The holiday season has opened up an entirely new dimension of grief. I find myself in more moments now, maybe even more so than in the earliest days of this hell, in which I am either numb or just completely inconsolable. Sometimes both. How can you feel numb yet ache and HURT in every fiber of your being at the same time? I am very convinced that this is worse than death on many levels. It feels as though my body and my soul are filled with rough, jagged edges, dark corners, shards of shattered glass… I inhale the ache of needing to have our child here and exhale the pins and needles of the pain of knowing that she won’t ever be here. It seems as if it’s never, ever going to be okay. That I am never going to be okay. Part of me wants so badly to keep searching for the light, the love… another part of me just wants to cave to the darkness and blackness. Sometimes, I. just. want. to. QUIT. Give up. Stay in bed all day like I really want to. But I feel like I can’t, that quitting is not my thing (*eye roll*), so I’ll keep trudging my miserable shell of a self along. Thinking about that somehow makes me even more tired. I’m so tired. My strength is failing me. I’ve cried more this week than I have in a long time. The silent sobs are the ones that really take it out of me, and that’s how it usually begins, my whole body wracked with violent gulps for air while hot tears sting their way down my cheeks, blurring my vision, making it so hard to breathe (sometimes I’d rather not anyway)… those are the times when the hopelessness doesn’t just creep into the corners, it sweeps in instead like a vengeful tidal wave and knocks me right off my feet, willing me to simply drown in the blackness. I feel so bad for Chris when he finds me like that (it’s happened more frequently these days). I think it’s getting harder to deal with me… I’m irritable, cranky, sarcastic, and overall just plain *^%$#@! miserable. And likely miserable to be around. More and more lately, I just want to be left alone. I can no longer find time to just ‘be’, and it’s especially tough when I keep getting interrupted when I do find some time to write or reflect. I haven’t had the house to myself once since my return to work, and I’ve realized I’m having a hard time with that. I feel so guilty just thinking that, because all Chris wants to do is help and make it better. I’m feeling very stubborn about having to give up some of my ‘Lucy time’, and am starting to get really pissed and outright cranky about it. I do my best to be careful of what I say though, because none of this is anyone’s fault, the interruptions are done with good intentions, and you can’t take back what you say. Even though anger, overwhelming sadness, and jaded bitterness are becoming my predominant emotions lately, I know I still need to be as kind and loving to Chris as I can be, because that’s what he unfailingly does for me. I don’t know if I deserve that all the time, but he’s always done that for me. I’m a little frightened of the ugly turn my grief has abruptly taken, and I’m going to do my best to push through it, but I do need quiet time to do that on occasion. I worry that to Chris, it looks like I’m just wallowing, refusing to move forward. And maybe I am.

Yesterday, I found myself fixating on a moment from the night Lucy was born. It was right after Chris had dropped me off in the maternity wing of the hospital and left to go park the car. There was no one else in the giant lobby, except for a man at the main desk, and a custodial worker waxing the floors. The sound of the waxer was like a white noise, drowning everything else out, oddly soothing. I remember sitting on one of the plush chairs, perched on the edge of it, holding my daughter in my belly. With a mixture of fear and pure excitement, I thought, “Everything is about to change.” Time seemed to stop for a long moment as I smiled nervously to myself, willing my thoughts to center on meeting our baby girl at the moment of her arrival. Then the sliding doors opened, and in walked Chris. Time began to tick again. We moved through the lobby and forward to a time that would indeed be different. My heart breaks for us when I think of that moment. I know self-pity isn’t something I should focus on, but I can’t help it. I feel so bad for that happy, innocent couple (and that beautiful, innocent baby) who stepped on to that elevator and toward the most painful destiny one can imagine. We couldn’t have known.

Today, I am simply beside myself in my grief. I want to be thankful, I want to be grateful, I want to be ‘inspiring’, but today, I just can’t be. Today, a blackness resides within me. Today, I feel bleak and hopeless. My heart is heavy and aching. Today, I don’t want to pretend that I’m okay. Today I want to focus on what we should have and not what we do have. Today I want to be pissed off. Today I want to be selfish and simply be alone with my grief.