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?

Back to Work & Losing my Shit...Twice.

Warning: I consider this a sacred space where the four of us are together as a family, and so I normally try to steer clear of any offensive language. However, this post, as indicated by its title, has broken this "rule", I hope justifiably so. Profane language ahead.

Tomorrow, I return to work full time after having the entire summer off. And I honestly don’t know how I feel about that. Most of my anxiety stems from thinking time is really going to start flying, and then suddenly the one year birthday of our twins will be upon us, and nothing will have been planned or organized because I find it all to be extremely overwhelming for a number of reasons. Let’s face it; it’s only a little over three months away.

I still cannot believe this.

I cannot believe that in a little over three months, I will be a mother to a one-year-old daughter.

I can not believe that in a little over three months, it will mark one year since saying goodbye to Elias and all our dreams of raising twins, one boy one girl, same-aged siblings with names specifically chosen to go perfectly together.

I don’t know what’s more difficult to believe, honestly. I can’t decide which part of my reality is more difficult to process, as I still to this day find it hard to believe I have a living child. Is that messed up?

The mind, it performs some very mysterious tricks to protect itself, doesn’t it? I think mine is still recovering from my traumatic miscarriage in 2009. Some days I wonder if I have PTSD from my miscarriage, and if that’s why Elias died. Because I never got help when I needed it, and then I got pregnant again eight months later. I just pushed on with life after hearing, “Oh, miscarriages are SO common!” Why was that relevant? It wasn’t. I don’t care how common something is, if I’m fucked up from the experience, I deserve some fucking help. I will always feel partly to blame and wonder if my stress during my subsequent pregnancy caused something to go wrong, even though I have heard that women who lost their husband on the WTC attacks on 9/11 went on to all have healthy living babies despite their overwhelming anxiety, stress, and grief.

So tomorrow is my first full day of work. And just to clarify – no, this is not my return from maternity leave. I already did that, back in February, and yes it was brutal but also a blessing for me at that time. However, I welcomed summer when it came, and literally left work at work for over two months. Never even checked my email all summer long.

I figured I had a lot of other things to focus on, like my grief.
And spending quality time with my daughter.
And not being pregnant, which for me at the moment is a very good thing.

The past two summers have been horrible. Last summer I was pregnant and felt very isolated, depressed, anxious, and lost. The summer before that, I was pregnant, then I miscarried, and my world was literally painted black for a few good months before I even saw a sliver of light.
So this summer, while there is darkness in that I miss my son, I wanted more than anything to just revel in the normal pleasures of life. And I chose to do that as much as possible, I believe. I grieved, I blogged (though not nearly enough), I cried, I sobbed, I screamed, I went to therapy, and I even went to a pregnancy and infant loss support group that I had previously written off.
But more often, I went for walks with my daughter, I went shopping with friends, I laid out in the sun while she was napping (ohhhh, how I missed doing that the past two summers), I met people for lunches, I chugged iced coffees all day and sipped wine at night when I felt like it, I planned and coordinated get-togethers and parties at our house. I LIVED.

And what an odd feeling, to be missing someone so terribly, more than I ever have before, and to have a greater pain than I ever imagined myself knowing…and yet feel more alive than I have in years.

At any rate, inevitably, summer has come to a close, and I've had to get some work done in preparation for the upcoming school year. Leaving my daughter with my dad while I went up to school to prepare my classroom was brutal, for a number of reasons. First of all, I realize that this is going to be far more difficult than returning from my maternity leave. When I returned to work back then, the opposite would have about killed me. NOT getting back to some type of “routine” or new normal would have literally landed me in the loony bin or worse. I had to get back to work, I was desperate to keep busy and distract myself, not only my well-being but my very life depended on it.

Now? Not so much.
My therapist says that work will be good for me, as it will keep me from “ruminating” too much, and I think she does kinda have a point. But. What she’s not understanding is it’s different now. My daughter is a little PERSON now. She’s a child. She interacts with me, she lights up when she sees me, I can read her like nobody else can.
This wasn’t so back in February, when she was only two months old and I was in a complete daze most of the time.
I also worry more now than I did back in February. So much more. I know the SIDS risk goes down after six months, but Evelyn has been crawling since July. She wasn’t even seven months old yet and started crawling, which brings about a whole new set of fears. Just today she demonstrated her ability to crawl up two steps to get into the kitchen level of our home. Thanks, babe, just what I needed before returning to work, another “milestone” for you to hit and for me to worry will get you into something you shouldn’t be into.

