Two weeks after

Everyone keeps telling me that one day things will “be okay” – the pain will end.  I doubt it very much.  I’m trying not to be consumed by this, but I feel like I’m living in my grief.  Matt tells me to take it slow, we’re only 2 weeks from her birth and I’m still healing physically as well as going through crazy leftover hormones.  But I’m so lost.  Us going out as a family together was supposed to be a good thing – but all I can do is sit there and think “this feels familiar, but it doesn’t feel right.”  I’m supposed to be lugging around a car seat and diaper bag, complaining about my boobs leaking, and only getting 1-2 hours of sleep at a time.  Instead I have an empty body, dried up breasts, aching arms and drug-induced blackouts. 

I know I can’t let the grief take over and be the defining factor of my life – I don’t want to be just that “woman who lost a baby”.  And I didn’t “lose” her – she was taken.  But all I can do right now with all this worthless energy and motherly instinct that should have been used to care for Coraline is try to preserve her memory.  I arrange her keepsakes and preserve her memorial flowers, instead of arranging her socks and burp cloths.  I create a video and photo book of the only pictures we will ever have of her, because part of me still wants to show anyone who asks (or doesn’t for that matter) “Look! Look!  Isn’t my daughter beautiful?” 

                
There is no “normal” anymore.  There is no getting better, or moving “past” this.  There is only learning to cope with the agonizing loss, and being able to subdue it long enough to focus on other things.  It all comes rushing back in the second I’m not distracted.  It’s horrible that I will carry these scars longer than I carried my baby girl.  The only things keeping me from completely losing my shit are my amazing husband, who has put my needs and healing above all else and has shown me the meaning of unconditional love, and my son, who needs his mother and whose father I’m afraid would use my “mental breakdown” as a chance to take him from me.