left of me. I can not sit idly bye with buckets of tears and no hope for relief. Sure, time is the salve, but it won't be the healer this time. I don't want salve. I don't want to have this hurt camouflaged and covered up, just to resurface time and again. I want to be healed. But there will be no healing. Nore should there be I guess. My baby died. I'm not sure I ever want to "get over" that. I'm not sure I don't want it to hurt. I'm just back to saying what I've been saying for the past six months...I don't want a dead baby.

Days like THIS??

Momma said there'd be days like this??

No, my momma didn't tell me.

In fact, I was pretty clueless that there was this kind of pain in the world. Pain that doesn't really have a face. Pain that is so multifaceted that it inflicts itself upon me for seemingly random reasons. Why is it that some days (and this is one of those none hormonal ones, this is supposed to be my one week of peace) I feel the overwhelming urge to stuff Peanut M&M's into my mouth, just after I'd eaten lunch and am feeling rather full? And why is it that there are days that I become obsessed with getting something to drink (we're talking pop here!!) so much so that I actually get dressed (just enough not to have people stare) and go to 7-Eleven?? I've become a comfort eater/drinker. I gained 10lbs this month. TEN!! And get this, I'm trying to LOOSE weight. I don't recognize myself anymore, my brain. It's like I'm two different people. The person I was before Logan died, and the person I am now (who is trying to fake that she's still the old me!). I think I'm depressed. Seems obvious, almost expected. To be honest, I don't really know what real depression looks like. You know, when you're past the blues and you start looking for alternative methods to feel good. I cry for reasons I can't explain. I know, I know. I'm the mother to a dead baby. I should be depressed. I should cry. But at what point does it go too far? I'm too logical to kill myself. At least I'm with it that much. But getting out of bed (and it's getting later and later) is a chore like none other. And getting off the couch, well other that to do what is absolutely necessary (and frankly, the bare minimum), just seems pointless. I know I'm supposed to function, and I do what I have to, but I don't want to. I don't see the point anymore. And days when my daughter is not home...well...those days are pathetic. Makes me wonder who I'd be if she wasn't here to keep me from sliding all the way under. I have an appt. so don't freak out about me or anything. It's just one of those days. A day when I can't describe the hollow hole in my chest, days where I feel like I am literally suffocating, days when I am quite willing to curl up and drift away into oblivion. Days when the Vodka in my cabinet calls to me, and my brain argues not to go down that path. So I don't, most of the time.

I don't want to know anymore.

I don't want to know my son is dead. I don't want to know that I should have a two month old laying in that empty room. That the room should be painted blue and green with little fishies (like this one). I don't want to know that I should be stressed to the max and flipping out because I have two babies. I don't want to know this reality any more. I don't want to know this kind of heart break, this enormous amount of pain that I can't explain to anyone I know. I don't want to stand by helpless watching the pain drag my husband under. I don't want such a wonderful man to have to experience such sorrow, and to know he experiences it because he chose me. I don't want to wonder what to tell people. I don't want people remembering I was pregnant, and not being sure where the baby went. I don't want people to know. I don't want people to look at me like that. I don't want to look at myself like that. I don't want every intimate encounter I have with my husband to be laced with fear, and remorse, and longing, and memories, and sorrow, and hope for something we can't have back. I don't want to search for ways to fill the void. I don't want to long for a different life. I had/have a great life. I have an awesome husband that I don't deserve who is as perfect for me as I could have ever dreamed to hope for, and a daughter who is such sunshine and rainbows you'd wonder how anyone could find a teardrop with in a hundred miles of her. I don't want to hide my life away. I don't want to spend my free time in tears. I don't want this sorrow in my home anymore. I don't want to miss a child I never got to know. I can't mourn someone I never met. It's unreal. I don't know how to do it and it has worn me down and split my chest wide open. How am I to heal? How am I to get over, to move on from an enigma? I'm tired. I ache all over. I'm spent and I don't know how it is physically possible to still be crying after six horrible months.

I've thought about a shrink. I have, a lot. But I keep coming back to the same point...how can they help me if they can't fathom what I'm going through? How can they tell me if I'm normal, or appropriate if they haven't walked in these shoes? All they can do is pat me on the back, ask me stupid questions about how I feel when I already know how I feel, and then give me drugs. The drugs don't sound so bad. A pill? All I have to do is take a pill and then poof, the tears will go away? I'm in! But we all know it doesn't work that way, or we'd all have that pill!

My favorite movie is Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It's a horribly tragic movie, or at least that's how I see it. The point of the movie, if you don't know, is that this man is so heartbroken over a girl that he goes in to have his memory of her erased. And the entire time they are going through the process of erasing her memory, his mind keeps trying to hide her, because though the pain is unbearable for him, in reality...in his subconscious, he doesn't really want to forget her. That's how I feel. I would give my right arm to not know what I know. To not feel the sorrow that is engulfing my heart. But really, in all of my blinding pain, I still want Logan. I still want to know he was there, even if for a little while. And though I would have given anything at all to have my son be born and grow up (there's that qualifier for you), Down Syndrome and all, I'll take this pain of knowing he was here, that I had a son...even if he died.

