forward

I'm trying to focus on self care these days.  Right after we lost Nina-Lou, taking care of myself was the last thing on my mind.  I barely ate, and when I did, it was a few chocolates from the box someone brought over in an attempt to assuage our grief.  I found pleasure in drinking coffee and that was pretty much it.  A few weeks out, when Turner and I had taken some time to discuss what we were going to do moving forward, and had decided that we wanted to try again, I realized that I would have to lose the weight and get my body healthy again, in order to hold a pregnancy.  I didn't really give a shit about myself, or feel any confidence in my body to do anything the way it was supposed to, but I wanted a baby bad enough to start going through the motions.  So, I joined weight watchers.  I started running.  I cooked meals from scratch.  I went to acupuncture and brewed the disgusting tea.  I took my vitamins.  I tried very, very hard to care.

But, to be honest, I just really fucking hated myself.  I was fat.  I was a failure.  I was a sad person who cried all the time.  I was a sob story that people tell in hushed tones.  I only found the strength to try and get better because my friends made me feel loved, because my husband made me feel so special, and because I had a deep, gnawing desire to be happy again, and maybe, hopefully, be a mom.

I had a conversation with my massage therapist about how we dress ourselves when we're feeling low.  I had showed up to her office wearing some pieces of jewelry that make me feel good: a feather earring that I lost the match to years ago, a jade ring my friend Mercedez sent me, and a delicate necklace that my friend and Sharla gave me right after Nina died, which has the letter N, Nina's birth stone (turquoise), and a little angel wing.  She commented that she liked my accessories, and I said that I wasn't really wearing them to look pretty, but because they made me feel stronger.  I went on to say that it felt strange that, for the first time in my life, I had very little interest in adorning myself; I kind of wanted my drab appearance to reflect how shitty I felt.  She then told me about a book she read about Native American dress, and how in that culture, the way in which one adorns oneself with clothing, jewelry, makeup, etc., is an important reflection of what one is experiencing inwardly.  This is why it's kinda fucked up when hipsters wear headdresses; that headdress was never meant to be a fashion statement.  It was meant to be a reflection of someone's emotional being.

I had been laboring under the notion that I had to start making myself look better so I would feel better.  But after this discussion, and after giving it some thought, I realized that I was really not ready to start feeling better.  I wanted the world to see my pale lips, my limp hair, my tear stained cheeks, for these things were reflections of my pain, and hence, my love for my little girl.  I knew that I would eventually feel the desire to spruce up my appearance again, but I felt comforted by idea that there was no reason to rush it, and that I was justified in my public mourning.

But those happy moments do creep in.  I did, as the days went by, start to notice beauty more and more.  I had promised myself that I would do this; look around at the world and take it all in, for her, but I found it so difficult at first.  I was too sad, to disappointed.  But as time went on, I found myself awestruck at the light filtering through the trees at the park, or at the patterns left in the sand by the waves.  I started to care, despite myself.

So I started going through the motions a little more easily.

I am still pretty sad when I wake up in this new normal as a bereaved parent trying to pull her shit together.  But I drink my coffee and I joke with my husband and I walk the dog, and it doesn't feel quite as futile as it once did.  I am actually happy about some things.  I look forward to cooking a nice meal for dinner.  I laugh out loud with my friends when shit is really funny.  I make jokes and I don't feel like a fake asshole while I'm doing it.  I eat a little piece of dark chocolate every night, and it tastes pretty fucking good.  I wash the tears from my face and put on pink lipstick and smile at myself in the mirror.  I don't hate myself.  And I don't pity myself, either.  I have been through some fucking hard shit, and I'm not completely broken.  Partially broken, yes.  How could I not be?  My kid died, which is a nightmare.  But, it's not a nightmare.  It is my life.  I will always be Nina-Lou's bereaved mom.  Any subsequent children I have will not be my first born.  I am THIS person now.  I'm not the person I expected to be, and it hurts.  But, fuck it.  I gotta to work with what I have.

I will never be grateful for her death; Nina's death will always be wrong, and always be a tragedy.  But I am eternally grateful for her life, even though it was only spent in my womb.  I am so grateful for experiencing that kind of love.  It stabs at my guts and rips me apart and makes me cry in front of complete strangers, but I feel no shame or remorse or loss of dignity.  I am crying for her, and if anyone else felt the love that I feel for that little baby, they would understand that my tears are the most meager of offerings; it is a wonder I don't cut out my heart and offer it, purple and pulsing, up to the heavens.  Instead, I weep, I grieve, I love, and I live.  I don't buy that Nina would have "wanted" me to do this, but I do understand that this is the way life is.  Time keeps moving forward.  The seconds keep ticking by, and we can't freeze it or go back no matter how badly we wish to.  Forward.  Forward.  It's not cruel, it's not fair, it just is.  The special and the meaning are things that we wring from life with our scratched and calloused hands because we are strong, we are loving, and we are human.

The Good Shit.

I realize that this account of my life probably makes it look like I live in a constant state of despair and agony.  And, to an extent, I do.  The darkness of losing my kid has made a deep and permanent mark on my soul that will never, ever go away.

But there is also light.

I remember in the very early days after we lost her, as I was coming out of the shock and accepting what had happened to us, I found no joy in doing anything.  It was like the whole world had been coated in a fine layer of ash; there was no luster to anything.  I felt strongly that it was important for me to look around me and find beauty in the world, for HER.  I wanted to experience life that much more fully because she couldn't.  But I was too fucking sad.  Food didn't taste right.  Jokes weren't as funny.  The ocean, in all of its vastness and enormity, was just a depressing, gray expanse that made me feel small and helpless.

But, miraculously, I have started to find joy again.  It's work, but there is still so much good and so much beauty left, even in the World in which Nina-Louise Dies.

February 14 was the second full moon since we lost her.  I stood outside and basked in its light.  It was only for a minute, but I really saw it and felt it, like I used to.  I love the moon.  I don't know why.  Call me a hippie, I don't fucking care.  I think it's kinda magical.

Two nights ago I was out with our dog, Riggs at about 10 pm, letting her do her business one last time before bed.  Turner had made a last minute run to the store 2 blocks away to get coffee, which we had just realized we were out of.  Riggs spotted him walking back and bounced up and down on her two hind feet, her tail a blur.  I took the bag holding a dog turd and shook it in Turner's face, which made me laugh so hard that I had to stop and double over with my legs crossed so that I wouldn't piss myself.

Yesterday, in the middle of the day, I treated myself to a plate of lox, Humboldt Fog cheese, and arugula, and followed it up with a piece of dark chocolate and a glass of wine, all while watching Keeping Up with the Kardashians (omg, Kanye's proposal, y'all...).  This was after crying in front of and being hugged by two complete strangers, but I thoroughly enjoyed that plate of yummy things.

