fortitude, and fuck you

because i am a technical retard, you don't see the FLAME OF FORTITUDE award i received from meg. but i did, and thanks, meg!!!

i want to pass the flame over to C., who's responsible for most of my tears. thank you, C., for bringing that out. i also want to pass it to Coggy, who's back to work with balls of steel.


ok, so, WOW. you know how you sometimes, now that you blog, think of posts in your head? how you sometimes, even when you're talking or emailing, think, "i'm gonna post this."

that didn't happen with the emails to my mother.

the deal with her is, she is a very selfish and self-righteous woman. she's fucked me over during every major crisis in my life, because if you don't beg her for her support, she reserves the right to believe whatever the fuck she wants about you and your actions. unfortunately for her, having a dead baby forces you to stare in the face of every other loss in your life. in this case, i lost a mother as a girl. we were very much neglected as kids (i, being the oldest). she was concerned only about herself, yet also had an ongoing battle with her own mother about taking care of us. she didn't want us to be taken care of by her mother, she didn't do it, and so...we weren't taken care of at all. she was also extremely controlling (and like i said, i was the oldest)...so what do you do with no love and a shitload of rules?? now that i have my own children, she seems to think she's their second mother. i think it's more like she thinks she's got a second chance after fucking up so royally with her own three daughters. SORRY, but that is making me SICK.

anyway, i didn't plan on posting those. only after i sent the last one, the one containing the big, fat FUCK YOU, did it occur to me that i needed support; i needed witnesses.

it feels liberating and horrible at the same time. all i know right now is that if i have any chance at all of dealing with the past, FINALLY, i need to be free of her for a while. how can i possibly deal with it if she's constantly creating new drama, hogging up precious therapy minutes with new, improved bullshit???

it may seem like a bad time, but i think it's actually the perfect time to deal with this. i no longer have the energy to hold back my emotions about what she's done to me, exactly BECAUSE i have a dead baby to grieve. i don't have the, the...strength? to push the shit down and act strong anymore.

ooooooooooh p@ige, you opened up a whole can of kick-ass, didn't you.
i always knew you'd be feisty!

mommy dearest

On Nov 28, 2007 6:38 PM, charmedgirl wrote:

i want to make sure that you understood that i can't see you or hear from you for a while.

maybe you were right all this time, saying i was extra nasty to you, there must be something there underneath it.

when you said that you ARE selfish, and that it obviously won't change, i realized that it was true (i knew that already, but hoped you were stronger than that). no, i will not work around it. i am sick of it.

i guess since i didn't get raped as a child, i had no business ever complaining about/being effected by what you put me through.

you don't know me. you have no idea who i am. YOU DO NOT SEE ME AT ALL. YOU DO NOT HEAR ME. it seems your only intention during any conversation is to make YOURSELF understood.

as i do not want to get into a rediculous back-and-forth over definitions and semantics and petty specifics, i will end by saying that the reason i asked you to pay my co-pay was not because of any emotional need to feel cared for by you, or for spite, or for any feeling of fairness since you are the reason i'm there. i wanted you to pay it to take away just a little bit of the seething anger that is coming up at you...dare i say i was trying to do you a favor?

the difference between you and me (your words: my parents fucked me up, but they didn't pay for my therapy) is that i am not dependent on you to support my children, have a place to live, for emotional support, for life advice, for anything at all.....i can choose to get you out of my life, and that was never an option for you. maybe the biggest reason you hate your mother is because you know you could never survive without her or her help.

the x-mas stockings- i don't care what you do with it. burn them, knit a sweater, wind the yarn around your hula hoop. i don't want them. you only asked me numerous times to let you knit them so you could relentlessly tell the kids MIMI MADE THEIR STOCKINGS. forget the fact that you tried to tell me you'd make them next year because all you want to do is sit on the computer all day and night.

i'm sure above all else you are terrified this means you can't see the kids either. they will see you on holidays, and feel free to arrange with [husband] to see them when i have other plans. hey, don't worry. i loved nonna plenty and only saw her 6-7 times a year.


mommy dearest <mommydearest@hell.com> wrote:

I am not going to address all this, because I know that's not what you want me to do.

