What if it never gets better? (Yes, I know. Everyone says it will get better, but what if I'm so damaged I can't? What if I'm so fucked up anyway, I'm just not strong enough? I have moments, hours, sometimes a day or two where it's not so bad, but hitting the ground hurts each time hurts as bad as the first.)
It took me so long to get to a decent place, mentally, emotionally. I'm so afraid I'll never get back there.
I know I won't be the same. I know that. But what if I don't like the person I've become? I'm already uncomfortable in my own skin. The world feels like a minefield. And I'm blind and groping around on all fours. I feel everything, and little of it good. Every rock, every thorn. The holes that knock me off balance. I'm so tired of it. I can have a good day, and then there's the hole. There's the mine.
What if I never regain a sense of trust in the world? In myself? It seems the circle of safe people has shrunk. And continues to shrink.
When we first lost the boys, I couldn't wait to get pregnant again. Now the idea scares the hell out of me. And the idea of not having more children scares me just as much. And the clock ticks. What if we run out of time before I'm ready?
I've always wanted to raise my children to believe in the good in the world, to trust in people. What if I can't do that now?
3 comments:
The house is dark and I'm sitting in the kitchen on my computer wondering these same things. Within a few days of coming home from the hospital I ordered several books on trying to conceive again after a loss. I wanted to stick over the grief and go right to getting a baby. I wanted a baby right away. I would have tried to get pregnant that very month if my husband had let me. And now here we are just a handful of days away from my ovulation on our first cycle to try again and I'm so scared that I can't sleep. My whole life has become about this and I'm just frozen in my tracks.
I decided long ago, months after the event, that it wasn't going to get better. But that I was going to get better at living with it. That somewhere there would be some kind of meeting between the yuck and the function, and I'd hit equilibrium. I don't think I'm there yet, but certainly much closer than last year. I think things sort of become more blurry and out of focus, not that the fear still isn't with you (because jesus, I'm going through some of these questions myself), but it becomes less . . . pointy? If that is indeed better. Maybe I'm not the one to answer this.
I realized at some point that I wasn't asking these questions simply because I was living day to day, caring only about getting through the immediate things in front of me, immediate tasks, and not so much wondering about looking ahead. Screws up the planning and logistics of many things big time, but it has been helpful to me.
What helped me perhaps was that we always knew we would try again. So the big question was never a question. But getting through the time was like eating an elephant-- one bite at a time.
I am still sort of in that mode, but I am also less raw, so I am not feeling every little bump on the road.
Post a Comment