Remember the girl who you thought was handling this earth shattering experience so well. She spent 4 weeks wallowing in bed, and suddenly was out doing life again. Monday was good, Tuesday was good, Wednesday was good, Thursday was good.
Thursday night was a mess.
I went from checking off healthy grieving steps: Get out of bed, go for a walk, visit a friend, find a way to honor the loss, talk about it, smile and not feel immensely bad. Living life even after loss.
And then for no reason at all. Or quite obviously, the most intense reason. I felt incredibly sad. Deep in my chest. You will often hear people who are grieving complain about the physical side effects of grief. This is one of them. The actual physical heaviness in your chest. Its almost like anxiety, but somehow its even more extreme. I was just telling Brandon how extremely well I was doing today. Even though I still spent most of the day in bed. Even though I was currently in bed.
The antidepressants are doing their job. Keeping a lot of these emotions at bay. But tonight the simple act of my husband asking if he could kiss me, for the first time in 4 weeks, it brought those walls crashing down. Then the weird outpour of all the emotions let loose. I was crying, my body shaking, then laughing, my body shaking. Back and forth as he tried to comfort me, my body couldn't figure out which one wanted to win. So it did both.
I am a mess. Quite literally. My mind is a prison and I don't know who is in charge. It certainly isn't me. Maybe its the celexa & xanax, because I certainly know grief, and this isn't how I grieve normally. I knew this week was going too well. So I know the break is coming. My brain is just feeling above the waters right now and desperately trying to self preserve.
Right now the strongest winner is this odd side of me that keeps repeating that this whole thing isn't real. You might be wondering how that is possible since I have minute by minute reminders that it is. The empty cradle in our room. The locket I wear around my neck, and now a tattoo permanently on me. I haven't forgotten what I am going through. It just feels so irrevocably wrong that your brain can't comprehend the loss. It's easier to imagine that reality is false, than to accept it. Even though I spent 8 months being pregnant, even though I held her in my arms for 12 hours, even though there is a room that is so empty in my house, but so ready for life. All of it must not be true. I would rather believe I was losing my mind in insanity of imagining the last year of my life preparing for anna, than admit to myself what has truly happened.
I am caught between a strong mind, and a fragile heart.
So I write. I write all day long. And far too late into most nights. Sometimes the pills take over and I fall asleep with words on my mind, and like being unpaused, I wake up with them still needing to be said. There is no peace with sleeping, there is only a shut down of the physical form. When I open my eyes, those feelings are still bright red scars demanding to be felt. Demanding to be said. Life is painful, and it deserves to be seen. I want to celebrate the conquering moments in the face of this. But I also want to honor the love that is deep grief in child loss.
with love, lissa