I have decided to go to therapy for this SPECIFIC reason, to try to make sense of all this too, and to make the changes I need to make.

My biggest pain is NOT not seeing the children. It's the fact that you are punishing THEM for something I did or didn't do. Whether you like it or not, those children are attached to me.

And you know what? Just like I have to deal with my sins and how they affected YOU now that you are grown up, YOU WILL NEED TO DEAL WITH THOSE CHILDREN WHEN THEY ASKED WHY THEY SUDDENLY LOST THEIR GRANDMOTHER.


charmedgirl wrote:

fuck you for trying to use those kids against me you self-righteous bitch.
i'll take my chances.

boring, dizzy

i have nothing to say that hasn't been said, by me and everyone else, three thousand times. it sounds the same, feels the same, looks the same. i have it all, i have nothing.

i am going around in circles.

i can't remember who wrote they couldn't stop themselves form reading birth stories. i am stupid; i should have been warned. someone on another group, on a completely different topic, posted her very recent birth story and i couldn't not read it.

it's haunting me. i am jealous. i can't stop thinking about it...that fucking bitch.

i'm not the jealous type. soulmate friend is going to give birth within the next two weeks, and until now i've been as happy as i think i possibly could about it...until now. now i'm scared. now i'm scared to go to the hospital and cry and cry and cry. i will still go to the hospital, because i want to. i may stay in the waiting room...but i probably won't. and if i cry, and cry and cry, then i guess that's just what's going to happen. she will still love me no matter what, but i know it will hurt her, because she would rather have the pain for herself than see me with it.

i'm sorry, c, in advance.

it just occured to me that i may feel so angry towards anonymous birth-story lady because i won't allow myself to be angry about soulmate friend. well, so be it......because that's the way it's going to stay.

i am going around in circles.

thanksgiving

i'm just going to say what happened, besides three valium, a shit load of wine, and basically no food.

my mother is a total self-centered child. my sister and i planned every course and made all the food. did i mention my mother is totally incompetent? how did this woman raise three children? mind you, i say "raised" pretty casually. and i don't feel anyone gave two shits about the effort my sister and i made for the meal.

the highlight of my night was crying incessantly about my dead baby. when people started to filter into my safe room, i went onto the bathroom where i rocked her back and forth. crying. soon i pulled the towel from the rack and cradled and rocked it and cried. sick, yet satisfying.

i am not thankful for anything. well, i am thankful for my children, yet i don't really feel thankful. that's the truth as it exists for me.

my baby is dead, goddamn it. i have alot of hatred about that.

i mean, what the fuck?

thankful?

"you're very lucky to have three beautiful, healthy children."

"and you have a nice house in a nice area."

"you should be thankful you have a good, supportive husband."

"thank god she didn't die of sids instead."

"you're lucky, you already have a boy and girls."

"your family is so supportive, you should be grateful."

"well, you're lucky you carried to term so it wouldn't happen again if you wanted another baby."



am i an asshole because- although i have said these things to myself, and been comforted- that i get pissed off when someone else tells me? i mean, who the hell are they to try to cheer me up with consolations? do they really think that because those statements are true, it should make the aftermath of a dead baby any easier?

and that's why i think i'm an asshole. because those things DO make it easier, and i am more thankful than i've ever been. but i just think that's for me to think, and not for them to say.

which makes me an even bigger asshole. because i've said some of those very things before i had a dead baby of my own...


edited to add: please go to Afterwards to read a waaaay more fitting post on thankfulness...make sure to get your hankie first...