And there's PregNation.

PregNation is a group that my friends and I started because two of us were pregnant, two of us were thinking about getting pregnant, and one of us had just had a baby.  It started as a group text between the 5 of us, and has evolved into a GroupMe of 18 women, the majority of whom have kids, who post random shit throughout the day and night regarding topics that range from recipes, pregnancy, developmental milestones, dead babies, live births, skating, breastfeeding, torn taints, pants shitting, and farting into one's own vagina.  Anything goes.  After Nina-Louise died, I really wasn't sure if I could still be a part of this group of women, and it broke my heart.  I felt so left out of all the fun, and I didn't want to ruin the party with my tragedy.  But my lady friends made it clear that my story was still relevant, still important, and they made me feel accepted.  They make me laugh a lot throughout the day.  Occasionally, I have to turn the notifications off so that I am not blindsided by a gorgeous picture of a breastfeeding baby, or a video of something adorable.  It's not that I don't like those things, but if I'm having a fucked up day anyway, I try not to torture myself with reminders of what I lost.  However, even though I am sometimes filled with jealousy for what some of them have and I don't, I always get to be my sad, happy, tragic, crass, weepy, laughing self.  Because I'm all those things.  I haven't figured out yet what I am going to be like as I evolve forward into The Bereaved Mother Who Has Healed.  But I have a feeling it's something like I was before, but maybe more rich and complex.  I will never look at Nina-Lou's death as a blessing, but I do feel like loving her is a gift that has enriched my life and my very being.

My therapist said to me that tragedy cracks you open, and makes you see and feel things more acutely.  She's right.  I am so changed from this, and ultimately I hope it's for the better.

The best thing, the thing that I love the most, is sad and sweet and happy and precious all at once.  It happens in the middle of the night, when my dog is snoring, and it's quiet enough that I can hear the waves crashing on the beach a few blocks away.  After over a decade of sharing a bed, Turner and I have a pretty solid routine: when one person wakes up and rolls over, the other automatically rolls over as well.  We do it unconsciously, barely waking as it happens.  But lately, every couple of nights or so, when I roll over, Turner will stay in the same position, and wrap his arms around me, burying his face in my neck or my hair.  Sometimes we kiss, and murmur I love you's, and sometimes not.  But we always lie there for a moment, our arms wrapped around each other, feeling the warmth of each other's bodies, feeling so deeply sad, and so deeply grateful for what we have despite our loss.  In those moments, I feel simultaneously overwhelmed with grief and with love.  It's a precious, nearly indescribable feeling; one which only those who belong to the Tribe of Bereaved Parents will ever fully experience.  It is the only perk to belonging.

Seeing the world, knowing in my heart of hearts what I love and how much I love it, being true and raw and exposed and letting the light pour in during my darkest moments... these are gifts I never would have known had I never had her.  I am broken, but I am slowly becoming whole, reforming into an entirely new shape.  There is good shit out there, and in here.  She changed me, as all of our children change us.  I will never get to see her grow up, struggle with her teenage years, teach her to knit, take her for walks with the dog and let her play with pinecones in the park.  But I am still changed.

Her life came with her death, and those two things are the greatest gifts and the darkest tragedies of my existence.  

the hardest thing

Last Saturday, I had to attend a CPR and First Aid training, as a requirement for school.  There was no getting out of it or putting it off; I had to do it if I want to work in the clinic next quarter.  I cannot possibly express how much I did NOT want to do this, and not just because it was at 9 am on a fucking Saturday.  Attending this training meant that I was going to be in a room with people from my school, most of whom last saw me at the end of fall quarter, 37 weeks pregnant, happily riding off into the sunset to spend winter break gestating away.  Thanks to the rumor mill (which I made sure to move along at a breakneck speed in the wake of Nina's death), I was pretty sure they all knew that my baby died.  But I couldn't be sure.  I also just didn't like the idea of having to participate in something so banal.  Having to do something so... normal.

The further I move through my grief and get on with my life, the further I move away from her, and it rips up my insides a bit.  I don't know whether to be grateful for moving on and making it through the day without crying, or desperate to go back to those sharp, early days.  It's a confusing, tumultuous, complicated experience being in limbo like this.  I don't relate to the happy person I was before she died, I can't be the person I expected to be if she had lived.  To be honest, I just really don't know how I'm supposed to be.  I didn't have a contingency plan for this.

Before I had ever gotten pregnant, before this whole chapter of my life started, I was a pretty free wheeling girl.  I liked to eat and drink and scream and be thrilled.  When I started to contemplate becoming a mom, I actually got really excited about the prospect of reconciling the wildness in me with the nurturing mother in me.  I thought I was gonna make a pretty rad mom.  Me and my little one were going to unleash ourselves on the world and experience all of it.  Then, with the miscarriages, my confidence started to fade a bit.  I was so sad.  I was in such a dark place.  I wanted to be that person I had envisioned so badly, and with each loss, I became more and more fearful that it would never happen.

But Nina-Lou brought me back.  Once I made it through that first trimester and still had her growing in there, I became filled with a hope and a happiness unlike anything I had ever felt.  I was so sure of everything when I had her with me.  I saw and understood the trajectory of my life, and I was so confident in who I was and where I was going.  Waiting for her to be born was the happiest I have ever been.  I found meaning and symbolism in everything.  It was all meant to be.

Turns out that was all bullshit.  But I digress.

The training on Saturday was just as boring and cheesy as these things always are.  The class was taught largely by video, the production value therein leaving much to be desired.  They did blow a lot of their budget on a pretty sweet dude on fire that they saved for the end.  The rest was silly and giggle worthy.

Then we got to the infant CPR.

I didn't see it coming at all, which may have been for the best, because if I had had time to worry about it before hand, I probably wouldn't have come.  Or had a panic attack in anticipation of it.  I just hadn't even considered that we were going to be learning to save babies.

But there it was: a bag of babies.

With their arms and legs flopping, and their plastic faces all wearing the same sleeping expression.  They looked dead.  It was a fucking bag of dead babies.

As they were passed around the room, I started to internally panic.  My heart raced and I felt dizzy.  I wondered what people around me were thinking.  Were they worried about me?  Embarrassed for me?  Equally horrified?  Or were they just happily oblivious, failing to make any connection at all between me, my formerly swollen belly, and those lifeless dolls?

