Trying

People who have suffered the worst loss imaginable have to fight for their lives every day. I know that sounds melodramatic, and even loss parents reading this might think "exaggeration much?" but stop and think about having your heart torn out and being expected to survive that? And yet, we do. Survive. But when do we get to do more than simply survive? Every day is a struggle to get out of bed, shower, get dressed, hell even breathing just hurts some days. Now that the first year has passed, I am making a conscious effort to emerge from my hermit-like self-loathing pity party state and be an active participant in life. My son wouldn't want it any other way. He would want me to fully LIVE. So as I said before, I am striving for that balance of work, home, friends, hobbies, myself, and all the other things that grief "stole" my attention from. This is kind of a HUGE deal. Not everyone gets here. Some people stay STUCK forever in the black mire. Well, apparently not all of my friends truly realize the significance of my efforts or how much more difficult it is for someone who is grieiving to try and throw something like a dinner party. I spent allll day Saturday cooking, cleaning, decorating, and getting amped up to have people over. Two couples that we were expecting to come over didn't show up. One of them had promised to come and were a huge part of why we were throwing the party, because they said they never do anything. Less than three days before the party, one of them mentioned to my sister that they wouldn't be able to make it due to a prior commitment (mind you, we had spoken about the party for weeks beforehand where nothing was ever mentioned about prior plans). I find that excuse very difficult to buy, and I need to emphasize that this person never even bothered to tell me directly or apologize or anything along those lines. They didn't even ask if my sister could pass the message along. (?!) Another couple said they were coming and just never showed up. We heard nothing. A week or so ago, another friend of mine ignored several of my attempts to hang out after saying she wanted to. This was a friendship that had drifted, and I was trying to do some mending, which takes a great deal of emotional energy on top of grief. I tried suggesting different things to do and at different times, and she never confirmed anything, so I finally said "What is going on????" and still no response. So, I'm about done. With everyone. I keep putting myself out there, and it angers me that people must think I'm better, that I don't need friends, and it angers me that they don't know that in many many ways I am still fighting for my very life. Fighting to have some kind of life outside of the loss world, to do more than simply survive but to live. It angers me that my husband doesn't understand that concept, either. How will anybody else get it when he doesn't? I remember when he used to "get" me. I miss those days more than ever. Overall, I feel so disrespected, devalued, alone, misunderstood, unloved, and unimportant. If I didn't have my daughter here, I think I'd just be done with it all. The weather is getting nicer, and I have the day off, I should be out enjoying it, but I just want to crawl in a hole and disappear.

Feeling off-balance.

I just want to say that I miss this place, and I miss reading blogs regularly and commenting and all of the above. I am really struggling right now to achieve some sort of balance. I have stepped away for awhile, mostly because I feel I was here perhaps too often, and that's not good either. Life is not meant to be spent tied to a computer screen. The positives have been that I'm taking a workout class and am also learning to cook and enjoy other things. However, something is missing, and I know that I still need to come here; I need to write and to read and to connect. I just don't know how to get things balanced. Slowly I am "unsubscribing" from people on Facebook and will be doing a cleanup. I feel I have overdosed on social media to some extent, and I want to emerge from the shadows and focus more on "real life" and all that is tangible. Then, I realize, I don't even know what that means or what that is. Between my career, my marriage, my home, my family, my friends, it's just so difficult to balance it all. New hobbies and interests have taken shape in my life, but where do they fit in, and how do I incorporate all of this new stuff and still come here? It blows my mind when people say they are bored. How the hell are people ever bored? Life is so painfully short, and there's so much I want to do, become, achieve, and explore. So many people to connect with. So many people who can change and enhance my life. I can't disconnect from the loss community, either - not that I would ever want to. No way, no how. I am judged by people (and it is very obvious) for still reading the loss blogs when I do (which isn't often enough), for connecting with other loss moms on FB, and for wanting to acknowledge and honor my son. Maybe to some extent at certain points in my life, things were lopsided in that direction, sure. But now, I am realizing that, and the problem is that I don't know how to fix it so that it all has its proper place. I've found myself becoming much more social lately, which also has its pitfalls. Anyone in the loss community will tell you that figuring your social life out post-loss is a very confusing and difficult task. Just when I open my heart to be vulnerable again to friends, I end up getting screwed over again. I am at a point in my life where I am done with games and passive aggressive relationships. You're either my friend or you're not. I realize friendships are on a spectrum, and they shift and morph, but there's also a limit. And when I feel completely disrespected and devalued? Time to move on. I don't know how to achieve balance in my life yet, and I realize that's the goal so many of us have. I don't know how to reach "integration" as some call it. I don't know how to just be at work and focus on work, or be at home and focus on home. Everything gets blurred, the colors bleed, the lines shift. Just as I don't know who to trust anymore or how I will ever be okay again, really okay again, without my son here. Everything is lacking clarity, and I feel aimless, confused, hurt, abandoned, and scared. My grief has new layers to it that I never knew before, and I have horrible flashbacks and nightmares that can be triggered by many different things. I don't want to say I have PTSD, because I don't really know, but it really wouldn't surprise me. Work used to be my safe haven, my place to go and get away from my grief, and it was easy to compartmentalize to some extent. Why fifteen months out (today!) is it becoming more difficult to do that? Why do I find myself crying at work during my lunch hour? Why can't I focus and be efficient? Why do I still not know what choices are best for me, and why do I feel like depression is lurking around the corner threatening to snatch away any joy and motivation I feel?

