Time Passes

I just realize I haven't posted a substantial post in a while. Part of that is because I am still without my own computer (using the b.berry for reading and commenting when possible), but part of that is because, well, there is not that much going on. Not externally, anyway.

C read and appreciated your good wishes for his birthday. It really was a nice day: lunch and a movie, gorgeous summer afternoon with blue skies and good spirits. As a couple, we don't really do gifts much. I apologized to him for not buying anything, but he just smiled and said it was a huge gift just to be with me and see me smiling, laughing, enjoying myself. A good man, I tell you.

I am doing better. I'm not doing much, but I'm thinking about the future. Worrying about it, too. I'm worried that when fall comes, I'll fall apart again. That all the sensory reminders of my pregnancy, and then my depression, will still be there. I'd like to believe, as C and friends have told me, that I'm strong. I'd like to believe it. But I don't trust it.

And I do have some difficult moments. Those are the times that make me fear the slippery slope. They make me reconsider my tentative plans to be with my sister when she has her baby.

It's the bitterness. The anger and sadness that pops up sometimes when out in public when every woman is pregnant. Or with a small child. Or two. Stupid shows all over tv about pregnancy and birth and multiples and careless women, women who take their fertility for granted, take their children's lives for granted. Put their children at risk by gestating like some ridiculous number of embryos/fetuses. TV commercials that glorify pregnancy and motherhood.

Normally, I just curse and turn the channel, or mute it and look away. I've been watching too much tv. And staying up way too late.

Last night there was an episode of Law and Order: Crazy Vin.cent D'on.ofrio flavor. Late last night. The upshot of the episode is that some unstable mother accidentally killed her less than year old child by leaving her alone in a hot car. And that she and her husband pretend that the baby was still alive so they could get some kind of inheritance from his great aunt. The mother, though, was so unstable, that she believed the baby was still alive. Even though they had buried the child on the aunt's estate. They made some reference to the mother being hospitalized briefly after the loss. And during the episode, they show her sitting on the floor and rocking, watching some St.Ju.de's TV infomercial, saying, "children don't die, children don't die..." At which point the husband gives her some drugs and sends her off to bed.

At the end of the episode, the medical examiner shows C-V-D the blanket the baby was buried in, a poem left with the dead baby. All while some assistant wheels in this cart with a small body bag, which he puts in one of the morgue drawers.

I was shaking. It's some stupid show. But the portrayal of the crazy dead baby mama. That little body bag.

I don't know. It freaked me the fuck out. I actually wound up taking a Klon.opin for the first time in a while.

It's just moments like those that make me think, well, maybe I shouldn't go to CA to see my sister. Maybe I'm not doing as well as it seems. Maybe we won't be ready to try again this fall.

C is really feeling his anger now. Though it does seem to have waned somewhat, it's definitely still there. Definitely still there.

I just don't want to go try to help my sister and wind up losing it. I don't want to be even more of a wreck than I would otherwise when/if we try again. The chances of yet another chemical pregnancy are good. I got pregnant in 4 out of 9 cycles, but 3 of those 4 were chemicals. It's such a mindfuck. I do wonder, though, if it would be different since losing the boys. Not less bad, just different.

*****

I just read Charmed Girl's most recent post. Among other things, she talks about Janis's post about how life is really a process of letting go. Both posts really touched me. In a lot of ways, I do feel like I've let go of the boys. A few weeks ago, it hit me that it really has been almost a year and a half since we lost them. A year and a half. It's been like a dream or a nightmare -- like my life has been on hold for the last 18 months while I've tried to deal with losing them. The loss of the pregnancy. How responsible I feel and have felt. The horrid delivery and what followed. One lousy thing after another. We're about 2 and a half months shy of 2 years since getting pregnant. It feels like it just happened. But it feels like ages ago. And I am just barely starting to move forward.

And not even really forward. Maybe just upward. I don't know. I don't do much. My motivation is still low. I take care of the barest of household responsibilities. I resent and resist. I am afraid.

I am behind my cohort at school. They are all taking comps in August, and publishing and presenting. I still have classes. Comps won't come till next spring, I think. I know, life happens and we do what we need to do, plans almost never come through. I don't even know what I want to do my research on anymore. Maybe I'm just afraid to invest in anything. I have been struggling with feelings of futility, like, it doesn't really matter what we do, the system is the system. What I have to say isn't going to change anything. Whether I stay with the work I left off with last year, or shift to something more transdisciplinary.

*****

Despite all this, I am feeling better over all, believe it or not. I am more myself. Maybe I'm just feeling this frustration, these questions with a clearer head. Or maybe I'm just wasting more time. Like this long, rambling post.

I just don't know.