He's been gone longer than he was here.

How the hell can it be that this little person who I think about the first thing when I wake up in the morning and the last thing before I lay my head down at night has been GONE longer than he was HERE? For weeks, it's been this way. But I haven't written about it. I still don't think I should, but here I am. I don't have much to say about it, but I can't post about anything else without at least documenting this simple fact. This very simple fact that my adult brain is struggling with so. I can't believe he's been gone that long. In the early weeks, the thought comforted me, that soon we would hit this milestone and something would lift somehow. Now that it's here, it's not comforting, it's excruciating. I don't want to be this far away from him. I want my son. I want him back. How could someone who is such a big part of who I am be gone longer than he was ever here? I'm beyond sad. I know I'm not saying anything new, but the 9 month mark has really taken its toll. I've reached new lows. It's like I feel the anger, but it's buried so deep it won't surface, it can't surface, so it just builds quietly behind my smiles. I'm a robot going through the motions with a subtle hope lingering that one day I will be glad that I kept going through the motions when all I want to do is literally give up. On everything. Nothing makes sense anymore, and I question every single decision I've ever made - not just during my pregnancy but my entire life. So that is where my mind is at - wondering who the hell I am, how I got here, and whether or not this is where I should be. Maybe I was meant to be living an entirely different life. Right now, I'd take it. In a heartbeat. I can't stand myself or this reality. And if there is no "plan", and thus no way I could be "meant" to be living a different life, well I want one anyway, because this is just too freaking painful and I am a shell of a person. And I am having trouble, what with how chaotic and scary and random life seems to be, with seeing anything that's not directly in front of my face, with seeing anything in terms of long term. What's the point in believing in anything? What's the point in having any goals? If we have no control anyway why even bother? If we could get hit by a bus tomorrow why the hell watch what we eat today? What's the point in ever doing anything good or moral or ethical? People drink and do drugs and pop out healthy full term babies so they can go on to beat them or neglect them, while countless others endure multiple losses of perfectly healthy babies that they loved and wanted with everything in them. I can't believe I didn't see the lack of balance and symmetry in the world, but now that it's in my face, in full view, I can never go back to feeling loved and safe and protected. I don't know if I will ever trust anyone ever again. I put my faith and trust in many different places - in God, in my family, in my husband, in myself, and in my doctors - and nobody could make sure I brought home my two perfect babies with me. It's the worst betrayal, to trust others with something as precious as your children, and to have them die. How the hell did this happen. How the hell did this happen. How the hell did this happen. I can't even bring myself to type question marks, that's how robotic I've become. I can't bring myself to sob and scream these questions, they just play on a permanent loop in my head in the background like horrible elevator music. So here I am. Typing, typing, typing. Going through the motions. Because they tell me one foot in front of the other, one day at a time, one hour at a time, one minute at a time, one second at a time. But I don't know if I can trust anybody anymore, so how do I know they are telling me the truth when they say it will be worth it to get through the days a second at a time? And even if I do survive this, who the hell will I be when I come out on the other side?

A Literal Parade of Triggers!!! Yay!!!

So, my rant on the twin thing partly (but not wholly) was sparked by the fact that this weekend there is a friggin' FESTIVAL devoted to twins not far from my home. (Aren't I oh so lucky?!) In fact, one of my friends/coworkers lives on the parade route. When she moved there, she did not realize what she was in for. Soon, she grew to love living on the parade route (or at least did a good job making the best out of an annoying situation).

Obviously, if we lived there, we’d be moving in a split second away from this PARADE OF TRIGGERS. I can’t imagine much else that would be as horrific to me at this point on my grief journey as seeing droves of parents flaunting their twins and putting them on public display.

My friend has a party at her house every year on the weekend of this parade.
Every year we have gone, mostly to humor her. It is the one big party she has every year, and we don’t get out to her house often.
I remember the first time saying, “Well…I feel kind of odd attending a party for Twins Days when I am not a twin.” What place was it for me to go there and just stare at all the twins?
Seemed incredibly voyeuristic, no?
She said it was her party and anyone was welcome, that there would only be one or two sets of twins at the party. Basically, it was a good excuse to have people come over. She explained that people from all over the world come to Twins Days to participate in the parade and/or see all the twins and that it would be fun to “people watch”.

So, every year, we would go. Mostly to visit with our friend hosting the party.
To be honest? It always made me uncomfortable, but I don’t know if I ever thought through the “why” outside of feeling like a tourist. We just kept going every year as to not disappoint my friend.
When we conceieved twins, this friend was over the freaking moon, obviously. Going on and on about how Twins Days would be so much fun. In her mind it affirmed we would definitely be attending every year. She was so ecstatic.