I told myself, over and over, it's just a doll, it's just a doll, it's not a real baby, it's not her.  I felt tears welling up behind my eyes, and realized that my hands were visibly shaking, and I very seriously considered leaving the room.  But then, the pragmatic part of my brain took over.  Would I explain to the instructor why I was leaving?  Would I come back for the rest of the training?  Would they be able to give me my certification if I didn't save the dead baby doll?  Would I get my money back?  Would I be able to find another place to complete the training before the start of Spring quarter?  And, of course, there was the public humiliation to consider.  Did I really want to make a scene?

I took deep breaths.  I talked myself down.  I disassociated myself from the experience and went through it, emotionless.  At one point, I looked down at the baby on whom I was performing chest compressions and thought, I wonder if this is about how big Nina-Louise would have been by now.  It was so awful.  It was the worst thing I could have possibly put myself through.  But I didn't die.  I didn't cry in front of everyone.  It was painful and difficult and horrifying, but I managed.

Later, alone in my apartment, I screamed as loud as I could.  I screamed and screamed and cried and pounded my fists on the coffee table until they hurt.  I wanted to impale myself on something.

This is my life now.  White knuckle through the painful bits then lie on the couch while my husband rubs my back silently and I sob into a pillow.  It's fucking depressing and it makes me feel helpless.

I want to go back to the person I was before, but I can't.  I want to clamber through a window into The World in which Nina Lives, but that ain't happening either.  I would, at the very least, like to fast forward to the person I will be as the woman who has survived the death of her only child.  But there is no fast forward, no rewind, no do overs.  I just have to live through each day.  Some days are ok.  Some days I laugh and I see the beauty around me and I know that I am me and she is she and that we have different paths, and that I will someday be a mom to a different baby; one who lives.  Other days are dark and exhausting and empty and really, really fucking hard.  It's the thing that should be impossible but isn't.  Somehow, I am making it through this; not because I'm strong or because I am finding closure or because I miss her any less.  I am making it through simply by being alive and adapting.  Human beings, it turns out, are good at suffering.

I never knew.

...

Today I'm just sad.  I don't have anything inspirational or profound to say.  I just wish she were here and she's not.  I feel so lonely without her.  I had so many hopes for our future as a family.  I never imagined that I would be a mother to a dead baby.  There are reminders all over this city: all the places I ate lunch with her in my belly, the place where I was going to go for breastfeeding support, the shops where I hopefully bought her little things, the parks where I imagined we would go together.  It all hurts.  I had so many hopes for her future.  I wondered what kind of an adult she would grow up to be.  Whether she would like sports or not.  What kind of person would she fall in love with.  Would she want to be a mom someday.  I miss her so, so much.  It is so unsatisfying to miss her like this.

I don't know what to do with myself.  I don't know how to be without her here.  I feel so lost.

stitches

I have gone running for the past 4 days in a row.  I feel I should put that in quotes: "running".  In reality, these outings consist of 3 minute intervals of jogging interspersed with walking.  But whatever, I'll take what I can get.  It's pretty amazing what exercise does for the mind.  I have felt different, and better over the past few days.  I would even venture to say that for moments I have felt... good.  Seems weird to say that.  It's been 6 weeks and 3 days since I lost Nina-Lou.  Too early to be healed.  Too early to be better.  I know there are more bad days to come; it's often at the peak of feeling like I've reached a new threshold of healing when I suddenly get thrown back down into the muck.  But hey.  Like I said: I'll take what I can get.

I still carry the thought of her with me all the time.  She's always, always, always on my mind.  Nearly everything I do, I wonder what it would be like to do with her.  Or I think, "I would not be doing this if Nina were here," and those kinds of thoughts really make me feel terrible.  These are things that I should enjoy, like getting wine drunk or sleeping in late.  Before I lost her, when I was still pregnant, I would think to myself that it was important for Turner and I to enjoy this last final part of our lives as a twosome.  And here we are, still a twosome, and I deeply resent having the time and space for those things that only the childless can enjoy.  Fuck those things.  Gimme the sleepless nights, scabby nips and cradle cap.

I don't have to be back in school until April, and I'm grateful to have this time to grieve.  I'm grateful that if I want to spend the afternoon reading blogs by people who have lost children, I can.  I can go "running" every day.  I can take my dog to the beach and look out at the ocean and think about how tiny I am.  I can watch the sunset and take a mental picture of it for Nina-Lou.  I can cry whenever I want, pretty much.  I feel so strongly that it's important for me to surrender to the grief and let it take me where it needs to go.  I know that there is a certain amount of suffering in this that just needs to happen.
I don't know how people go back to work right after this kind of loss.  Turner went back to work a week after she died.  He said he wanted the distraction, and it seems to have been good for him; I sometimes envy his ability to work despite his grief, but I just have to remember that we are different.  I was and am too consumed to be distracted.  I look back on those first several days after she died, and I remember that I wasn't able to even turn on the TV or the radio.  I managed to read a little bit at a time; that was just consuming enough for me to let my mind go from the torment of dead baby dead baby dead baby.  But after awhile I'd have to put the book aside and let the sadness of it fill me up, and cry and cry and cry.  I was still so shocked by what had happened, for weeks.  The reality of it would sometimes hit me all at once, and it was just crushing; I was hardly able to breath under the weight of it.  Shock was a friend to me.  It kept me from crumbling.  Although I think I would have liked to crumble; it would have been a relief to just collapse into a heap.

But not now; these days, it feels good to stand up.  I don't know if I'm just getting more accustomed to her not being here, or if I'm just more used to the sadness, but it all feels a little more manageable.  I grudgingly attribute it to the exercise.  I find it both reassuring and annoying that our minds are influenced so deeply by the chemicals in our bodies.  I would rather think, "my kid died and that is the greatest tragedy that can possibly happen, so therefore I am the saddest person in the world."  But then I do something as simple as running for 30 minutes, and the darkness lifts, and I can think about what I'm going to make for dinner and whether or not I might be able to fit into my skinny jeans soon ("skinny" jeans, let's be real).  It makes my emotions seem a little less valid to know how much they are influenced by hormones, and that pisses me off.

Hormones.  Those dicks.

Then, there are all the other little things that are helping me heal. There is therapy.  And friends.  And my sweet husband.  And our dog, who is the best, sweetest, funniest dog who has ever lived.  And this blog.  I have not been able to put a finger onto what it is about writing here that is so therapeutic for me, but I feel compelled to do it in a way that I have never felt compelled to write in a journal.  There is something about the public nature of a blog that sets it apart from journaling (something I have never been very successful at as an adult, although as a teenager I scrawled all kinds of narcissistic drivel into many a spiral bound notebook); there is something about sharing the experience with others.  I think that losing my daughter just broke me completely open, and there was no holding in the absolute anguish of it.  I was so wasted in the wake of her death, and I did not have the strength to be stoic, or have people think I was ok when I knew I wasn't.  I am changed.  I am not the person I was before.  People should know.

