How I am, 4 weeks later

I wrote this back in December but didn't post it because it was so depressing. Well I read it again today and I know I am doing better now than I was back then, and to be realistic to the experience of loss, I have to admit to the dark times as well as the times that give me hope. So here goes........





Sorry I haven't posted in a while. I have been really down. Everything I do takes great work and I am even more tired at the end. But here you go, thanks to all who are keeping up with me.

I guess there are ups and downs. The downs are so far down that the ups really sort of are downs. Imagine drowning in an ocean. Usually all day long all night I am at rock bottom of that ocean with the weight of the leagues in full force over me. There are moments of floating slightly mid depth in the ocean. But never moments of rising above the weight of the water.

I am so tired, and tired doesn't even work as an explanation. I am exhausted to the bone to the heart of me I am exhausted. There is a song that says. "I've no fear of drowning, its the breathing that's taking all this work." That is how I feel like even breath is too much for me. How can I possibly do the rest needed of me in my day. How can I hear that horrible alarm pushing me out bed and react to it? Ok so I over come that enormous barrier and get into the shower, I sit down letting the water pour over me. Ouch it is too hot. the lever is so far a way can I reach it to find comfort here? How long till I go back to bed? Ok got the water right. This shampoo bottle is so hard to open didn't I just wash my hair yesterday? Well I better do it again, tomorrow I won't be able to. Conditioner? No way. That is work. Shave my legs? nope its winter and my husband is hardly ever home to see them. Done with the shower. blow dry and style my hair? no need, rubber band and it is out of site out of mind.

Clothes? Nothing fits. just throw something on, don't worry about looking good it wont happen.

Eat? no way, that is work times too, prep and clean, no breakfast.

Get the kids into the car, drive them to school. Go to work. Ok now I am so tired I can barely function, that was more work in twenty minutes than I am capable of. I am too tired and exhausted. A new kind of tired. To the bone I am tired. I don't have the stamina for this anymore. all I think about is bed, I want my bed. I want to dream it all away.

You know when I had emotion and strength for life? When my baby was inside of me giving me strength. The two of us together we were strong. But it is like that baby left and took my heart, my strength, my ability to feel joy. I am half a person now. We were functioning together symbiotically living together. building the chemicals to process joy and passing them to each other. This loneliness after loss is like nothing anyone could understand. I didn't just lose the hope of a baby, though that is huge. I lost a part of a soul that was in me. I felt this baby living and existing, feeling joy and knowing its blessing. But now it is ripped from me. What is left? The ability to feel joy in the absence of the cause joy. That is worse than lonely, I don't know the word for it, but it is worse.

Now what is left, a horrible daily life that is void of any real joy. Sure I can live through my sons' joy and my husband's accomplishments. While I feel my life slipping away to join my babies. I don't feel strong enough to stay here. Of course here is where I must stay. I just don't know how to do it. I don't want to eat. I don't want to work. The only thing at all that brings me any sort of hope is the hope that I can work toward giving others a supportive place to go when they hurt this disparately. They can know that someone else on earth has wished that their constant involuntary muscle that makes them breathe and survive would just suppress and stop the pain.

I have a wonderful family they keep me a float. But I know I have lost my own buoyancy. I have wonderful friends they give me somewhere to look for helping them. When I don't have the strength to help myself I reach out and help them. And in that reaching, I float another inch to the surface. My boys and husband are the only reason I continue to breathe in the oxygen that forces me to live on.

but honestly right now, I am exhausted and could sleep for a year, if that dang alarm clock would stop waking me up.

I miss them. They gave me the buoyancy to float their lightening was taken from me and in their place was left a heart of lead.