A day in the life

I was pregnant and then I wasn't. She was here and gone. All in a second. I was carrying a life for 3 days shy of 10 months. In love with the idea of her for nearly a year. And then in an instant she was just a memory. Just a fleeting thought. A passing blessing. Temporary. 

I imagine I had to look like a shell of my former of much like what I resemble today...sitting there in that hospital bed. I wasn't crying. My whole being was numb. Not just a hand or foot or my head or my body. My soul was numb. Empty. Stuck. Bleeding. If I could describe hopeless in the dictionary... I felt like it was some sort of nightmare and surely I'd wake up, what's the point of crying? It'll end soon. This is just silly anyway. When I went home is when I realized I wasn't waking up. I pinched bruises on myself. I've never been the type to pinch myself. But I was desperate because all my old tricks weren't working. I wanted to cut my own arm off to make sure this wasn't real because it couldn't be. I wanted to bite my tongue in two until blood soaked my shirt because it's just a dream...it won't count in real life when I wake up anyway.  Ever seen the movie inception? I was waiting for the kick. The signal that it was okay to bail on this dream. The kick never came. I was stuck in the interim where the dreams occupants know you're an intruder and they're attacking you. I've never left there. Not for one day. Not for even a minute. Through all the blessings I've received since then, I've still never left this place. 

I think I've came up a layer now to where I can survive. I'm afloat but part of me will always be drowning. I stay here because my boys are here in this layer. If I go back a layer or forward they're not there and I can't go there. There's the constant battle of wanting to move between one layer and the other. Problem is, once you're there you can't go back. I'm not ready for the next layer up or to go so far back in layers that I don't remember any of it. 

They say the more you love them the harder it is to lose them. That's true. In every sense you can put it. Boyfriends when I was younger. Broke me because they didn't want love they wanted something else less complex.  Which was fine - I eventually learned that as long as we were both on the same level as to what we were expecting then it was fine by me. That can create a not so picturesque personality. I was cold for a long time and I got what I wanted and didn't care who I hurt in the process. I had been getting revenge at the world for hurting me for some time. It is true for pets as well. The longer you've had them and the more you love them the harder it is when they leave you. I will not and I have not loved an animal like I loved Rex and I refuse.  He died in 2012. Almost 4 years ago and I have no desire to love another animal like him and I won't attempt it. I'm not investing myself in something so temporary. 

Which anything can be temporary. Emma was temporarily with me. When you get pregnant you don't think it's going to be temporary. Who thinks that? Only the mother pregnant after a loss of some sort knows how fleeting this thought and feeling can be. 

The ultimate disappointment. A let down you just can't imagine. It came in September. Hoping for the best and preparing for the worst just doesn't cut it. Nothing disappoints me like this does so everything else is just minute. I'm still waiting to wake up, waiting for September to end. Stuck between summer and fall. The fog just won't lift sometimes. 

Everything feels different and nothing is the same. Nothing tastes the same. Nothing looks the same. I see through some sort of vision, someone else's eyes. These aren't mine...they can't be. 

Ever had the wind knocked out of you? When I was swinging on the playground in first grade once I fell forward off the swing onto my chest in a swift thump. It knocked the wind out of me and I legitimately thought I would never breathe again because I'd never felt it before.  I was sure my lungs had both collapsed and my heart had stopped. There was a ton of bricks on my chest. I didn't cry, I just froze and waited for the air to come back to me. But in that second, when the air was gone...I remember so vividly because that's how this feels. The second while the wind is gone. That's my life always in the back of my mind I've always just gotten the wind knocked out of me. I don't forget then realize it's happened or remember her randomly. It's all the time. If the clock is ticking, it's there. That's how I know she never truly left me is that something of her is always here physically, it has its own intrinsic effects even. 

Tachycardia, shortness of air, dizziness, blurry vision, tremor, nausea, a sick strange darkness, like there's spider webs in my skull where my brain should be. The feeling that there's a set of hands around your throat squeezing.  It's real and I hope if you're reading this, you never have to feel it. And if you have, if you're in my shoes right now...know I feel you. Every day and every second of my life. 