*the* story, part three

ok, so we elected not to spend the night at the hospital, but to get admitted in the morning. after showering and vomiting, i had to face my family before i was off to l&d. god i'm getting anxious just typing it. my mother was here, my grandmother, my sister...and of course the three children. my face was a swollen mess (kinda like my belly). saying goodbye to the kids was the hardest, as my other family knew i was going to rush the goodbyes and get the hell out.

on the drive to the hospital, i told husband i didn't want to see her. he said ok. we got up to l&d, i changed out of civilian clothes, and laid in the bed. i can't even explain how i felt. horrible, surreal, tired. the doctor came in and told me he wanted to wait for his partner to do the c-section, and it would be around 2pm (it was probably about 10am at the time). he could do it sooner, he said; he could just grab another doc if i wanted him to. i said no, 2pm was fine. what the fuck was another few hours? the baby's dead, people. there's no emergency.

i remember a few key things from the next three hours before surgery. first, my special nurse just came right out and said we should think about holding the baby. for some reason, i immediately said ok, even though i really didn't want to during the drive. then, during further conversation, she happened to say, "she's your daughter." husband started sobbing, and told her that no one's said that; it's been, "it's not good news," or "the baby," etc. we cried together for a while. a little while later, special nurse came in and told me she had a sweet girl in the waiting room for me. it was soulmate friend, who told special nurse she wouldn't come to my room unless i asked for her. i think she'd been there for an hour already. she was 6 months pregnant at the time, and didn't know how i was going to react to her...she had driven over an hour and would have just sat in the waiting room all day until they kicked her out. i wanted to see her, and she sat with me the whole day. she told me she didn't care if i turned into one of those who hated pregnant people and couldn't see her for a while, she still loved me. i think she was way more upset about being pregnant during this than i was.

surgery time came, and i remember the two guys coming in with the nurse. i cried the whole ride to the operating room. i calmed down when we got there; i thought i didn't want to get all worked up for the surgery because it might make for complications. then the anesthesiologist came in to give the spinal, so i sat up. special nurse was there, and she held me, like a hug, and told me what was going on with the spinal- here's a pinch, here comes a sting. the thing was, i couldn't give a shit less about the needle in my back...i was facing the bassinet they put the babies into after they yank them out. jesus, that flannel receiving blanket with little pastel baby pictures...all i could think was, "that's where my dead baby is going to lay...that's where all the other babies squirm and cry." i cried softly as not to disturb the spinal. special nurse hugged me and said very kind things, and i remember thinking i would always be thankful she was there.

they strapped my arms down, and husband came in and sat at my head. we looked at each other for a long time. i was drugged, but very present. i remember the anesthesiologist kept asking me if i wanted a sedative, and i said no. the whole thing was such a nightmare to begin with, but i didn't want to step out. i wanted to experience it; i wanted to be able to remember what happened. it was like i was saying, to myself, I'M NOT WEAK. this is all i'm going to have of birthing her and i want to remember it, goddamn it all to hell!! husband, at some point, started to get dizzy and sat in the hall, and special nurse came back and stroked my cheek and cried with me. i love her for that.

the surgery was fine- pressure, tugging here and there. but then the time came to deliver her. there was alot of pressure, which was fine, but then he couldn't get her out. oh god, they were pulling so hard i thought they were going to pull my lungs out with her. at one point, he asked the nurse to get forceps, but then said no, she was coming. she was really big. special nurse and husband left to bathe and dress her. i hate that i couldn't be there for that.

p@ige francesca

september 9, 2007

2:34pm

9lbs, 13oz * 21 1/2 in

i finally got back to my room, and was itching like a madwoman. i was so damn itchy!! turns out morphine makes you itch very badly. that really sucked. i remember wondering how people got hooked on it when it sucked so bad.

special nurse came in and asked if i wanted to see the baby, and i said yes. she wheeled her in, and told us she was a beautiful baby. when i saw her, i was...horrified? her face looked contorted. special nurse warned us that she would look like that; she must have died about 36 hours before birth. i held her, and husband and i cried. i wish i unwrapped her, but at the time i was nervous to. she had some areas where the skin was blistered, and i was afraid she would look very bad under the blanket. but i still wish i saw her whole body.