I'm just tired of knowing that he died. Tired seems like a weird word to use. Weary. Spent. Exhausted. Drained. Empty. I feel all used up.

Is this what it's like when a spouse dies? A parent? Do I have to go through this again? Does Logan's death hurt this bad because he was a baby? Or because he was my child? It makes me fearful for the future. I am affraid that I can not survive out-living my daughter. I can not imagine that I could survive out-living my husband. It makes me hope that my death is first, and that makes me sad, and scares me. I am a coward. I have seen that kind of darkness and I am afraid to touch it again. I don't care how that makes me look.

OPB (other people's babies)

I did it. I held a newborn. Even more so, I held the little girl my cousin was pregnant with when I was pregnant with Logan (born a month later). She was 6 tiny weeks old. So tiny (8lbs 6oz), so precious, so perfect...so alive. Surprisingly I didn't react or "feel" anything weird. There was a small tinge for my sweet baby when I first took her into my arms. She was so small, I immediately thought about how small Logan was. I held her on three different occasions. I wanted to take her. I wanted to protect her from her idiot mother. I looked for her all afternoon at the wedding, stealing glances every chance I got. Like I craved seeing her. I did it though, no tears, no freak out, no kidnapping. The last time I held her it occurred to me that her and Logan would have been so close in age, that I should have been there holding my two month old...that threw my heart into a tailspin, and it was also the last time I held her. But I think I did ok. I think I did ok because she was a girl...a boy might have been a very different story. It made my heart ache for him though. Holding that tiny little bundle of warmth and innocence in my arms. Watching how my daughter reacted to this tiny baby that was stealing her mother's attention away from her. I also had the very distinct feeling that everyone was watching, waiting... I felt compelled to hold her. I debated, but then I reached out for her and the moment she was in my arms (well, the moment after the initial twinge) I relaxed. I know I surprised my DH and a few others. I always feel like the crazy lady everyone is keeping a leery eye on.

I also watched TNT's HawthoRNe today (on TiVO) episode 3 or 4 I think. A homeless mother had her newborn son taken away and placed into foster care with out her knowing it, and she screamed "I didn't get to say goodbye!!" and collapsed into a heap of tears...and so did I. Stuff like that takes my breath away everytime. I didn't get to say goodbye either.

6 months!

Here it is! 6 months that my sweet boy has been gone. Dead as long as he was alive. It's morning, I'm OK so far. I was up for a few hours before it hit me. I guess that's good, right? Maybe it helps that I'm out of town. Maybe it helps to have the distraction of family and the wedding. Maybe I needed to be distracted so that I wouldn't sit at home and obsess about it. Man! Where does time go? Life kept going on. It doesn't seem fair, and it doesn't seem plausible. It should have stopped the day Logan died. My heart did, so why didn't my life? "They " say that time heals all wounds.
It's late night now. Bedtime blogging. Today came and went and I was thankful for the distractions. David and I didn't talk much about it. But he was mentioned. I wore his tiny tag today and his missing piece bracelet. It always helps me feel closer to him to wear those, like I'm taking him along. I seem to be ok right now, unless I dwell on it. So I try not to do that. But when I do stop to think about it, I'm horrified at how the time seems to have slip away...and yet, thankful that it has.
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Whew! Right?

Thank you guys. Your reassuring comments are helpful.


I took the test this morning. 1 pink line. So...I'm not pregnant. Which is great. And that sucks. But honestly I have to say I'm not ready. I've rejected taking my pills for the past 6 months. Like my rebellion makes it better. And since I'm high risk for Spina Bifida, the fact that I quit taking my folic acid scared me. So, guess I'll be taking those again. I have too much to worry about already, and adding my fear of SB on top of it because I was an idiot and quit taking my pills is just foolish. Plus, I realized last night that this is the same time that I got pregnant with Logan, which means that had I have been pregnant now I would be due in May...the same time as Logan. I don't want that. Plus I feel like Logan's loss is still just to fresh for me and my grief is too raw to be able to enjoy the prospect of another child at this moment. So, though I feel sad, I think I am more relieved and if nothing else I sure have talked myself into believing that it's better this way. I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one with a messed up cycle. I really worked myself in to a tizzy. I made an appointment the other day to get in with a new Ob/Gyn in a couple of weeks. I really need to get my hormones checked.


I will be taking my laptop with me this weekend, so I'll be sure to add a new question of the week to The Dead Baby Club Blog on time. Plus, I've gotten pretty good at mobile blogging. Yeah, I'm a dork, you can laugh.