Better

Thank you, everyone, for your kind responses to my last post. Friday was a bad, bad day. Today is better.

I'm almost embarrassed about my outburst/explosion/freak out, but to be honest, I'm kind of glad it happened. It's like, all the thing I was feeling all the sadness of the loss and, really, the anger came to ahead. I was never in denial of what I was feeling, but I had no idea of its depth.

I, like many people, have trouble with anger. Duh. When I feel angry, I tend to cry, and then sometimes yell. Ranting and raving, really. Not screaming. Usually, the crying is enough to dispel most of the tension around my anger, and then I can talk about it, or fight about it. I can use words.

**Digression**
((This whole experience from infertility to pregnancy to pregnancy loss and grief has been so physical, and I am so not someone who uses my physicality. I've never been athletic (quite the opposite), my interests tend to lean toward the sedate or mind-stretching activities. When I was a kid, I rode my bike, I walked into town with my friends. As an adult in the city, I depended on my feet to get me to the train or bus. I'd go home and take my parents' dog for a walk or run through a local park or woods.

After a year or so of infertility I started taking yoga at my clinic. A very mild, gentle yoga, which was just what I needed, being totally out of shape. It worked my body, relaxed me and, surprisingly, put me in touch with my body. The first day of class, during the very first relaxation exercise, I began crying. At the end of it, too. Because I realized I had been so out of touch with it for so long. The only relationship I'd had with my body in those months was through infertility treatment -- an antagonistic relationship to say the least. With yoga, and also with therapy, I began to forgive myself, my body for not doing what I wanted it to do. I treated it a little better, considered it a bit more gently.

Pregnancy was not easy, to say the least. Then, when my water broke, something clicked in my brain and I was right back to hating my body. It was just the little shove I needed. From that moment to the delivery, the transfusion, the infection, the D&C, the broken arm...the truce was over. I ate crap. Tons of crap. I stopped taking any pills other than those that help keep me from panicking or that would help me sleep. No exercise, no extraneous movement, if I could help it.)) **End of Digression**

So the point of that huge digression, is that such a physical reaction to anger, anything besides tears, is unusual for me. I intellectualize it instead of physicalize, if that makes any sense. I have not thrown an object in anger in probably 20 years.

Reading back over my post from the other day, the word ripped came up -- and it seems so appropriate given how much its come up in the history of this blog, even. Feeling ripped apart. The placenta ripped from my uterus. My heart shredded. My therapist will have a field day with this.

The physicality of the anger kind of scared me. I have really never before felt like I was going to burst, or like I had to do something to release it. Something other than cry. Or in addition to crying. Because that physicality wasn't enough. When C came to me, he made it safe for me to just get the rest of it out. It was scary for both of us I think. I said things I didn't even know I felt. Hadn't realized until I articulated them. Which made it hurt even more. Ripped out of my chest. Leaving me raw and weeping harder. How much all of this hurt. How angry, down to my core, this has left me. Wounded and shaking.

It made me realize how very much I loved and wanted those babies, even more than I knew. How much I wanted to be their mother. How much I want to be a mother. A mommy. How much I want that life of raising a family and dealing with the hassles of kids and work and pets and connecting with all the other people who get to do that. I just wanted to be like everyone else. For once, to feel like a part of the club. To be like everyone else.

Deep down at my core. And how not only sad, but angry I am, that it's been taken away. At the very least for now, and I have no idea if I'll ever get another chance at it. It makes me so sad. And so angry. So angry.

I had no idea how much.

*****

The tears are rolling down my face now. I have a sleeping kitty at my hip, and another on her perch at the window. It's quiet, and I hear a bird, wind rustling through the trees outside the window. The calm after the storm, perhaps.

Like I said, I'm a little embarrassed about my outburst, the intensity of my reaction. But I'm coming to understand where it came from. I don't think I'll have another explosion like that for a very long time -- hopefully forever. I'd like to think I've learned from it. And, like G commented, hopefully, I've addressed one more layer of grief in this process.

Thanks for being there.