And, quite frankly, I wanted people to fucking suffer along with me.  I got real sick, real early, of hearing people say that they COULD NOT IMAGINE what I was going through.  Well, here.  Let me describe it in great detail for you, so that you can fucking imagine it.  I want people to understand that this magnitude of tragedy is not just a nightmare, it is real, and it happens, and it is a horror show.  Be incredibly grateful for what you have, because it FUCKING SUCKS to lose it.  And it also sucks to have to leave that tragedy behind you and find some semblance of normalcy again.  To sleep and wake and eat and have sex and walk the dog and jog and do all of the things necessary to live a normal life, and use your bare hands to claw away the shit in order to find the joy buried in all of it, all the time knowing that you are broken but that you are slowly stitching yourself back together, and to somehow have faith that life will feel worth living again someday.  It's horrible, and maybe it's selfish of me to want others to see and feel how shitty it is, but I don't care.

I just loved my daughter so much, I don't know how I could possibly hold it back.  I remember when I first fell in love with Turner, I really understood what people meant when they said that they loved someone so much that they wanted to shout it from the rooftops.  I wanted to shout it out and tell the world how much I loved him.  I was bubbling over with it.  With Nina... I just never knew that much love was in me.  And it's overwhelming and bubbling over, but it's all mixed up with the pain of not having her here.  And I'm broken and shattered and my love and my pain and my anger and all of it has just been strewn everywhere.  I want to shout from the rooftops that I LOVED her and I MISS her, and LOOK HOW FUCKING SHATTERED I AM since she died.  She is supposed to be here and she's not, and my understanding of the irrefutable truth of her death leaves me with an emptiness inside of me that I will never be able to fill.  I hope that the emptiness shrinks down a bit; I hope that I can stitch up the edges around it as I stitch myself back together, but I hope it never goes away.  That emptiness is all I have left of her.

There is a balance to all of this.  And I am slowly, slowly figuring it out.  I have surrendered to the process, and am letting it take me where I need to go.  If nothing else, I have learned that life is short and precious, and a fucking crapshoot.  Success and happiness can be hard fought for and even won, but it can all disappear in a flash.  No one is blessed.  No one is cursed.  Some are lucky and some are not.  But we all have to keep trudging through the shitstorm in order to find a lucky break.  And when we find it, it doesn't hurt to just sit, and let the sun shine on our faces for awhile.

Ain't no sense in squandering that shit.

waves

Last week, Thursday, I went a full day without crying.  I was amazed.  I felt sad that day, and I saw things of Facebook that were upsetting (this, by the way, happens every time I look at Facebook, but I still do it), and I felt worried about whether or not Turner and I would ever have a baby, and I missed Nina and felt her profound absence in our lives.  But the tears never came.  I went through my day to day activities and I didn't break down or need to hide my hideous, dark sadness.  It was just there with me, but it never pounced.  I carried it silently.

Then Friday came, and the fucking shit hit the fan.

It started with my acupuncture treatment in the morning.  I was going through my various symptoms with the intern at my school clinic, discussing my appetite, my body temperature, my bowel movements, etc.  And then I burst out with, "this is just the shittiest fucking experience of my life and I am so sad, " and as I said those words, tears poured out of my eyes, and I couldn't stop.  Her supervisor came in to check my pulse and go over the diagnosis.  This supervisor is a teacher at my school, an adorable, tiny, elderly chinese woman who taught me medical mandarin during the time when I was pregnant for the first time, before the miscarriages had started and before I knew how bleak life could be.  She was kind and asked me questions about how much blood I lost during delivery, and she told me to take care and that they would put together a good herbal prescription for me (a dank concoction that is burbling away on my stovetop as I type).  I really kind of wish she would have said something consoling, like, "I'm so sorry your baby died," but she didn't.  They left the room and I cried more.

I weighed myself on the scale out in the hallway and the number from last week stared back at me, stupidly the fucking SAME, and I cried more.  I sent Turner a text to vent, and then I followed that up with one that said It's bullshit.  I'm so frustrated.  I hate my stupid life.  Then the intern came back to treat me, and I put my phone on silent and threw it in my purse.  I laid face down on the table and sobbed tears and snot onto the floor through the face cradle, afraid to wipe my nose because of the needles in my wrist.  When she came in to check on me 15 minutes later, I had to ask her to stop the treatment early; I just couldn't lie there crying onto the floor anymore.  She thought my nose was just stuffed up, and she was concerned that I was getting a cold.  No, I told her, I'm just crying a lot today.  She was silent but I felt her concern.  She gently massaged my back after she removed the needles.  It felt good.  I breathed.

When I got out of the building and looked at my phone, I was confronted by a series of increasingly panicked texts from Turner, the last three of which read Will you please talk to me?  Where are you?  Do I need to come home?  Sweet T-bone.  I called him and caught him before he was about to hop on a bus.  He hadn't realized that I was getting a treatment.  Poor guy thought I was gonna off myself.  Or something.  I scared the shit out of him and I felt horrible.  We talked and he went back to work.  We texted back and forth while I sat in the car and rain beat down all around me.  I cried and felt sure that we would never have another baby, that Nina was my only shot at happiness and that I had ruined it.  I felt deeply sorry for myself.

I cried myself out, and then decided to stop by Trader Joe's for groceries.  That stupid mantra of dead baby which has come and gone since she died was going full force in my head.  Dead baby dead baby dead baby.  I wanted to be on my first shopping outing with the baby.  To be struggling with a shopping cart and a baby in the rain.  To be laughably unprepared and stressed out and trying to manage life as a mother of a newborn.  I'm not that at all.  She is just not here and it's so strange.  Life is surreal and familiar all at once.

Right after Nina-Louise died, I kept having this feeling that maybe it was all a nightmare.  I sincerely felt that it might be.  Faced with such an irreversible, horrifying reality, my mind went to crazy places.  I am a little ashamed of my childish desire to just shut my eyes and have it all be changed as I opened them.  But I hear that it's natural.  I wish so much that she had lived.  I wish it so hard.  Friday, in the rain, putting my groceries in my car in the Trader Joe's parking lot, that feeling came back to me strongly, and for a split second I entertained it; considered that there might be some way I could take a sleeping pill or meditate my way into my real life.  Wake up and find myself still pregnant, having been taught a profound lesson about gratitude and love.

It's not a nightmare.  It really happened.  I have to heal.  I have to keep living and moving forward.  It's the hardest thing I ever imagined.

Later that night, after a few more crying jags and half a bottle of wine, Turner and I watched Raiders of the Lost Ark and I allowed myself to get lost in the fantasy of the film.  It felt good to get swept away.  And when my mind started to settle back into dead baby dead baby dead baby I thought about our next baby.  I thought about my darkest fear, the voice in my head that tells me that I'm cursed with a desire to have a child that runs deeper than any other, and the inability to do so.

