It has been so long since I've written. I have thought about it. Meant to. Set aside the time, then done other things. I have been busy, but mostly I am not sure what to say. I have lots of good days now; they are far more frequent than they were even a couple of months ago. I also have shitty days. Lonely, dark days, when I look ahead at the expanse of my life without Nina-Louise and I feel so lost and tired.
Mother's Day came and went. I prepared myself for it. I braced myself, and it wasn't so bad. A good day, even. Lots of wonderful messages from friends and family. Acknowledgement. I planned my day out well, and I knew that reminders would be everywhere. Most of it rolled right off my back. I have found that if I can foresee challenges, and I can prep myself, I do ok. It's the unexpected shit that takes me out of commission. The glimpse of a woman jogging with a baby in the same jogging stroller I researched and sweated over and eventually asked my mom to buy for me. Hearing my mom-friends planning baby outings. Seeing a classmate with her baby who was born two weeks after Nina-Lou was born and died, and how everyone crowded around her in a bubble of pure joy. The tag for a baby bonnet I bought for her weeks before she died, unexpectedly tumbling out of my purse. A pregnancy announcement (or two or three...).
What is getting to me now is just how never ending this grief is. It hurts, still. Every little thing that reminds me of what happened and how lonely and childless I am HURTS, and I just have to fucking take it. There is nowhere to put it, nothing to do but endure, endure, endure. It's fucking endless. There is a maddening quality to this purgatory in which I find myself. I remember, when we were in the hospital, after Nina had been born, and her body had been taken away, and my friends had left, and I had changed out of my hospital clothes and into my coming home clothes, I remember sitting there on the edge of the hospital bed and just thinking to myself... fuck. Dammit, I thought I was done with these feelings. I thought it was going to be over, and now it's even worse. I'm still here, in this shitty place. What a nightmare. Now that the shock has worn off and I have accepted this fate, I thought it would be easier. And in a lot of ways it is... but mostly I am just more accustomed to it. This time, now, after the shock, after the searing heartbreak, after the condolences, after all the flowers have withered and died, this is the real shit. The long haul. Carrying this burden... forever. Like Turner said to me, several weeks ago, as we discussed what things might be like for us if we have another baby someday, "No matter what, we're always going to be the people who's baby died."
The weird thing is, now I can't even imagine what that would be like to parent a living child. I have been studying for my comprehensive exams, and that shit is time consuming. I can't help but think, "how the fuck did I think I'd do this with a newborn?" I guess I would have just done it, like people do. But it seems crazy. Like she was never supposed to be here in the first place. And when I think that, I want to slap myself for it, because OF COURSE she was supposed to be here. We changed our whole lives to accommodate her, making room. Now that space is still there, still fairly empty, but slowly getting filled in with other things, shit we don't want to have time for, but do. It seems so crazy and foreign to me that we ever thought we were going to bring home a baby. I see pregnant women at my chiropractor's office, and they go past their due dates and worry about induction and drug free births and emergency C-sections, and then, there they are, a couple of weeks later, holding a baby. It surprises me, every time. It's lonely to be a person who's baby died.
I don't feel strong. I don't feel brave. I don't feel like I want to carry this anymore. But what other choice do I have?
A great fear that I have is that, years from now, I'm going to look back at this time in my life and find that I wasted it with sadness and self pity. I don't want to waste it. I refuse to, actually. I know that I have to find the right balance of including myself socially so that I maintain relationships, and so that I don't miss out on my friend's lives, but also protecting myself from things that might send me into a tailspin. Sometimes I think I can do something and it ends up to be a mistake, and other times, I think I'm going to regret doing something, and I am so grateful that I did it, because it was awesome. I do a lot of second guessing and visualizing and self-talk these days. I also cry in bathrooms and wear waterproof makeup. Ya never know.
I think I'm going to be ok. I think this will get easier. I'm alive. I'm relatively healthy. I love my family, my friends, and my sweet husband. I love my city. I love my dog and my kitties. I love the career path I have chosen and I love to help heal people at my school clinic. I love TV and movies and books. I love the woods and the sea and beautiful clothes and cool makeup and good music and wine and chocolate and laughing at ridiculous shit. Keeping myself busy helps. But sometimes, no matter what I do, the sadness catches up with me. The darkness is always there, waiting in the wings. Sometimes I just have to let it wash over me and lose myself in it for awhile. For fleeting moments, at the bottom of that despair, everything will snap into focus and I will feel Nina-Lou's absence and presence and my life after and my life before all at once, and I can envision what this long haul might look and feel like. But mostly I just feel really alone and I need hugs and TV and a good book and strong coffee. I should write more. I feel better towards the end of this post than I did at the beginning.
I had a dream on the morning of Mother's Day in which Turner and I had a baby boy. He was so sweet. He would pull himself up on the railing of his crib and telepathically let me know that his diaper needed to be changed. Or maybe he said it aloud. I'm not sure. There were other fucked up things about the dream, like we had left him alone while we were at work and then suddenly realized that wasn't such a good idea, and at one point I left him teetering on the edge of a shelf and managed to grab him before he slipped off... and as I was about to post to my mommy group, to ask if anyone could recommend a nanny, I suddenly realized that I wasn't sure if our baby was real or not. I was embarrassed to mention him, lest people realize I was caring for a pretend baby. But it felt so good to be his mom! It felt so good to hold him and change him and see him smile at me. He knew I was his mom and it was deeply fulfilling to look into his eyes and feel how close we were. But I knew that he wasn't real. I knew it was ok to leave him alone or let him rest precariously on the edge of a shelf because nothing can really happen to a pretend baby. It was disappointing, but at the same time kind of thrilling. Just me and my secret, imaginary baby.
Having a baby in the future seems like a dream, much like my pregnancy with Nina-Lou seems like a dream. I'm always going to be a mother to a dead baby. Always, always, always. Sometimes I light a candle for her, and when I do, I always light a candle for Future Baby. I want that imaginary baby to know that there is space him or her in our lives.
We will somehow make room for both.
And in the meantime, we will be alive and try not to waste it.
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