Immediately, I started to feel even more uncomfortable than I had in the past about this spectacle devoted to twins. I was so incredibly in love with my children already, but in my heart I couldn’t bring myself to get excited about including them in any of it. It really got me thinking about how different my children would be treated simply on account of being conceived during the same ovulatory cycle, and I already started to kind of resent that. I didn't want the label, the extra attention, the early categorization of them as "different". I related so much to the women with living twins who said they hated the very word, that they just wanted their children to be treated as separate individuals.

A parade and festival for twins?
I didn’t get it.
Would I ever get it? If there was a time to get it, it would be at that point when I was expecting twins and could fully participate in these festivities for years to come after their births.
But I felt more annoyed at the idea than anything else.

I wasn’t sure I wanted to go to the parade that year. I was halfway through my pregnancy and wanted to take it easy. My friend assured me that I could lie down or just do whatever I felt was best once there. My parents were invited too (but never attended in the past as they thought the whole thing was odd too), but suddenly it seemed more “relevant” as they were expecting twin grandchildren. I thought it might be fun to go and bring them. My pregnancy was not only stressful and taxing on me and my marriage, but on my parents as well, who had seen their daughter endure the trauma of miscarriage and would worry until the babies were both here kicking and screaming, understandably. I thought, maybe if they see all these healthy twins, they will relax a bit.

Hell, who am I kidding, maybe I would relax a bit.

I chose a very understated dark gray maternity dress to wear and was mostly uncomfortable the entire day. For many reasons. One being, my friend kept pointing at my stomach, taking photos of my little bump, bragging to everyone that I had the youngest twins there. She even told me I should have worn a sign or something to indicate that I was carrying twins.

As I said before, the whole thing just didn’t sit right with me. Sometimes I wonder if I “knew” something horrible would happen, but then I realize that’s ridiculous. Yes, I was worried about my pregnancy, but that's true of most women who are told at their first ultrasound (after already suffering a traumatizing loss in the past),

"This means you are high risk. But don't worry, you are the lowest risk of the high risk."

Oh, ok. *whew?*

And honestly, even if my twins were both napping in their cribs at this very moment, it still wouldn’t sit right with me, and I wouldn’t want them to go. So I don't think my feelings on this point have anything to do with our loss.
In fact, last year during my pregnancy, I was already trying to concoct reasons why we wouldn’t be able to go to future Twins Days.
Wouldn’t the parade be too loud for the babies?...Wouldn't it be too stressful bring two infants out?...Wouldn't we just want to stay home and spend time with them?...

Having living twins, I probably wouldn’t have been able to get out of the feelings of obligation to go. And here I would be, dreading the party and all the ensuing awkwardness. I probably wouldn't be blogging about it (I wouldn't have a blog) but would be feigning excitement and wondering what my problem was. Which would be a hell of a lot better than sitting here missing my son so terribly.

Another point that really bothers me is that my cousin will be bringing her twin daughters in from out of state just to participate in this circus. No one has mentioned to me that they are coming into town, but I figured it out (Facebook makes detectives out of all of us). Am I crazy for thinking it would be really nice if they would just skip Twins Days this one time? (They've only gone one other time!) I feel like it's somewhat disrespectful toward me and my family. Maybe I am just oversensitive. (My husband thinks so. He says they should just live their lives and not worry about ours, basically. And an added point he throws in, is that as much as he would rather have his son here, he must admit feeling relief in that we have a "free pass" getting us out of ever attending Twins Days ever again. For me, it still stings to even hear about it, even though I never liked it to begin with. I know, I'm a hypocrite. Guilty as charged.)

I think what bothers me even more than my cousin bringing her twin daughters to the parade (I mean let's face it; it's their choice and their right...) is the thought that they will silently slip in and out of town without even so much as stopping by to meet my daughter. They are staying at my aunt's house who lives literally three minutes from our home. I'm assuming this is what will happen, as no one has said anything to me about their visit, and they are in town TODAY.
Do they not care about Evelyn now that she isn't a twin?
Does she not matter as her own person?
Is my cousin's family forever going to tiptoe around me simply because they have intact twins while I lost one of mine???
Do I deserve feeling like such a freaking outcast?!?!

*sigh.*

At any rate, now that my grief is so intensified by the whole “twin thing” being built up by society, this parade of twins literally sickens me. I think back to before we were pregnant and used to attend, and I remember hearing some people talk about how seeing so many twins in one place was “just so freaky”, which really drives my point home, no?