the rest of the day i sat with husband, soulmate friend, and my sister. i remember being so extremely rational about it all, saying it was better that she didn't die of sids. there must have been something wrong with her, and she would have died even if she was born alive. these things happen, if there's beauty in life there must also be beauty in death. whatever.

the next day, i asked to see p@ige again. when i saw her, i thought, thank god i am seeing her again; her face had settled and she looked like her sister. she was cold, but i touched her face and her nose and chin. i told her i was sorry. i told her i wanted so badly to have her...it was supposed to be me and her. i took a picture of her at that moment...our only special moment that would ever be.

in the following days, i was pretty comfortable. the surgery wasn't AT ALL what i experienced with the triplets. it was so much less painful, and i remember thinking, thank god i didn't have to suffer that much because the baby isn't even alive. i was very rational and easy at the hospital. the only times i would cry was in the bathroom, and not because i was alone. it was the blood. something about the smell of the blood smelled like a newborn to me...maybe from my smell memory of having the first three...i don't know. but i sat on the bowl and smelled the pad and cried.

the milk started to come in on the third day, and i wished i put the sports bras on BEFORE it happened. they told me i should, but i just didn't. i asked them if they took donated milk because i would have pumped for a while (i don't know how long) if they did, but no. by the time i got home it was pretty bad, but cabbage leaves in the bra worked within a day! one problem down, thirty bazillion quadrillion to go.

so, there i was. home. back to reality. back to real life. back to the kids and house and laundry and fucking tv. there i was, with no baby. no baby inside, no baby outside.

the worst was yet to come.

fantasy football

husband: i set up a fantasy football team for you, and you're doing better than me!

me: well, it's really you, isn't it??

hb: yeah well...see? you're name is charmedgirl mama and your team is the incubators!

me: ummm, why would you do that? why would you make it all about pregnancy and shit?

hb: well i set it up...BEFORE.

me: clearly that will end badly.

seething, and nine months

aaaaaaaaaand that pretty much sums it up.

i am so angry. i have no patience for my children or husband. everything is making me so mad i could spit. i've never felt this fucking angry before in my life! sometimes when i'm rational, i admit it must be a result of dead baby, but i am not sad so emotionally i vehemently deny it. as far as dead baby goes, it happened and that's that. i've cried. i've felt horrible. jealous. shitty. numb...and those stages piss me off too. isn't that what it's called? stages of grief? well, fuck you, elizabeth.

i don't even want to write. a thousand posts fly through my head a day, yet i'm too mad to sit down and write them. i am exercising like a woman possessed. i can feel the adrenaline boiling in my blood.

there is one coherent thought i can string together for this post. it's been about two months since dead baby. seven more to go...you know, as many as i was pregnant. i keep coming back to the thought that i am pregnant with my future self; i am developing what i am to be. there's alot of ugly shit that goes on in the womb (for some wombs more than others), and this shall be no different. this is not to say it will end there (even if i did say it, i know it's not to be). but for the love of all that's holy...i need some kind of, of, of...DATE. i need to not look into my future forever and think that this shitty, aggravating moment can last that long. i need to think that this exhausting work of living will, at some foreseeable point, become easier.

so for today, nine months.

waiting

soulmate friend is 36 weeks pregnant.

we were talking the other day about when she might have the baby; her last one came two weeks early. she, of course is done with being pregnant. the exasperation in her brought me right back to the end of the summer- GOD was i sick of being pregnant. i was transported right back into my hugely pregnant body, back into all the emotions of, "when is this going to happen? i just need to know WHENNNNN!" i am definitely a planner.

talking to her made me realize that somewhere inside me, i'm still waiting. literally, i think. i am trapped in the most expectant time that could possibly be. none of it will EVER come to fruition. i started to think, somewhere deep in my soul, will i be waiting forever?