This is just so hard.

Driving to work last week in order to prepare my classroom, my mind drifts to our loss and more sick ironies. The irony of my having “the perfect body to carry twins – nice and tall, thin but not too skinny”. No one was worried; my long torso meant I would not likely have them too early. We made it so damn far. DAMN IT. We overcame prematurity, damn it, that should have been the only thing we needed to worry about!!!
But no. So terribly naïve.

A green light becomes yellow, then red, so I stop and decide to stop obsessing and focus on the day ahead of me. A bright flash of color catches my eye, and I immediately notice that the car in front of me has a yellow sign hanging in the back window, “Twins on Board!!!” FUCK! FUCK FUCK FUCK!!!! Are you fucking serious?!?!?! I pull closer, peer in the back seat, and see two car seats…The same ones we have. Er, HAD. I literally start yelling at this woman, “FUCK YOU!!! YAY YOU HAVE TWINS, YOU WANT A FUCKING COOKIE? DOES THAT MAKE YOU SPECIAL SOMEHOW?!?! FUCK!”

Not a proud moment.

(I had the windows up, and there’s no way she heard me or even noticed, so relax.) Yeah the sign she had was tacky, and I never would have flaunted my mother of twins "status" so blatantly as to hang a sign in my vehicle, but she didn’t deserve my anger directed at her.
But then again, it wasn’t at her.
It was at the universe.
The universe that handed us this hand, one that I didn’t deserve, my husband didn’t deserve, my daughter didn’t deserve, our parents and sisters didn’t deserve, and my son certainly didn’t deserve. The universe that decided that all of this loss wasn’t enough and decided to place a car with that stupid freaking hangtag right in front of my van.
A tiny compact car full of twins, while I drive my empty minivan to work with one car seat in the back.

At work, more triggers. I go to sign out a video from the library and notice I signed out the exact same video on the exact same day one year ago, to the day. I remember last summer and all the anxiety of having to set up my room (I had moved classrooms) while five months pregnant with twins. I was TERRIFIED that something I would do would trigger preterm labor and I’d lose them. Or I’d have incompetent cervix and randomly lose them like some women do, no warning.

Sure, a year ago, when I moved classrooms, I had people helping me move things around and lift heavy books, but it wasn’t enough. Nothing was ever enough to keep me calm and feeling like I was doing everything to protect my babies. I was fiercely protective. Overprotective. And then one died, and maybe, just maybe, if I hadn't worried so much about the logistics of moving classrooms, Elias would be here. ((See the shit that runs through my head? Why do I do that to myself? It doesn't even make sense!))

Needless to say, my classroom was not properly organized during its move last year. I had been SO excited about finally getting a new classroom and being forced to actually go through all my stuff and make it clean and nice and neat (I had signed up for the task well before knowing I was pregnant with twins, btw), but that wasn’t going to happen with other people moving all my stuff. And it wasn’t going to happen when all I wanted was to go home and lay down on my left side and keep my babies safely inside where they could grow, grow, grow, and I could just be left alone from a world that didn’t understand what I was going through psychologically, being pregnant after a loss. They say with twins you worry times two; I say you worry times twenty. Factor in a previous loss, and, well, you get my point.

After signing out the video, I went to my room and saw how messy everything was. Materials strewn around haphazardly, no rhyme, no reason, no organization, period. And I just got pissed. I got so freaking angry. Resentful, even. I should have been able to get all of this organized before, but I couldn’t, because I was stupid and thought I could control things and chose to stay home and be a hermit to keep my twins safe. Then, when I came back from maternity leave, I should have been able to get all of this organized, with all my happy new mommy vibes and renewed zest for life, but I couldn’t, because my son died, and I was a freaking mess myself. I could barely remember to shower or brush my teeth much less go through file folders at work and alphabetize my materials.

A few days later, my husband had a day off and came up to work with me to try and help me get organized, and I just lost it. Hot tears rolled down my cheeks, and he just stood there looking very confused and frustrated. I said, “I shouldn’t have to DO this!!! All of this stuff should be organized already, but it isn’t, and I don’t know why this is such a trigger for me, but it is. I feel like I’m repeatedly being slapped in the fucking face, and I just really need to get out of here and go home!"

Sigh.

My classroom is still not the way I would like it, although I made progress on my subsequent visits there after those two extremely difficult days. Please wish me luck tomorrow as I venture back there. And please, please, please universe, if you’re listening, don’t let any students ask me about my “twins”. I realize there are some students who probably don’t know what happened, who only knew I was having twins but didn't hear about our outcome, and I have no faith in prayer, but I PRAY that none of those students end up with me as their teacher this year.

