I don't really know what I need to say, but I got out of bed feeling like I need to write. I am doing better, even I can tell. Whatever better may mean at any given moment. My crying is less intense, less raw. I am really sad but I am also able to go about my normal life. Some of my worries that I had at the very beginning of this grief have proved to be untrue. At the beginning I worried that I would never be able to go to work, to tell someone about my daughter, to want to get up in the mornings. And now I do all of those things. If you saw me on the street, you probably wouldn't know what I have been through. I am not THAT CRAZY GRIEF-STRICKEN LADY. And yet, I am.
Still, I am scared. I am so fearful now, of everything. Probably about 90% of the time I am able to "walk by faith, not by fear." That is just always how I have lived my life-I'm an optimist, a positive person, the one everyone comes to for support. But now, that other 10% of the time, I live in fear. I am scared that none of my hopes and dreams will ever come true. I doubt that anything that I REALLY want will ever happen for me. I am scared to even want anything too much, for fear of 'jinxing' myself. And I'm not just talking about having another baby. I'm scared of my other hopes and dreams too. Like I have to keep any potential happiness hidden away from everyone else, or even myself. We are building a house in Brazil and when we opened up the latest batch of update photos from my brother-in-law, I felt genuinely excited for the future that we might have in that house, but just as quickly I killed that feeling, afraid that if I let myself be excited, the reality will never happen. Sometimes there is just no convincing myself otherwise.
Tomorrow it will have been 12 weeks since there was no heartbeat. I mostly think of Kayla now in a more spiritual sense, and I feel her as a part of me, just like she always was. It is better for me to think of her like that, because when I think of her in the hospital, a fully formed little baby, I can't understand why she is not still here with me.
I thought about that a lot in the beginning and even still about how when I am out in public when people see me can they tell I am a mother who has lost her baby like there is a flashing sign on me. I know there isn't, but it's strange to be out going about my business like life is normal when it is so not.
ReplyDeleteI live in fear a lot too, I think when you know those statistics about how it only happens 1% of the time and YOU are that 1%, we will ALWAYS worry about that 1%.
It is SO hard to understand how a perfectly formed, wanted, loved baby isn't with us. So unfair. Our months are different, but we were told there was no heartbeat on the 4th and Addi was born on the 5th...kind of interesting.