to sleep...

last night
i had a glass of wine and a valium
i went into bed
and cried and prayed
that i would dream of her
i didn't

a tale of three pregnancies

i was married for the first time when i was 20, he was 29. the day i sent out the wedding invitations, i ate an entire carvel cake in the shape of a bunny. two weeks before the wedding, i cried to two girlfriends on three-way calling that it may be a big mistake. i was young and had yet to find my balls so i went on with the show, with the thought that i could get divorced. it's funny to think about now; i didn't even know the depth of his evil before we married. the day of the wedding, my best friend and soulmate (the one who is now about to give birth) cried the whole time; there was not a single smile in any photograph from her. we separated for the first time three months after the wedding, but got back together. at about the year mark, i fell pregnant. don't you love that term? OOPS...i've fallen pregnant! fuck me.

i was pretty screwed by my own father, so i knew very early on that my first responsibility as a mother was to give my child the best father i could, with the knowledge i had at the time. i mean, i'm no nostradamus, but it was pretty clear that bastard wasn't the one. three days after i learned of my *fall*, i was spread eagle in a clinic. yeah, people, you heard that right: the girl with IF, IUIs, IVF/ICSI, and a dead baby had an abortion. i never felt sad about it- not the day it happened, not months or years later, not during my years of infertility when i had no idea i'd ever be a mother, not even now that my baby is dead. i am nothing but proud that i was a good mother to that child.

fast forward through a divorce after two years of marriage, three years of dating husband, and one year of marriage. soulmate friend had her first baby- a girl. the day after husband held her for the first time, we decided we would start trying for a baby ourselves. my cycles were still off (as usual), but i'd been pregnant, and he'd had a girl *fall* pregnant (hehe- can't help it) as well (both pregnancies ended the same way). after a year, my gyn prescribed clomid. nothing. he referred us to an RE, who performed an IUI with clomid. nothing. i started getting freaked out about the possibility of IVF (i didn't want twins- HA!), so for the next year, i went au natural. acupuncture, herbs, tinctures, charting temps and cervical nectar, LH sticks, meditations, yoga for fertility, visualizations...for a year. and that resulted in, well, nothing. i relented at that point, and we went back to the RE for IVF. long story short, we had three embryos by transfer, transferred three, and had three babies at 32 weeks. one boy, two girls, 4lbs each. NICU for three weeks to learn to feed and grow. all in all, pretty uneventful, despite doctors at every turn warning us not to get too excited; we could end up with three babies, two babies, one baby, or none, give or take countless disabilities of prematurity. but alas, my charmed life proved true to form. three perfect babies.

too bad that's not the end of it. my life with those babies the first year sucked ass. not only did i have all the logistical bullshit of caring for three newborns, i had the infertile girl's guilt for feeling like my life sucked ass with babies. i didn't enjoy them. i have virtually no good memories with them, and i question whether i just don't remember, or if there were any good moments at all. all those years trying, fantasizing, planning...gone to shit. i will always feel robbed (for what i lost) and guilty (for what they lost) about having three at once. and to top it off, i'm now a freak for life. i'm the triplet lady, forever and ever. (little did i know it was just practice for the real freak show: dead baby mom!).

fast forward through their second year, during which we bought our first home (an hour away from where we're from). it was my second year of co-existing anxiety and depression; i had gone from a successful, educated, socializing girl to a homemaking mother of three in her first home, waaaay away from home (well, far enough to keep me from a casual night out with the girls). i was all over the place. november brought the start of the holiday season, and the switch flipped. i was getting myself back together. we had decided that we wouldn't have any more kids, i started working out and losing the baby weight, and planned for my future...until the fateful morning in january when i opened the bedroom door where husband was sleeping. a gush of body odor assaulted my ultra-sensitive nose and i felt hatred for him, and in that moment, i knew i could be pregnant. two lines instantly appeared. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?? i didn't want more children. i was just beginning to get my shit together! goddamn you, universe!

