Lost

I am not sure exactly what I am going to use this specific blog post for, perhaps just exploring the utter emptiness that has arisen and taken over my daily life, that I try to muddle through since the beginning of 2012. Anyone that knows me knows I struggle with depression since after Scarlett was born. I had moderate (though not diagnosed) Post Pardum depression that ripped through my emotional psyche like a battering ram. Follow this PPD through a rocky break-up, low self esteem, and you have where I was 7 months ago. Then I met Mikel. My outlook on life and my body had begun to change sometime around May when I realized though I may be overweight, I wasn't exactly unattractive. And though I had a child, did not make me completely "off the market" per say. Mikel changed my perspective a lot, and I thank him for that daily. Fast forward to the end of September when we all lost a dear, close friend. Hello depression! I have knack for not noticing it until I'm through it. Everything was being affected: my relationship with Mikel suffered as body image issues resurfaced, and thoughts of not being good enough took over, my relationship with my daughter suffered, I grew short tempered and irritable, even though I knew that the things she did were completely normative development for her age, somehow she was doing things to aggravate me... (definitely not the proudest time in my life). Then comes the conversation with my father that put things into perspective. I became serious about attempting to manage the stress in my life better, and cope with the loss of a close friend. I never really let myself grieve because it is never within the time constraints of my schedule. Guess that's what I am learning here.

When Mikel, Scarlett and I got home that morning and took a pregnancy test because I was late (and until irregular periods I was never late) and got a big fat positive. I was excited. I told Mikel, and he was ecstatic.

That was January 4th. There was always this nagging feeling in the back of my mind that this pregnancy would not come through. That somehow I was not going to be holding a newborn at the end of 9 months. I don't know what you would call it, but intuition? Who knows. But I was right. Some time around Sunday/Monday January 15th I miscarried, which was confirmed by bloodwork and 2 ER visits the week of January 19th.

Now the logical side of me says that there is nothing to grieve over, it was a combination of cells that had not taken form yet, and that something was more than likely genetically wrong on the chromosomal level which caused the miscarriage.

But the emotional side, the one that was released from depression with the news of this baby, the mother in me cries. And it's not just simple tears... it's cascades of ugly cry... the heaving weeping of some bad actor you see in the movies.

And it has not gone away. Like a good air sign, I get infuriated, enraged at the thought that whatever exists beyond this life decides to grant a life, then take it away just as quickly. Cruel joke?

I cannot reason with either side. I just grin and bear it, go to school to talk about infants and pregnancy, go to work and work with infants that are the age of my daughter, then go home to Scarlett and Mikel and pretend that everything is okay.

Nothing is okay.

I can't stand to use the restroom and to see the crimson... knowing that my body failed to protect the life that was granted, even though on medical terms it "wasn't my fault" due to severe dehydration and a rather nasty stomach bug...

It's an emptiness that I can't fill... a void that no matter how I try cannot be stitched together by any words of wisdom, words of sorrow, remorse... encouragement...

I don't know. I know that I will be okay eventually... but right now it seems bleak. It's been rainy and cloudy since we found out too...

I'm not making much sense in this post, but it is really just to type to get this shit out. I need to move on, continue living, get it together. But doing that is so much more difficult than one would suspect.