If the festival was about celebrating how much adversity the twins and their mothers had to overcome just to exist, now THAT would be a different story! To be fair, at Twins Days, sometimes I would see twins wearing signs/shirts that would say “32 weeker”, or “Twin-to-twin transfusion survivor”. If in the parade, these people were passing out pamphlets about the risks of a twin pregnancy or something educational / spreading awareness, then I would whole-heartedly agree with the concept of a parade. The subsequent festival after the parade could be a celebration of their lives.
However, not many wear such shirts or are looking to spread awareness.
Few people even realize that at the festival there are tables where people hand out information on some of these issues, because those tables are hardly a main focus.
There are also booths where researchers offer your children a candybar or a free eraser if they agree to be poked and prodded or have some type of testing done.
Mostly, there are vendors trying to make money on overpriced merchandise and food sold to people in attendance.

It would comfort me to know that the proceeds they make for entry into the festival went toward some kind of fund toward improving outcomes for multiple births (and maybe some of it does; I honestly don't know), but what I do know is that some if not all of it goes toward prizes for twins after they compete against one another in front of an audience on stage for "cutest", "most alike", "most different", and a whole host of other categories.

Two years ago I noticed a few people at the festival wearing shirts that said “Twinless twin”, and “Surviving twin” on them. It made me incredibly sad. So deeply sad. I thought, why would they want to come to this festival? I guess to celebrate their twinship? (And, what does that even mean?) I decided that maybe some of them simply wanted to attend in memory of their lost sibling. However, weren’t there other ways to honor them? And what were the parents thinking? Were they there for the “shock factor” of seeing people’s reactions?

I kept asking my friends, “Did you see that girl’s shirt?!”, but no one seemed to notice but me. It really troubled me, and I wondered what their stories were, but everyone else seemed more focused on ogling all the look-alikes swarming around.

I felt rattled, unsettled, and lonely in those moments.

Oh, what horrible foreshadowing.

I am not sad 24/7. For realz.

I feel a responsibility of sorts to push all the other blogposts I have floating around my head to the backburner for awhile and just say something.

So here it goes:

I am not sad 24/7.

For realz.

No joke, no fingers crossed, no bull.

I remember in the early days a coworker came to visit (yes, the same one I mentioned in a previous post about over-sharing). She brought a gift for Evelyn (cute girly outfits), and she also brought a gift in memory of Elias (a children’s book. I cried.).

I was still so early out that I was in complete and utter shock over what happened (this was maybe a month post-loss, if that). I said, “I think my life is going to be ruined by this.” When she asked me to elaborate on how I came to this conclusion, I simply said, “Look at the babyloss blogs. They are full of misery.”

Now, this woman had no idea what I was even talking about. So I had to kind of explain what the BLM community is and how many blogs there are floating around in cyberspace written by women whose losses completely destroyed their lives. Jobs lost, marriages ruined, no future children, multiple losses, no hope for the future, etc.

I had such fear in my heart and in my expression when I looked at her and said, “Will that be me?! Is this it? The best of my life is OVER, and I’m not even thirty years old? It’s just all downhill from here on out?!”

She simply responded, “Everybody grieves differently.”

I sighed, and let that comfort me as best it could. I moped for days thinking about how further down the road, once the shock of it all had worn off, I may be ruined by my loss like so many other BLM seemed to be ruined by theirs.

One day I logged into Facebook to find this message from her: “You said that you read a lot of the blogs and women never recover from the loss of a baby. But women do recover...or at least learn to move on. The blogs you are reading are from the women who have a difficult time moving on. The women who have managed to forge ahead with their lives are busy with their families, friends, careers, etc. and probably don't visit the sites as much as the women who are having a difficult time. I am not writing this to upset you...not even a little. I'm hoping that this will make some sense and help you in some way. You can tell me to shut up if you'd like. But just know that I'm thinking of you and wish you nothing but peace and happiness.”

Now, I know what some of you bloggers are thinking. And I agree, some of her words could cause offense (especially to those of us who are very raw in our pain). I don’t equate blogging with “having no life”, which is what she seemed to imply, and I recognize that part of what she wanted to communicate to me was that I need to enjoy my daughter and not spend all my time reading loss blogs. (Come on, that’s a good point, people.) But that wasn’t even the main point. She was trying to help me see that the loss blogs are only snippets and not necessarily representative of the entire loss community.