so, there i found myself, pregnant. there began the process of adjusting all thought, plan, and reason to the positives of another baby. i could experience labor and birth. i could experience the joys of the 1:1 mother to baby ratio. i could experience actual breastfeeding as opposed to pumping 3/4 gallon of milk a day for a year like a goddamn dairy cow. the sibling age gap seemed ideal. my thoughts about sending all three to kindergarten on the same day and finding myself alone were gone...i'd have a three year old to buffer. on the flip side, i had alot of ambivalence about all those positives; how would i deal with the guilt of giving all that 1:1 time and attachment to her and not my first three?

fast forward to her due date....

"baby sister"

why is it that both my daughters have suddenly taken to calling their stuffed penguin and elmo dolls their "baby sister"??? yes, they are wrapped in blankets; swaddled, you could even say. but, suddenly, the *baby sisters* are crying, giggling, being held like babies, and sung to...

now, we could get all deep and say that even though they haven't asked any questions about the disappearance of my HUGE belly, or the lack of appearance of any REAL baby sister (like we talked about).....we can say they are working through their 2.5y/o feelings. they are going through their own grieving process.

...or that's what people say when i tell them about the totally inconvenient time they chose to play the normal little girl game, "baby sister."

F*CK. and f*ck again.

anais

And then the day came when the risk
to remain tight in a bud
was more painful
than the risk it took
to blossom.

I stopped [...] a long time ago.
What remained was the slavery to a pattern.

Life is a process of becoming, a combination of states we have to go through.
Where people fail is that they wish to elect a state and remain in it.
This is a kind of death.

We don't see things as they are,
we see them as we are.

What I cannot love, I overlook.
Is that real friendship?

girls untied, united

my mind is all a flutter.

it is by total shock and surprise that i find myself immersed in the world of self-help; not for the first time in my life, but probably the most intense. i find myself needing to repeat: my baby died inside me after nine months of pregnancy. yes, it really happened. yes, TO ME. yes, it will never go away; it is forever.

it's been amazing to me to be a part of the blogging baby loss community, to read...read, and read and read. we are so different, yet the same. those women, years ago, before the internet, before groups...i can't imagine the torment of the horrible dead baby thoughts. we, together, know that they are not original. we, together, learn day by shitty, sad, meaningless, angry, or numb day, that it's all what is to be our lives for an unknown period. we, together, write vomitously to ourselves and each other and realize it's the best we can do. our collective energy is so strong. i am so grateful.

after it happened, i knew i couldn't pretend it didn't. i joined an email loop. let's just say i didn't find that to be a healthy outlet for my grief, so i went to the hospital support group. that was pretty good; i felt normal in that room of other dead baby parents. none were to jealous or hateful or angry on that first night and i felt calm about it all. i thought at first that i wouldn't need a therapist; this was about dead baby, not my personal shit, right? well, not so much. so i got one of those, too. i am such a good dead baby mom! yikes.

i am finding this thing is a two-headed monster- the grief and the past; the death and how it filters through my particular brain. i am starting to realize that paige's death is also pushing to the fore all the tragedies previously scored on my spirit. my real work is in trying to recognize the landmines that are my unhealthy and unproductive responses...namely: run away, you worthless fatty.

i am currently having some mind-blowing dialogue with an incredible woman about attachment; how a break thereof in childhood can make this emotional trip down dead baby lane seriously complicated.

it's amazing what can happen when women come together.

in your face, world

a few weeks before my due date, i ordered my birth kit. it had all kinds of stuff: mucous syringe, pads, squeeze bottle, herb soaks. i opened the box when it came, and there, above the plastic blue pad backings, was a tiny off-white baby cap. it made me think of the birth- something i was so excited, nervous, and curious about. i studied some midwifery in college and was so sad about the c-section i had the first time around. i wanted to experience birth and she was my partner. and there, before me, was the actual beanie she would be wearing when we met.

