It’s been bubbling to the surface a little more each day… the anger I feel when I think of our situation… it’s becoming more present in my thoughts and mood. I woke up today after a terrible night of sleep just pissed off. I was mad at the world last night too. Yesterday evening I filled up a handwritten page in my journal spouting off and littering the page with expletives and jealous thoughts. I don’t always share here in the blog the pure ugliness of what I feel at times… I guess sharing it makes it more concrete and tangible, and that’s not necessarily what I want to embrace through this grief journey. It’s getting harder to ignore as it surfaces more often. I don’t want anger to be my guiding emotion, but I also know that it’s to be expected in this kind of situation. It’s normal, it’s okay. What happened to Lucy is not fair, not right, and not okay. What happened to Chris and me is not fair, not right, and not okay.

The thing that ignites my anger the most is seeing and observing others who are experiencing right now what we should be with our new baby. I am exposed to it every time I go out in public, every time I do anything on the internet, every time I log in to Facebook. Facebook is presenting some obstacles for me; it would make sense to just quit looking at it altogether, right? Social media is such a trivial thing, yet it’s a concrete part of our society and what so many of us do. It’s hard not to look. I often feel that it’s a connection to the outside world (let’s face it, I’m not exactly out and about cheerily participating in the outside world at this point) and a way to connect with my loved ones and even in the support groups I’ve recently joined. Lately though, there’s a lot of bad that comes along with it too. The ads seem to be the worst; I hate that I am still bombarded with ads for baby products and such. Yes, they can be unfollowed, but you can’t unsee the stuff. Same goes for all of the new baby photos that people in my network post and put up… Yes, they can be unfollowed too, but it’s hard. I saw that an ex of mine and his wife just recently welcomed their second healthy son into the world the other day, and I was actually afraid of the immediate flare of jealousy that I felt upon seeing even one of the photos. Not jealous of the ex, but jealous that they, like so many other happy couples snuggling joyously with their newborns right now, have what we do not: their own healthy living baby. It’s not their baby that I want, it’s our baby Lucy that I want. And we don’t get to have her. And why do they get to have two when we couldn’t even have our one that we wanted so very much? It pisses me off to no end. We were so close to having it all. I made the mistake of looking through all of the posts and photos I’d shared throughout my pregnancy… there was so much joy and happy anticipation leading up to Lucy’s birth. It was like watching a Shakespearean tragedy unfold with the dramatic irony overshadowing the characters’ happiness, the characters never knowing what kind of hell was about to befall them. I am so angry that our innocence, optimism, and happiness were stolen from us. Both Chris and I feel that we can never simply trust that life will just be okay again… there will always be the shadow of doubt lurking in the backs of our minds no matter what solid ground we may find ourselves on in the future. It all eerily reminds me of my once favorite quote from Macbeth: “Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player, That struts and frets his hour upon the stage, And then is heard no more. It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” I used to think the language of this was so powerful, so vivid and beautiful, in spite of the dark view of life… now, I wonder sometimes what it’s all for. I wonder why Lucy was created so beautifully, why she was able to make it to birth, only to have her life snatched from her upon entering the world. I don’t want to think it all signifies nothing… but really, what was it all for? It isn’t f%#*ing fair. It’s bullshit. I just feel so much rage when I think of the beautiful waste of it all. There won’t ever be an absolution for this loss… just questions, sadness, pain, and anger.