And then, I did something a little crazy.  I decided that was a bunch of bullshit.

I decided that, no matter what, I am going to be a mom to a live baby.  I decided to believe in that reality beyond any other.  I will have a baby.  I will have a baby.  I keep telling myself this, and it actually comforts me.  It allows me to mourn Nina-Louise without getting that all mixed up with mourning the life I wanted for myself.  I had been laboring under the thought that, in order to heal from this, I needed to confront the fact that I may not ever be a mom.  Reconcile the mother I wanted to be with the mother I am.  But, honestly, I am not ready to do that.  Right now, I need to believe I am still going to be that mom I wanted to be.

Last night, one of my good friends gave birth to a beautiful baby boy.  We had been pregnant together, our due dates only a few weeks apart.  Nina came 2 and a half weeks early, tiny and dead, and her boy came a week late, 9 pounds of alive.  As her due date came and went, I started to realize that, along with my obvious jealousy of her excitement and joy at the inevitability of meeting her baby, I was terrified that her baby was going to die.  I was so scared that I was a bad luck charm, and that the horror of my life was going to rub off on her.  That her baby would die and she would always secretly blame me for it.  After we got word that he had come, alive and healthy, I breathed a huge sigh of relief and admitted to Turner this fear I had been secretly harboring.  As soon as I said it out loud, I realized that it was silly.  Life is neither fair nor unfair; it just is.  And although looking at the picture of her sweet baby makes my heart hurt because loving the two of them makes me feel my loss so acutely, it also gives me a strange feeling of hope.  Maybe next year that little guy can meet my little one.  Maybe I can get through another 10 months of pregnancy without losing my mind.  Maybe I can deliver a baby and hold him or her in the moments after birth, and be amazed that I did it.  Maybe, maybe, maybe.

I looked at the picture of my friend in the moments after her birth, her exhausted face and the tiny baby with his mouth full of boob, and I stared and I stared and I stared.  It filled me with the warm tingly feeling of love and desire that I get whenever I see new babies -- a sensation I've experienced my whole life, even before I had ever been pregnant or was sure I wanted to be a mother -- and it filled me with so much longing.  Longing that my birth could have gone differently.  It brought back memories of what it was like, giving birth to Nina-Louise.  I am so proud of myself for what I did: I endured the pain of childbirth, knowing that my daughter was dead.  It was so hard, and it pains me that I can't share my story in the same bragging, amazed-at-my-own-strength way that mothers of live babies get to.  I am amazed that I did it.  I am amazed at the pain of childbirth; that red hot wave that you have to ride until it crashes out on the other side, and then prepare yourself for the next.  I'm amazed at the way it felt as her body gushed out of me.  Right after I pushed her out, even though she was dead, I still expected to hear a chorus of congratulations, because I had done it, the seemingly impossible!  I had known that women who lose their babies at term still have to birth the baby, and that fact had always been a sobering, nightmarish idea, but I had faced the fear and the pain and the work, and yet the room was filled with a horrifying silence.  It was like, until then, no one else had been sure of the reality of Nina's death.  But there she was.  Dead, dead, dead.  Birth is so primal, and when I was pushing, I became an animal.  The push came from somewhere else.  I couldn't stop the force of it, it was so strong.  I was something else in those final moments, and I think I let go of the reality of what was happening for a few minutes.  I was so relieved to feel her come out, that I was actually a little surprised at the silence that followed.  But the truth is it was not a happy birth, not the kind of birth you brag about in passing.  I like to think that people, especially my closest loved ones, are strong enough to hear my story along with the happy ones.  And I know that it is valid and true, and deserves to be told.  But I'm not sure if it's right.  I am not sure that Nina's birth story belongs alongside the birth stories of live babies.  It might have to stay hidden away, and that saddens me.

However, I must admit, I am getting used to this life on the other side.  I am less and less shocked that my baby isn't here.  I am less and less surprised at the way my heart grips tightly in my chest when I see things that remind me of her.  I am actually, really, starting to move forward.  It sometimes makes me feel sincerely guilty, but it mostly makes me feel relief; getting a glimpse of how I might be able to get through this is hugely comforting.  It is so difficult.  It is such a roller coaster.  But the dips and turns are coming a little less frequently and sometimes I can even see them in the distance and steel myself before I get thrown.  My god, I miss that baby.  I miss her so much.  But, as my therapist reminded me last week, although I feel like Nina is a part of me, she is also her own person.  I am me, and she is she, and we have different paths to follow.

I finished Cheryl Strayed's Wild last night, and I related to so much of what she found throughout the course of her life, in reconciling the death of her mother and integrating that into who she was from then on.  It all comes back to life just HAPPENING.  It happens and we deal, and the suffering and the happiness and the work is all ours.  I also discovered that Cheryl Strayed has an advice column called Dear Sugar, and someone on a baby loss blog posted a link to a very poignant response she wrote to a woman who had lost her baby to stillbirth.  I copied and pasted a paragraph of it into the notes on my phone so that I could reference it when I need to.  It says

You will never stop loving your daughter.  You will never forget her.  You will always know her name.  But she will always be dead.  Nobody can intervene and make that right and nobody will.  Nobody can take it back with silence or push it away with words.  Nobody will protect you from your suffering.  You can't cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away.  It's just there, and you have to survive it.  You have to endure it.  You have to live through it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal.  Therapists and friends and other people who live on Planet My Baby Died can help you along the way, but the healing -- the genuine healing, the actual real down-on-your-knees-in-the-mud change -- is entirely and absolutely up to you.  

Below this, in the notes on my phone, is another one, that I wrote.  It' says You are going to have a baby.  You will be the mom you want to be.  Stay positive and believe in yourself!  I have looked at this note several times since I wrote it in there two days ago.  It brings me comfort to know that it's up to me.  I know that I am not through with mourning Nina, and that dark days will still come and I will still cry and I have a lot of work ahead of me.  I miss her.  I love her.  I can't ever entirely let her go.  But I am choosing to believe that I can still, despite her death, be the mother I want to be.

I am me, and she is she.

I am still so lost without her, without the possibility of her.  It hurts me so deeply to know with absolute certainty that any baby I have in the future will be a different baby; even another little girl with dark curls and beautiful lips will be someone else, with a different name and a different future.  I find both comfort and pain in that fact.  She's gone and we're here, and there is no answer to the question WHY.  It just is.  It just IS and there is no going backward.  The future is a vast unknown expanse and there is nothing left to do but live it.