"Friends"

So even though I'm kind of in a place of nonsharing, I must share this. Staying busy HELPS me with my grief. It DISTRACTS me. It gets me OUT OF MY HEAD, out of my nasty thoughts and emotions, out of my pity party. You know what I've come to notice over the past year? If I want to do something with friends, 90% it is up to ME to get things going, invite people to do something, etc. I have always been THAT person - one who likes to get people together for parties big and little, one who likes to catch up with a friend over lunch. After our loss, I just want to say, WHERE THE HELL ARE ALL OF MY FRIENDS? I feel comfortable saying that here because by and large my "friends" do not know about this blog. But seriously, WTF. Do I have "dead baby plague"?

Further, I want to say, on behalf of myself and everyone else who is facing isolation from friends who put little to no effort into the relationship, do people REALLY expect grieving parents to be the ones to put effort into maintaining relationships?!?!? I am not saying that losing a child means you get to just throw your hands up and let everyone else do the work in maintaining a friendship, but seriously, you can NOT expect much from people who are facing the most horrible thing imaginable in their lives. I, us, ALL of us out here, deserve to have friends who step up to the plate and make things happen. We shouldn't have to lose our friends on top of our babies, unless we are being complete jerks and ignoring everyone's calls for months on end and unable to emerge from our hermit-like state.

Today I had a coffee date with a friend, one who actually puts effort into seeing me and having a real conversation with me, which was nice. I have a few friends like this, thankfully. But seriously. People know I teach, and they know I am on break for two weeks, and yet I can count on one hand how many people have actually contacted me to make concrete plans to get together. Two coffee dates, one lunch date, and one NYE party invitation.

I am grateful for those four people and the effort they put forth. I really am. But there is WAY too much down time around here. (It doesn't help that my husband could care less about having a social life and puts NO effort into inviting people over or getting out of the house.) What really burns my butt is that I have had friends completely disregard my twins' birthday and subsequent party. And I mean, completely. As in they didn't RSVP no (it was regrets only) so we expected them, then they didn't show up, and then they never told me why after the fact. (Please tell me if you think I'm over-reacting!) I find that a really hard pill to swallow, considering anyone who knows me knows how difficult and complicated their birthday would be for me and how much I NEED the support of my friends and family. I know that the world doesn't revolve around me (clearly, and thankfully), and that everyone has their own personal struggles and even tragedies, but that is just ONE TIME the entire year that I think really defines for me who is a friend and who isn't. Even people who weren't included in their birthday party gave me cards, little gifts in memory of Elias, or just a kind word or hug letting me know they're thinking of me during this complicated time of joy and sorrow. I am left feeling a little abandoned and much confused about those who didn't.

You know what's messed up? I'm kinda happy about this post, because it's the first time since my son dying that I've been able to get kinda fired up about something like this. That's progress in a way, right? I mean this is progress compared to, "I don't care what anyone does ever. Nothing matters. My son is dead, end of story." I am actually capable of getting fired up about people being assbags. I know people have their own lives, and I'm happy for that, but if they made little to no effort to be of any support to me this year or ever get me out of this house or out of my head for a while??? Well, let's just say I'm hearing what they are saying loud and clear without their having said a word. Which is pretty much the whole point. Silence speaks volumes, doesn't it?

A place of non-sharing, one year out.

I don’t know why but right now it’s just becoming more and more difficult to share anything here. I know that not many people “in real life” even know about my blog, but it IS public. I don’t want to go private at this point. But some days it just hits me that this is where I share some extremely personal thoughts, and I just don’t know if that’s okay or not. Grief is a private thing, right? So why did I even create this blog? I’m asking myself these questions and not coming up with answers.

I feel selfish in that I write more here about myself than I write here about my son. It makes me sad that I don’t know more about him. It leaves me feeling so heartbroken and empty that I don’t know what he would have been like or who he would have turned out to be. (And while I'm thinking of it, if you'll allow this tangent, let me just say this. I can’t stand it when people say, “Oh it must be SO difficult to look at your daughter and think about how your son would be doing the exact same thing had he lived.”…and yes, this is actually something I have heard literally and several variations of it…How freaking idiotic can people be? I don’t think there’s a set of twins out there who do the exact same thing 24/7; in fact, I’m pretty sure that would be impossible…And just because they were born on the same day doesn’t mean they would have hit the same milestones at the same time…They were over a pound apart weight-wise at birth, just as one example…OH and they were also different genders! And we can’t forget the tiny little fact that they were two completely separate individual human beings, different DNA and all that, can we? Apparently, some people DO forget. Two.separate.eggs.two.separate.sperm. I think I should start busting out diagrams for people when they piss me off.)

So back to my question, which is by writing here am I really honoring my son’s memory? It sure doesn’t feel like it. I don’t feel like I am ever doing right by him, just as I rarely ever feel I am doing right by my daughter. A friend and coworker the other day described me as living life with “an impossible situation”. It’s an understatement, sure, but Truth. Nothing I ever do feels right. Grieving while I have a beautiful daughter snoozing in her crib upstairs seems horrible. Enjoying life while I have a son who never got to breathe a breath seems horrible.

Maybe I should just try to be numb all the time and not feel anything so I can stop feeling so freaking guilty about whatever I’m feeling. But that would require drugs, and I’m not all about those.

So that’s it. I’m in a place of nonsharing, and it really sucks. I feel I am betraying Elias by not writing here enough. More guilt. *sigh* I'm also dealing with not knowing where I stand with almost everyone in my life. I see why the statistics are not in favor of couples staying married after a loss. I see why Those Who Have Lost Before speak of losing friends and family after a loss. Early out, I thought NO way, that won't happen to me. Well, a year out, it's happening, some of it at least. I just don't know who I can trust or lean on anymore. I feel VERY judged to still be so sad and be over a year out, like there's an expiration date on my grief, and we're past the point where it's acceptable. Like at some point you are seen as "the crazy lady with the dead baby" instead of a human being with a right to grieve, a person who has been thrust into an impossible situation every minute of every day for the rest of her life.