The Aftermath

I felt very 'Dr. Dre' typing that just then.

*big huge deep breath*

I did NOT want to write that last post.  I seriously considered abandoning my blog where it was and coming back six months later, all "Hi everyone!  I'm back all shiny and bouncy and happeeeeeee!"

I knew I couldn't.  I have chosen this path to heal and I will stay on it until I'm better, which I'm so seriously not.  So I'm here, wading through the muck shining a light in the corners because it's actually helping.

However, just like a flashlight, only pieces can be illuminated at a time --  you can't see everything at once.  Blogging is cathartic for me, and everyone who reads my words (you and you and you and you!) help me.  You reach out to me and I'm so very grateful and I'm starting to be able to reach out again and it's so helpful.  But the thing I'm getting at is, what I'm trying to say is, you don't have the whole story.  Trust me, I'm shining the light in all the dark corners, sweeping the room, covering the whole house but it's just a flashlight.  I strive for honesty because it's only through honesty that you get authenticity and that's how you heal, how foundations are made, all that.  So what I tell you is always the truth, but it's never the whole story.  For that you'd have to be here, in the muck with me and for real, you don't want that.  I don't want that for you.

So if my story leads you to draw conclusions, it's because of me and what and how I write.  ME.  I chose this path fully knowing that this is how it works - I write posts, not books.  Not legal documents where the tiniest detail must not be forgotten.  I tell stories that convey feelings more than details because I trust that y'all are smart and can fill in the blanks that I can sometimes leave. 

I'm in the dark but I have a flashlight - I just need you to see.

...

I think God knew.  When I got this job last December and was complaining about how mind-numbingly boring it was, God knew.  He knew what was coming and knew I would need a job where I could just be a warm body in a seat and still draw a paycheck. 

I came back to work Monday and was thanking God in Heaven that all I had to do was transfer calls.  "Good morning, propertycompany."  "Betty Jones, please."  "Sure, hold the line."  That's it and I won't miss a paycheck, thanks to my vacation time, bereavement time and sick time that allowed me to be gone all last week.  If I had come back to 65 emails, five projects that all had deadlines, 12 people answering to me, I would most assuredly be sitting in the corner sucking my thumb and pulling on my ear right about now. 

But I can sit in a chair.  I can transfer calls.  I can read and I can write.

For eight hours yesterday, I wrote, I searched the internet, googling 'grief, baby loss, miscarriage, counseling,' and reading stories.  Stories of women like me, women who put their loss out there and were comforted by women (I don't know if there are any guys that read my stuff) like you.  There are stories of women WAY WORSE off than me, women who had healthy normal pregnancies with zero problems who went on to deliver full-term stillborn babies.  I don't even know where you have to go in your mind to come back from something like that.  If there was ever a group in the world who deserves a pass for anything they do ever, it's the full-term stillborn mothers.  Let them do and say whatever they want forever.  For real.

Not that my grief is less valid, not that I have no right to grieve.  There is no measuring stick and I am by no means slapping myself in the face, trying to snap out of it.  It doesn't work like that, and I don't expect it to.  But knowing that there are others, wading in their muck, shining their flashlights, I feel less alone.  There are other women out there whose bodies sometimes make dead babies (and yes, I know that's not the deal.  It's not my fault, my body didn't betray me - even though I feel that way sometimes) and they go on to have healthy babies and it gives me hope.  That maybe my body won't make any more dead babies.

And then there are other people whose lives are blissfully awesome and perfect and shiny and I take refuge for a quick second, although I'm not to the point where I can stay long because I start questioning why my life can't be like that.  Then I remember the flashlight.  They're shining the light on what they want you to see and you never get the whole story.  And it helps.

I can do this.  I will do this.  I will sit in this chair for eight hours a day.  I will read.  I will write.  I will process and I will heal.  I have no clue how and I'm pretty sure that the worst isn't over yet but I will not give up.  No matter how much I want to.  No matter how much I so seriously want to lay in bed forever.  No matter that the mere thought of getting pregnant again has me shaking.  No matter that I don't know how to forgive my husband for being a royal disappointment in my time of need.  I don't know what to do with all that stuff and I really just want to get in bed, pull the covers over my head and sleep for six months.  Then I'll poke my head out, groundhog-style.

I can't do that?  Shit.
...

Remember that children's game Goin on a Bear Hunt?  Where you come up on all kinds of obstacles and the chorus goes Can't go over it!  Can't go under it!  Can't go around it!  Gotta go through it!  I totally can't get that dumb chorus out of my head and it's pissing me off. :-)

I don't know where to go with Drew.  My mom and Kathleen left last Friday morning and with the house empty we talked and I told him, without screaming or cursing (too much) that he let me down and acted selfishly and that disappointed me.  Saturday afternoon he took responsibility for his actions and was very sincere and very contrite in his apology.  I tried so very hard not to be ghetto and go "too little too late muthafucka!" because I SOOOO wanted to.  Because that wouldn't be the path to healing.

But I sure do feel that way.  WHY?  Why did he even have to do anything to be sorry for?  Why couldn't he have been more sensitive to the situation?  Have more respect for the fact that he doesn't know what I'm going through?  Be more attentive to me?  Put me first so that I could put him first and we could find each other in the pain-hurricane and grow in our love?  Why even now does he think that I'm okay just because I went to work?  

For better or for worse.

'For better' comes first in that particular little phrase.  I wasn't supposed to have a dead baby in me on our wedding day (a thought that particularly freaks me out and I just don't dwell on because I will go crazy.)  The 'for worse' is supposed to come later, when you've established your bond as husband and wife and it's had time to strengthen and harden, like caulk or some shit.  *sigh*

God knew about the job thing, so I'm reeeeeally hoping He's got the rest of this.  For real.