Medusa

There's so much darkness in me these days.  I would love to say that Nina-Louise brought nothing but light and joy into my life, but the fact is that her death has left me very broken.  I try and eke out joy from occasions, from meals I like, from the beauty I force myself to see out there in the world, but it is exhausting.  I feel sincere love for the people with whom I've surrounded myself, and my relationships with them do assuage the pain.  But joy is buried and only emerges for fleeting moments.

Yesterday was Turner's birthday.  We went out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, Nopalito.  We sat at the bar.  We had drinks.  We laughed.  We spoke closely and intimately with our hands resting on each other's thighs.  We kissed.  We enjoyed each other's company.  To anyone watching, we must have looked like our life together is pretty rad.  And honestly, it is.  Except for that our baby died, and a huge piece of our hearts feels like it's gone forever.  And as much as I enjoyed this moment, I felt that dark empty spot gnawing inside me.  It's just the two of us.  Just the two of us.  Nina is supposed to be here and she's not.  Oh, fuck, it hurts.  Goddammit.

As we were getting ready to leave, a pregnant lady walked in, and my heart sank, and my stomach felt queasy, and everything I had achieved and then lost was right there in front of me, and I wished I were dead.  I cried the whole way home.  Poor T-bone.  Happy birthday, buddy.  Let's just sit in the car and sob for awhile, cool?

I don't hate or feel resentment towards pregnant women, or new moms (unless they treat their kids like shit, in which case I pretty much wanna rip their faces off).  I used to, when I was going through my miscarriages, but not now.  I am not sure why.  Maybe because I've been a pregnant woman, and I know what I went through to get that way, and what I will have gone through if I end up that way again.  But who knows.  I do, however, feel jealous.  Deeply, intensely, pathetically jealous.  I am jealous of the innocence in a pregnant woman knowing her swollen belly will result in a screaming baby.  I'm jealous of the love with which a mother looks upon her child.  I'm jealous of a living room cluttered with baby shit.  I won't ever have that with Nina.  I may not ever have that at all, and that thought makes me feel so fucking sorry for myself that I just want to crawl under a blanket for the rest of my life.  It fills me with a darkness and self-loathing so potent that I don't even want people to look at me.  I'm fucking Medusa.  I will destroy you with my sadness.  

And, honestly, I fear for pregnant women.  I constantly worry that they are being too lax.  Too much like I was.  Too trusting that the universe wouldn't dare take that child away from them in the end.  As much as I love and appreciate the community of bereaved mothers I have found in the wake of Nina's death, I am now burdened with the knowledge of just how much can go wrong.  Preemies who die in the NICU.  Perfectly healthy babies who get sick and die within hours of being born.  Babies who suffocate, suffer brain damage, and die in hospice.  Heart defects.  Cord accidents.  Beautiful, healthy, LOVED babies who die in their sleep for no reason at all.  It all happens.  It doesn't just happen to people on the news.  It happened to me.  It could happen to any one of us.  Even if I get pregnant again and have a perfectly healthy baby inside me and carry it to term, any one of a plethora of tragedies could befall us.  Already having experienced the worst won't protect my baby.  It also won't protect me from getting cancer, or having my dog mauled by a coyote, or my husband hit by a car, or having a child who later gets killed in a war, or shot on the street.  It's all so arbitrary, and the universe doesn't bless certain people and curse others.  Some of us will suffer and some won't.  There's no rhyme or reason to any of it.  The shit could hit the fan at any moment.

But despite all that, my desire to be a mom is so intense and acute that it takes my breath away.  People tell me that because I had a daughter and I loved her, that I am already a mom.  In a sense, I believe that.  But she died, and I didn't really get to be a mother to her.  I never held her in my arms while she was living.  I never dressed her in an outfit that I chose.  I never put her in a baby carrier and gently kissed the top of her head while shopping in a grocery store.  I never felt her drink from my breast, or put her warm skin against mine.  I never bathed her or felt her perfect, tiny little hand clasp around my fingers.  I held her dead body and it was not the same, no matter what anyone says.  I didn't get to be a mom; at least not the mom I was supposed to be.  It hurts in a way that is tortuously painless.  I want to give birth to her again and again just to fucking feel something other than this empty nothing.  It's crazy to want something that feels like it should be right there beyond my grasp and know that it isn't.  I'll never have her back.  I'll never get to be her mom.

We will keep trying.  We will follow through with all the tests and see if this is in the cards for us.  So far, no one can find anything wrong with me, other than that babies thus far haven't thrived very well inside me.  I will work all the angles, from the western doctors, to the acupuncturists, to the chiropractors and the mayan abdominal massage and the fucking Reiki healers. We take comfort in the fact that we made it pretty far with Nina.  As hard as it is to know that she had a chance at life and died anyway, it does give us hope.  I will nurture my body and make it as hospitable an environment as I can.  If we get pregnant again, and it lasts into the second trimester, I will be monitored closely, will undergo no less than 20 ultrasounds, will possibly inject myself with blood thinners and steroids, and I will most likely be induced or have a c-section.  I don't care how it happens.  I don't care that it will be the most stressful 9 and a half months of my life.  They can slice me open, pump me with drugs, whatever it takes.  And if none of that works, we will start the adoption process.  I want that fucking baby; the one who lives.  I know it won't be Nina, and right now, that stings.  But I have to keep trying, because don't know if I can live in a life that doesn't let me be a mom.  As unattainable and imaginary as it seems, I still think it's something that I'm meant to do.  I am not cursed.  I am not blessed.  I'm just a woman who has been dealt a shit hand.  Life is neither fair nor unfair, and I am going to do my damnedest to get what I want.

Fat.

I'm fucking fat.

The whole time I was pregnant, I openly worried about how big I was getting, but deep down I really didn't care.  I knew it would all be worth it.  Plus, I had that awesome jogging stroller that I was gonna take Nina out in.  She would sleep peacefully while I jogged away months of flab.  I would attend postnatal yoga, connecting with my child, and my breath, and the earth.  And OMG breastfeeding!  It burns so many calories, I really wouldn't even have to worry about the baby weight!  And what was the hurry, anyway?  I would have a beautiful baby girl, all I've ever wanted.  I was sure I wouldn't even mind being overweight for awhile.  I knew it would come off eventually.

Well.  Expectations change.

I DID drop 20 pounds of baby, blood, and various other bodily fluids in the first couple of weeks since Nina-Lou's birth, but I still have 30 pounds to go, and they have been stubborn thus far.  It sucks.  I am still wearing maternity shirts, because all my other shirts are fucking crop tops at this point.  I have one pair of non-maternity jeans that fits over my muffin top.  I have a saggy gut, which, if I'm not careful to suck in, looks pretty much like an 18 week pregnant gut.  I get winded jogging for more than a minute, and I doubt I could pull off a legit pushup.  I feel gross.  I feel old.  I feel trapped in someone else's body.