Her words seemed genuine enough, and I knew they came from the right place, so I started to think it over. And while I don’t completely agree with everything she said (I think you can blog but still have a life, or I at least like to tell myself that), I have my own version of the point she was trying to make: Most BLMs go to their blogs when they are having a horrible day. It’s cheap therapy. Get online, type type type, and not feel so “about to throw someone out a window”-ish. The blogposts created from such sob-sessions are clearly not indicative of the whole person behind them. They are a sliver of that person, a snapshot in time, a moment of pain so heavy that it requires sharing to lighten, a fear so sharp it needs expression to cut a little less. I am “guilty” of this myself, in that I don’t want this blog to become where I only go to vent, cry, rage, and whine. That hardly represents my grief journey in its entirety.

Yes, I mainly use this as a therapeutic tool, but I feel a sort of responsibility to say…to any future babylostmama that may come across this blog after losing her baby someday…I know I am over seven months out from my loss, but given that right now I would consider I am having a “low” point, I want to be honest about what that actually looks like. Aside from my moments where tears are falling.

-I still function.

-Most days, I even shower, brush my teeth, and do my makeup (still working on the whole flossing thing).

-I make an attempt to find clothes that fit and convey some aspect of my personality (challenging with the weight grief, not carrying twins, has added to my body).

- I do not live off of junk food and donuts, like The Secret Life of an American Teenager would have you believe. (One of the main characters just suffered stillbirth and frequents Dunkin' a bit much.) I sometimes eat breakfast. I always eat lunch. Not only do I eat dinner, but I have gotten into finding recipes to try, and we have fresh organic produce delivered every week to my husband’s workplace in an effort to learn how to be “grown-ups”. I have enjoyed cooking lately when I never cared to before, so I’d say I am developing new interests, which is not common for someone “depressed”.

-I regularly go grocery-shopping and run other errands and enjoy doing so.

-I recently went to a movie in a theater (haven’t done that since I was pregnant and saw Eat, Pray, Love) and saw a comedy. And I laughed, real laughs, not fake canned ones. More than once. (It was Bridesmaids.)

- I have listened to people complaining about trivial things, like the weather, without screaming, "Did your baby die?! No?! Well then shutthehellup!!!"

-I love Pandora radio and am a huge dork about it. I'm a big fan of trip-hop and post-punk and a variety of genres, and I sit there with Pandora open, and whenever it plays a song I love, I add it to my playlist on playlist.com. (I’m usually cleaning or something while I have it on.) I love showing off my awesome playlist when people come to visit.

-I attempt to work out and do yoga, although some efforts are more successful than others.

-I have composed mindless Facebook status updates (which for many months I wouldn't have cared to even try to do).

- I am sometimes able to make small talk with neighbors and acquaintances (not even kidding).

- I love to go shopping (which may possibly be retail therapy, I realize), and I love to kind of splurge and pamper myself after all the bedrest and…well, trauma I’ve endured.

-I have held a male infant without totally losing my sh*t, and if I’m being honest here…I didn’t even think about my son when I held him. He absolutely positively was not a trigger. I had a great day that day and didn’t shed a single tear, actually. (Although if I had held my daughter at the same time, I think that would have been a trigger.)

-I spend time preparing myself for novels I will be teaching this upcoming school year and am excited about the challenges that lie ahead with my career.

-I am still very much in love with my husband, although we both have a lot of work to do individually and in our marriage.

-Not to brag, but I am not exactly lacking in the friends / social engagements department. I am not some recluse who sits at home all day. I connect with others easily – loss and non-loss people. It's true; some friendships do not survive tragedy, but it doesn’t matter at the end of the day. If I can learn to live without my son somehow, then I can learn to live without fake friends.

-I have this new ability to throw things out that before I would have become overly emotionally attached to. (goes along with my last statement above!)

- 99% of people I interact with do not treat me like I have the plague. (Some might say, the dead baby plague.)

-I find joy in focusing on myself as a whole person, not as just the woman who lost a baby (or the woman who just had a living baby!).

-I revel in the blessing that is motherhood; I don’t take my daughter for granted; I don’t allow my daughter to be a constant trigger for my sadness at the loss of her brother.

-I have learned the complicated but useful psychological art of compartmentalization, and it has helped to save my life.

-I have moments where, in thinking about Elias, my heart fills with so much love for him – pure love unscathed by his death.

In the early days, I did not believe I would ever find joy again. I did not believe I would ever have a regular conversation again without my mind wandering to my son. I did not believe anybody would ever want to spend time with me. I thought I was cursed and would only bring pain to everybody around me. I did not believe I would be anybody other than "that poor woman who carried twins and lost one".

I realize that my loss is different than the loss of a singleton, just like the loss of one triplet is different than the loss of one twin, just like stillbirth is different from SIDS, and the list goes on. Every loss is different and yet the same. Losing one baby but still bringing another home from the hospital is different than coming home with empty arms.

It’s not easier, it’s not more difficult, it’s just different.

