I don't have anything to say

 I'm not sure why I feel the need to type, but I just do. I don't really have anything to say. I feel broken, and weirdly normal, and totally devastated. I kind of want to disappear, but I'm also fine with existing. I hate everyone, but I want to be surrounded by people. I hate being alone, but I am so tired of anyone looking at, touching, or talking to me. I don't want to explain. I am dying to tell every detail. I don't wanna talk about it or think about it or be in this moment, but if you don't bring it up, I'll go crazy. I want to curl up and sleep for a year, but I don't want to miss anything with my kids. My kids. My poor children who don't understand why mommy is snapping one second and then begging for cuddles the next. I don't want anyone to be here. But I wish I could snuggle with my sister. 

I don't want to say goodbye. I wanna go back in time to when I was blissfully ignorant. I just want to be pregnant with my perfect baby boy and not live in this moment where its all been ripped away from me. I don't wanna stay home, but I cannot bring myself to leave the house. I need a therapist. I'm terrified it won't help. Can I just go numb for a while? Can I please just have the long sleep that Ava Marie got in Big Stone Gap? I just want to be unconscious for like... a week or two. There's nothing here for anyone else. I just want to be gone mentally. But I feel like that's not good enough. Not for Sarah. Sarah can't recoil from all the things. She has to rally and be a beast... Boss it up and stand tall and talk it through with everyone. She has to praise God for the good things and clean her living room a day after getting out of the hospital. She has to throw birthday parties. She has to be available to talk. 

Fuck you, Sarah. I want to be dead. Not literally. Just enough to heal. Let me be unavailable for a little while. Stop trying to be better and just let me be bad for a while. 

Ruined Summer, Worse Fall

 My mother arrived and two days later I found myself staring at a positive pregnancy test. It was not my plan for the summer. My summer was going to be a hot girl summer with my mom, exploring Europe, losing weight, packing the fun in until the summer exploded with joy. Instead, a wave of nausea washed over me and week after week of me laying in a lump on the couch, wishing there was SOMETHING that would take away the ever-present nausea. But hopes built and despite feeling like I had wasted my mom’s time and money having her come out to visit the limp-lump version that I had become in the throes of the first trimester, I found myself dreaming about this future baby and felt okay with suffering. This is my last time. Last baby. Soak it all up. 

Second trimester, I said goodbye to my mom and hello to the joys of the pregnant glow. We made more announcements, I had a dramatic decrease in nausea, and a whole lot more energy. Soaking it up. This is the last time! 

Midwife appointments brought some joy, hearing the heartbeat, getting comfortable with this person who will see me at my most vulnerable. But some stress… my shy veins resulted in some dramatic bruising… and it was all very expensive. 

I felt so good. I told anyone who cared to listen. My second-born decided he wanted a baby sister. And he was going to name her Treehouse. But I wanted a boy. Two of each. I had the perfect boy named picked out. I had so much hope. And I was soaking it up. Cuz this was going to be my last time. 

I didn’t know it was actually my first time. My first time wiping blood. My first time rushing to my neighbor’s house. My first time driving to the hospital. My first time hearing they couldn’t see a heartbeat, but that my body was already in labor. 

Surrounded by the most loving, decent, hard-working ladies in the world, I cried and joked and hurt and eased a teeny tiny still baby into this world. 7 ounces. A perfect baby boy. He looked like an alien. He was supposed to be the bow that tied up this phase of my life… the last baby. But now I have to sit here holding a version of humanity I never really wanted to witness face to face… he fit in one hand. He wasn’t quite a person. Just an empty vessel where a soul was supposed to be. 

Part of me is sad I did it alone. Part of me is glad my husband wasn’t able to be there. How do you comfort someone else when your grief is so huge? How do you let someone else carry you, when you just want to curl up and disappear. 

I was almost halfway done. I was one day shy of being able to say, “Halfway there!” 19 weeks. And 6 days. Barely even counts as a stillbirth, still young enough to sort of be considered a miscarriage. By one day. 

My milk will still come in. Postpartum depression. But with all the complications of not taking my baby home with me. 

My summer started with a reroute, a sudden change in the direction I had thought I was going. My fall has started so much worse.