I walk down the street, and I'm not a big pregnant lady, I'm not the woman with a newborn still carrying some of the baby weight, I'm just a fucking fat lady.  A 35 year old, childless fatty who has been wearing variations on the same outfit for the past 6 weeks because nothing else fits.  I know I'm not ugly.  I know that it's not the end of the world and that I can lose the weight.  But I am bitter.  My body has been changed from this experience, and not for the better.

Oh!  And as a sweet bonus, I have become one of the many women who must cross her legs when she sneezes, lest she fucking piss herself.  So, yeah.  Total pity party, over here.

I know how to lose weight.  I've done it before.  When I moved to the Bay Area in 2004 I weighed 205 lbs, which, at 5 foot 6 inches, is pretty much considered morbidly obese.  I joined weight watchers as a last ditch effort to get healthy, and lo and behold, was able to drop a shit ton of weight.  I have, for the most part, maintained that weight loss for many years.  Pregnancy scared me, because I knew I'd get kinda fat again.  And I did.  I maxed out at 210.  I knew a lot of that was baby, but it turns out that most of it was me.

So, I'm back on the weight watchers train.  I'm doing a couch to 5K program.  I am skating again.  And I'm pretty sure I'm gonna drop this weight just like I did before.  I have all this extra motivation now because if I'm gonna get knocked up again at some point, I have to get back down to a reasonable weight.  That shit is going to take some time, effort, and discipline.  But I know I can do it.  Aside from making a baby, I've pretty much always accomplished shit that I want to do.  It's not hard; you just have to be willing to work for stuff.  I wish that were the case with baby making... but, not so much.

I don't want to be worrying about weight loss.  I want to be worrying about breastfeeding, diapering, nap schedules, and baby-wearing.  I got so cheated out of so much when Nina-Louise died.  I hate the way my life turned out.  I believed that my life was going to end up a certain way according to my vision, my plan.  I was wrong.  I feel... duped.  I feel so stupid and sorry for myself, it's sickening.

My friends are pretty amazing, though.  They listen to me bitch, hold me when I cry, or just sit with me in awkward silence while I stare blankly at the ground.  They join me for walks, and read my texts late at night when I just have to tell someone that I'm sad.  They believe in me.  They love me.  They love my daughter and they hold onto hope for me and Turner and the family we want to build.  They feel angry for what we lost and they tell me they have my back.  I love them for it.  I feel like a large part of why I've been able to survive this far out, and put on mascara, and go to the grocery store alone is because I know that they are always there, thinking of us, holding us up.

I hope they can hold us for awhile longer.  This shit is a marathon, and there are ditches and snakes and sand pits and land mines all along the way, and I am getting exhausted.  I have no idea what the finish line looks like.  I'm done envisioning my future.  I'm just trying to keep my eyes open during the day, close them at night, do what my couch-to-5K app tells me to do, and chill out on the wine and chocolate.  If I can at the very least accomplish this weight loss goal, it will be something.  I sent my friend a text today that said I hope that someday I can look back on all of this and know that it was the worst and most challenging experience of my life and be grateful that I somehow survived it.  That's all I want, right now.  To survive this and have better times in the future.  I know Nina's not coming back.  I know that a future baby will not fill the hole she left in my heart.  I know that I will not ever be the same, innocent, fun loving person I used to be.  But if this is the worst of it (and jeezus fucking christ, I hope it is), I just hope that I can say I survived it.  I hope it doesn't kill me.  I don't think it will.

I'm trying.  I'm working hard.  I know I'm still in here somewhere, and that I'm not forever trapped in this body.  Like I said in my last post, I'm alive.  I'm changed, and pretty much broken wide open, but I'm here and I want to live a good life, a FULL life.  I won't let this experience steal any more from me than it already has.  So, gimme all your good vibes, because I really wanna beat this thing.  I really want to heal and live again.  I really just want things to get better.

a case of the angries

In the first couple of weeks after we lost Nina, I refused to feel angry about it.  My feeling was that the anger wouldn't help anything, and it almost felt like, if I were to dive down that rabbit hole, I'd never find my way out.  It also felt pointless; I knew that what had happened to us was horribly unfair, but there was no one to blame.  My doctor did the best she could.  My midwife had no reason to think anything was wrong.  My family and friends had all supported me throughout the pregnancy.  I don't believe in god, or any sort of higher power, so there was no blame to be placed on the universe or fate.  Even blaming myself was difficult; I know that I loved her deeply, and I know that I did everything I could to bring her into this world safe and sound.  Yes, I was naive, but that certainly wasn't my fault.  So, who to blame?  at whom do I direct all of this anger and frustration?

And yet, I'm still pissed.  I'm filled with a hot and vivid rage, and a cloying, sickening despair.  It's all so unfair.  It is so fucking wrong and horrible and tragic.  I want to rip off my clothes and and tear out my hair, claw my skin off and douse myself in flames.  I want to smash in the windows of cars, strangle innocent bystanders, and stomp their faces into unrecognizable heaps of blood, brains and bone.  My fists should grow large and cartoon-like, smashing down telephone poles and flattening small animals.  I should grow to the size of a giant, and wreak havoc on the world, lumbering over the tops of buildings, snatching planes from the air and gnashing them in my teeth, roaring, roaring, roaring.  My fucking baby died.  She's dead.  She's dead, you fuckers, and we're all going to suffer because of it.

As the boiling hot lava fills me up and spills over, all I can do is sit here, helpless, seething with it, and cry.  Beat my fists on the steering wheel.  Scream.  I am a madwoman.  And as much as I wish the car I'm sitting in would explode, as much as I wish that my fingernails would grown into claws so that I could scratch out my eyeballs, as much as I desperately need someone to take a baseball bat to my face, I am still just a woman crying in her car.  I am not godzilla.  I do not have cartoonishly large fists.  I am small.  A tiny buoy, floating in a vast, open sea.  I lift my head and look around.  I'm alive.  She's dead, and I'm alive.  The roaring in my ears dies down.  I'm alive.

I know the anger is a part of how much I loved her.  It is aimless, but not meaningless.  I feel despair along with the rage because despite its true, real, necessary nature, it changes nothing.  I am helpless to turn back time, or to shatter the walls and break into the World In Which Nina-Louise Lives.  That world doesn't exist anymore, and it fucking kills me.  It's so unfair.  So cruel.  So unreal.  A stupid, meaningless waste.  My beautiful baby girl is gone.