But differences aside, grief is grief, loss is loss, and I feel a sense of responsibility to say this today:

I am not destroyed.

Indigo is his own; blue always knew this.

I don’t know if people outside of the loss community can quite understand how much is lost BEYOND the obvious. I was just talking to some fellow BLMs about this very topic and how friendships change so much. Some friendships survive our losses. Some grow on account of our losses. And others die along with our children. But that is a post for another day.

Today I am full of another variety of sadness. I have always been the type of person to know myself, truly. Intrapersonal skills. Any personality inventory I took throughout school told me that was my strong point – knowing thyself. (I took a lot of these tests, actually, as I loaded up on psych courses in college.) I of course had other strong points but always scored so high in this area.

Now? Who the hell am I? Who the hell knows? I know that my son wasn’t all of me. I know that my daughter isn’t all of me. I know that being a mother isn’t all of me; my pregnancy wasn’t all of me; this desire for parenthood isn’t all of me. I know that I have an identity outside of this.

But what I don’t know is what has been changed about me on account of this loss. I feel so different, and I can’t sort any of this out. Sometimes I identify things that are different about myself, but I have no idea where they came from. I want to live life fully, but why? Because I am a mother to a baby I lost? Or because I am a mother to a baby I got to keep? These two things happened SIMULTANEOUSLY for me, so how am I supposed to untangle everything? I can’t figure out what changes have been made on account of my new parenthood any more than I can figure out what changes have been made on account of my loss. It all just sort of blurs together and leaves me feeling like such a stranger to myself. I have this intense need to understand myself and how I got to where I am. It just feels like such a betrayal now to sit and think wow, I have this greater appreciation for life, for example, but why? Does it come from losing my son? Does it come from mothering my daughter?

I don’t know why it matters to me. It shouldn’t, should it? What is, just is. But for some reason this really bothers me. I want to be able to tell my story and say due to a, b, and c…x, y, and z occurred. I suddenly don’t fit into any semblance of such an equation.

Cause and effect suddenly don’t have such a clear relationship.

Then again, I should know this after everything I went through to bring my babies home safely.

These are the things you don’t expect to grieve after the loss of a child. Why does identity matter in the face of a loss so enormous as your baby? So then those thoughts spiral and I wonder why I care about anything other than the fact that my son is gone. And I wonder how I can even begin to take an interest in my identity. So now this post has just brought more guilt. Which is ironic, because in my last post I said something about being kind to myself and flipping the universe the bird. I wish I could be kind. Mostly I am my own worst enemy. That much I do know about myself. The rest I guess will take a good long time to figure out. I am not comfortable walking around in this stranger’s body. It feels so foreign, like I’m intruding in somebody else’s space. Like I woke up out of a gentle dream into a living nightmare playing a character I never envisioned portraying.

I remember feeling this way daily in the early weeks and even months after our loss. Those first few weeks…when you first open your eyes and for a split second forget your baby died. Those precious seconds. You may even reach down to touch your belly, forgetting it’s flat and empty and aching for life inside. And then the sheer agony of your reality washes over you, and you think, “Why even get out of bed? Why even bother? Why even LIVE?!” But you fumble around and put one foot in front of the other like a toddler learning to walk for the first time. Clumsy and inexperienced in this new body, this new life, this new perspective.

Is it odd that I still feel like I’m walking around in a stranger’s body almost six months out from my loss? Does this mean I am still in shock or denial? I’m still thinking, “What?! Is this seriously my life now?!” I thought I was done with those feelings, and here there are sneaking up and smacking me upside the head so very unexpectedly.

I suppose grief in its many guises will do that, won’t it?

This has always been my favorite song by the lovely Tori Amos, "Your Cloud", but now it has taken on new meaning. I am reminded of this song by the post I just wrote, and I haven't listened to it in quite some time. It has to do with identity and not being able to go back to who you were before but retaining some of who you were. Just gorgeous. I love her. (Sorry but I can not figure out how to post a video. Here are the lyrics, and I encourage you to look up the song on youtube; it is just incredible.)

Where the river cross,
crosses the lake...
Where the words jump off my pen,
and into your pages...
Do you think,
just like that,
You can divide
This?
You as yours,
Me as mine,
to before we were
Us?

If the rain
has to separate
from itself
does it say,
"Pick out your
cloud"?
Pick out your cloud.

If there is a Horizontal Line
that runs from the map
off your body straight through
the Land shooting up
right through my heart,
will this Horizontal Line,
when asked, know how to find
Where you end?
Where I begin?
"Pick out your
cloud."

Who we were
isn't lost
before we were
Us.
Indigo is his own;
Blue always knew this.