while i was in the hospital after she died, husband and friends dismantled the birth pool at home. i instructed my midwife to also take the birth kit. what the f*ck would i do with it?? she had plenty of women who were lined up to birth LIVE babies. i wonder if it was a girl or boy who wore p@ige's cap. i wish i told husband to take it out of the box.

my midwife called last week to ask me if i would be ok with the recipients sending me a check for the kit. i said i was...hey, there's always something to use $65 bucks for.

i used it to buy a little 3-line plaque for p@ige. it will be added to a big wooden wall plaque on the labor and delivery floor where she was born. i almost feel like it's my own personal joke...putting my dead baby's name and birth date on a plaque surrounded by "welcome to the world sweet benjamin!" and shit like that.

really, though, my time in the hospital was special to me; as special as it can get when your dead child was pulled out of you just days before. it was the most normal i've felt since it happened...laying there, not fit for the tasks of regular life. being a patient, being a victim of circumstance. i didn't have to fake it when i was there. i was a dead baby's mother. period.

p@ige francesca mcnamara

september 9, 2oo7

thank you, mary pat

(mary pat, my special nurse)

so there, world of crying babies born alive. SO THERE!

and so it is

the past two days have been bad. angry and sad, all at once.

all i know is, i need to be going somewhere; i need to change. i can't be what i was before, and i don't want to... but i need to go slow enough that the mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual can all keep up.

the void

i've been saying i feel nothing, but retain a sense of being off. how long have i felt this way? have i lived for many years in a state of numb comfort?

i'm not just saying it feels like years since my baby died, although it seems decades longer than seven and a half weeks. i'm saying that i think this coping mechanism (you know, the one that masquerades as strength and courage) has been working overtime since long before i had "dead baby" on a loop.

i've also hinted at food issues. it began with anorexia at 13, continued with bingeing through my first marriage, and finally morphed into cycles of binge/diet (this last phase is still referred to as bulimia because the food restriction period after a period of bingeing takes the place of vomiting). i actually tried to throw up many times; i couldn't get it to work. i remember i went to a therapist for my eating disorder and the first thing i said to her was, "i wouldn't be here if i could get myself to throw up." addictions are maddening.

i had everything totally under control. my perfect weight was painstakingly maintained (give or take), i had a great job (well, it was prestigious but i didn't like it), i was in graduate school, had a pretty good marriage, and a very full social life. on the outside, i certainly was living the charmed life.

i'm also pretty self-reflective, and i'm no stranger to therapy. my parents are screwed up, and let me count the ways in which they negatively impacted my psyche. i understand all that, if not emotionally, at the very least intellectually.

if i've learned anything about addictions/addictive behaviors, it's that the substance/behavior is used to push down feelings. there is a void which must be filled, and the addict fills it with their substance/behavior of choice to avoid intense feelings. the *high* creates numbness.

i completely understand what those intense emotions are about this time. my baby, whom i carried for nine months, is dead. when i initially felt those horrible feelings, that total sense of loss, i felt filled up for the first time in a long, long time. it was very dark, but purposeful. it was REAL.

but now...now i feel normal again. i feel a nothingness that should be new. i mean, shouldn't it feel different than before?

if that numbness is a stage of grief, what have i been grieving all these years? what have i been stuffing down with food or lack thereof? have i been stuck, grieving some unacknowledged loss all this time?

i know that *sense* that something is missing is my baby. but the void- the scary, huge space- that's bigger than my current trauma. am i now damned to the hell of unraveling the WHOLE THING? am i going to drown in dead baby AND my past? and what is it, anyway? total deconstruction of my entire personality and how i cope with feelings of loss and rejection? although i don't like the food issues, i actually LIKE the way i deal with things.

i'm angry that i not only lost my baby, but my entire sense of self. or maybe i'm angry because i've been avoiding the real emotional work my whole life.

i'm definitely, without question, angry that someone out there is thinking, "see? everything happens for a reason..."