She's gone and I'm here.  I'm alive.  The tide comes in and I tumble with it, washed onto the shore.  The volume goes down.  The tide recedes.  I'm alive.

making room

Although my good moments are becoming the tiniest bit more frequent, the bad moments are still just as bad.  I keep waiting for the pain to ease up, but it doesn't.  Humans are so complex.  I went out to dinner with a friend on Wednesday night, and it was honestly really, really wonderful.  But I was so afraid of going; afraid of crying, but also afraid of laughing.  I am afraid to move forward too quickly, afraid to enjoy myself in this new life without Nina-Louise.

I am reading the book Wild, by Cheryl Strayed, and in it she talks about how, when her mother died, her life split in two.  There was the person she was before her mom died, and the person she was after.  She could not reconcile the two.  I absolutely relate to that idea; I am not the same person I was before Nina-Lou died.  When I was in labor, and it was time to push, I remember grabbing Turner's hand and telling him I was scared, that I didn't want to let her go, and he told me that I had to, so that we could move forward.  However, I think my fear of letting Nina go was all mixed up with my fear of letting my old life go.  I didn't want to move forward.  I didn't want to become the new person I knew I would have to become once her body was out of me.  We left that hospital so empty.  As we left, a security guard said goodnight to us.  I could not believe we had come through those doors just hours before, thinking we would be meeting our baby soon.  The world outside looked the same as it did before.  But I knew that it was painfully different.  It was wrong.  

This timeline shouldn't exist.  It's a mistake.  

Sometimes I tell people that I hate my life the way it is now, because it's just the same as it was before I got pregnant: we still cook meals in our kitchen and eat them on the couch, watching our same TV.  I go to the same roller derby practices  I register for classes at school.  I go jogging.  I fold laundry.  And, while it's true that it's the same, that all of this is painfully familiar and tired, I also hate my life the way it is now because I feel like I'm looking through a window into someone else's.  None of it feels the same because I am not the same.  It is so hard to go through the motions of daily life because it feels like someone else's.  This isn't the way things were supposed to be.  Yet the only reminders of the way things were is the burning in my lungs when I try to skate, the 30 pounds of pregnancy weight I have to lose, and a few stretchmarks.  All of the shit and none of the reward.  I remember reading about stretchmarks when I was pregnant; everyone said that if you got them, you wouldn't care, because they were worth it.  Were they?  Was any of this it worth it?  I wrestle with this question.  

Toward the latter third of my pregnancy, Turner and I realized that I would give birth before the football season was over, which was crazy to us.  It made it really REAL.  We would see ads for the Super Bowl and squeeze each other's hands: "by the Super Bowl, we'll have a baby!  How crazy is that?!"  But we don't have a baby.  We're just... us, living in this weird place in which nothing is the way it should be.  Yesterday, the Seattle Seahawks won the Lombardi Trophy.  I love the Seahawks.  I was born and raised in Seattle, and although I didn't learn to appreciate pro football until adulthood, I feel a deep loyalty to my team, and I was over the moon to see them have such an amazing season.  They defied everyone's expectations.  When you live in Seattle and you follow team sports, you get somewhat accustomed to disappointment.  But this year was different.  The team this year gelled in a way that is rare and beautiful.  And we didn't just win the Super Bowl.  We fucking DOMINATED it.  It was a sight to behold.  And while it was happening, I felt so... uncomfortable.  What is this place?  Where the fuck AM I?  A world in which the SEATTLE SEAHAWKS win the fucking SUPER BOWL?  I cried on the way home from watching the game, because I felt so empty.  I wanted to feel joy, but instead, my daughter's absence was painfully highlighted.  I don't understand it here on the other side.  Everything is the same and everything is different.  I don't understand what I'm doing here.  I'm in a parallel, alternate universe; the other life, the good one with a live baby, is over there somewhere, and I'm clawing at the walls, trying to figure out how to get the fuck OUT of here.  But the more time I put between the now and 12/29/13, the more I resign myself to staying.  I hate it here, but I don't see a way out.    

While I was out to dinner with my friend, we talked about a lot of different things... Nina-Louise, sex, food, birthday plans, pregnancy, our moms, our husbands... I cried a few times, but I also laughed.  I mean, I really laughed.  I still felt that pit inside me, but despite that, I was able to feel joy; not the pretend kind that I've been showing to people for the past month, but the real kind.  It was fleeting, but it was there.  It's happened on a few other occasions as well, but this was the first time that I've been able to recognize it for what it was: a glimpse of what it might be like to live in my new life.  And it looked ok.  I didn't feel numb to the pain, but I didn't feel quite as weighed down by it.  At this point, I'm really only able to be in that state of mind a very, very small percentage of the time.  I spend most of my time either reeling in deep sadness, or distracting myself from it; it is very rare that I can both feel it and function, simultaneously.  And I don't know that I'm ready to function yet.  I fucking miss her.  I LOVE her.  I want to keep her close to me, and close to the surface.  I want me and everyone else in the world to say her name often and cry over her memory.  This version of my life I live in now feels empty and dark, but I can't help but live in it.  I don't have anywhere else to go yet.  But, knowing that there might be a version of me in the future, who can hold her memory dear and still experience joy, gives me hope.  

I know that I have days and weeks and months and probably years ahead of me in which I will still, at times, leave the dinner table to cry in the bathroom, or wrestle with my own inner darkness as I witness the innocent joy of others, or feel tears well up behind my eyes when I hold a baby, feeling that subtle burning in my stomach, that love that I never got to express to Nina-Lou.  I know that it will continue to be difficult, and it should be.  It should fucking suck.  But I hope that there is room for all the pain, plus all of the love, and all of the joy.  This new, complex existence has so many nuances.

Pregnancy makes you big.  Your body expands to accommodate another person.  Your blood vessels contain more blood, your belly stretches, your ribs expand, your pelvic bone separates.  Maybe, in being pregnant with her, ALL of me expanded, and now there is room for more.  If that's the case, then I'm grateful to Nina-Louise.  She pushed my body and my heart outward in all directions and showed me that I have a far greater capacity for love than I ever thought possible.  I have also seen the unexpected love that exists in others; never in our wildest dreams did Turner and I imagine that we would be the recipients of so much compassion.  Don't get me wrong, I'm still fucking pissed; I would much, much rather have my other life, the one that was supposed to happen.  THAT life got ripped away from me, and I will never understand why or how.  My daughter's death was a meaningless tragedy, and it makes me so angry that I wish I could rip apart the fabric of the universe and stomp it all into a bloody mess.  But I can't.  Like I've said before, life, in all of its cruel banality, continues.  But, if this is my life now, if this is the hand I've been dealt and there's no getting out of it, at least my daughter gave me the gift of this largeness.  This capacity for more.  

At least now, I have room for what comes next.