Life's not all this huge dark pit full of knots in my stomach and lumps in my throat. Don't get me wrong. I have so much to be happy and blessed about. Shade is literally the sunshine at the beginning of the day and Isaac is the glue that mended my heart and soul and let me smile again...and Tommy is my rope when I'm stuck in a well and my family is my fortress. But in the background...is everything else. And some days it's the main attraction. It's consuming some days. Like right now...

I'm confused as to who I'll spend my forever with. The game plan got majorly changed up...life threw me a curve ball, a Hail Mary. But my team wasn't prepared and I fumbled. 

This far down the line and I still haven't got it right. I'm not writing for sympathy or to make people sad. But these are things people deal with daily. These are things that people like me who are told that they just have to "move on" or that "at least I didn't know her" or "that was so long ago" or the other stupid shit I hear day in and day out from people who mean well but just don't get it. Think about that when you ask why someone would want the maximum amount of time with their "dead baby". Or when you think about saying to a person "it was just a miscarriage" and that "you didn't even hear a heartbeat!" Or...just let her go. Really? Just let her go??? How do you even? Like explain that to me. Let's see how well you do with moving on or letting go of YOUR child. 

I'm not really extremely depressed, or at least I've learned to live this way and I don't notice it. I have my moments of reflection such as writing this blog, that seem like I'm wallowing in pain and crying, but it's just my daily - where I feel close to Emma and I feel her presence because I feel that if I don't have them I move further away from her. I'll tell you about a particular situation that's rather private but I feel like it may help someone else. I recently had to go on medication for my anxiety and depression related to the loss of Emma. I was lashing out on anger and was very on edge and became violent and angry in public and around my family. I am not proud of that. But psychiatrically, this could potentially help someone who is suffering in silence or embarrassed to talk about it. I have few secrets except the things I deal with on a daily basis and honestly all you have to do is ask. I'll tell you. It's not pretty sometimes. But it's my life and I'm better for it in many ways. Anyway - let's just say that I had words with coworkers and was such a loose cannon, that I now need to make repairs in walls in my own home and felt that I was too unstable to be alone with my children if things weren't going just perfect. They say "don't cry over spilled milk", well I didn't cry but I did see red. I immediately made an appointment with a provider because I couldn't come down off my anger outbursts and when I wasn't angry I was crying. If I wasn't crying I was emotional. I had someone say that I didn't grieve Emma, that I didn't deal with it when it happened because I got pregnant so fast. No, I disagree. If I hadn't gotten pregnant with Isaac I wouldn't be here. There's a huge likelihood that I'd have ended my own life at some point despite all my other blessings. But I digress. I've grieved her for 19 months now. So, I got medication and was prescribed vistaril for the acute episodes (doesn't work by the way don't bother), and Paxil for long term treatment. Within 2 days of taking Paxil I felt like I wasn't even in my own body. Couldn't laugh, couldn't cry, I was a robot among other issues. I immediately called the provider and asked her to switch me to Wellbutrin.  Paxil was NOT for me.  I didn't want to not be able to FEEL, I just needed the edge off. Wellbutrin has worked thus far. I am able to feel and grieve my daughter but I am not so much of a loose cannon. I am still depressed and I still have PTSD and anxiety. That will never go away.  I was regressing and now I feel that I have moved to a place where I "should" be as much as humanly possible given the situation. 

And again, that bit was not for attention or sympathy but to maybe help someone else. I love my children - whether they be in earth or heaven - more than life itself and they're why I do what I do. Why I've done what I've done. 

Yes. Some day I will move on. I'll move from this life to another and hopefully - I hope with everything in my soul - that she'll be waiting. That she won't have missed me. That it'll have only been a couple minutes in her time and that she never had to feel like I wasn't coming for her. Because I have been every day since September 2nd 2014.  I've been on my way. 

Xoxo