And please, just this once...No twins in any of my classes. I've had about enough of your cruel jokes, Universe. You owe me a break after that whole hangtag thing. Capiche?

Spring break. Yay?

I just wanted to tell those babylostmamas who may stumble across this blog that I am sorry, but I am not ready to share my story here yet. At least not with the same detail I've read in others' blogs. I can't share my son's "birth story". Maybe someday. I don't really know.
What I will say is that I have suffered a missed miscarriage in July 2009, followed by three very dark months of depression. The next three months I felt I was starting to "heal" somewhat, although I felt completely defective and questioned whether I would ever actually carry my own child to term. I literally had panic attacks over it, although at the time I didn't know what was causing them. When we started TTC again for our "rainbow baby" (will post definition later for those unfamiliar with the term), it took us six months. That doesn't sound long, and I know in the big scheme of things it's really not, but to me it felt like a lifetime. I had already put off starting a family in order to focus on my career and education, and to wait any longer for something I wanted so badly was just agonizing. I was about to pick up the phone and talk to my doctor about fertility testing, etc. when suddenly my home pregnancy test that cycle came out positive. I had convinced myself this one would be a missed miscarriage as well (defense mechanism, I guess), and I refused to get too excited or "count my chickens". So imagine my surprise during my first ultrasound, when I refused to look at the screen, and my doctor says, "Well there's the heartbeat. And there's the other one! You've got two in there!"

The fact that it was twins was a COMPLETE and total surprise. I was thrilled beyond belief. Terrified, yes, but incredibly excited. I felt like God was smiling down on me from the heavens and saying, "I love you. It's your time now for happiness and blessings from above. Enough pain for you." No, I didn't actually hear the voice of God. I didn't see his image in my grilled cheese sandwich or any other such nonsense people sometimes claim. Rather, it was just a *vibe* I felt from Him. I never felt closer to God in all my life. I was blessed with boy girl twins (I came to find out at my 19 week anatomy scan). Both babies grew wonderfully and were healthy and thriving. I couldn't have asked for anything more.

Well, except for both of them to actually live past birth.

So when I found out my son had suddenly passed away at a routine 37 week ultrasound in December 2010, after maybe 14 or so ultrasounds where both babies had strong heartbeats and had grown beautifully, I was just completely gutted. Just three days prior to that horrible day, he was deemed healthy after a biophysical profile and contraction stress test.

My heart was torn into a million pieces. I had mistakenly believed that God was watching out for my family.

So here I am, four months later, feeling utterly abandoned, betrayed, and brokenhearted. I also feel stupid, naive, and ashamed. I don't know where all these feelings come from exactly, but I have a myriad of emotions - so many that they keep tripping over each other, and I don't know what to do with them. Perhaps spilling them here will help calm them down a notch, even just for a moment in time.

So it's spring break this week, and I am home for the week full time with my precious daughter who is now four months old. I have been excited about spending time with her just the two of us and thought it would be relaxing compared to being at work full-time. But now that I'm home in this house with just her, I realize again how naive I was being about this. I am thrust back in time to those early weeks after our loss, when maternity leave officially started. What I now realize is that work has provided a distraction, a level of busy-ness, a welcome respite from the sheer exhaustion of grief. Let's face it, GRIEF is WORK.

Being home means I am again faced with that horrible reality that I am supposed to be raising TWINS. There are supposed to be TWO BABIES here, NOT ONE. Every moment of silence is deafening, because I sit and think about how much busier I should be, how much louder the house should be, how many more toys there should be, how we should still have the second crib set up instead of sitting in a closet, dismantled and useless. How I shouldn't have had to return the double stroller to Babies R Us, my tail between my legs, utterly defeated. How I should have been able to bring my long-awaited, much loved, much anticipated son home from the hospital sleeping soundly in his carrier.

How instead, I brought home a blue gift bag, full of pamphlets and other momentos that I couldn't even bear to look at.

As we approach Easter Sunday, I just don't know how to feel. I know I don't want to sing hymns about Jesus rising from the dead. I don't think I can handle it.

I know I feel broken, and depressed, and angry, and guilty, and I don't feel at all celebratory this season. I know I feel like a part of some big cosmic joke, a pawn in some sick twisted game, and I worry my Faith has been forever broken along with my shattered heart.