I had some unsettling symptoms over the weekend (to be polite) that seemed to be stemming from my C-section. I called my doctor’s office, the same office that didn’t have me come in until I had been in pre-term labor for 5 hours, and waited for some one to call me back. After I waited an hour, I called the office again. I was determined to be firm, to learn from my past mistake and demand to be taken seriously. The receptionist explained to me in a bored voice that she couldn’t find the nurse and would have her call me. I looked at the clock; the doctor’s office would close in 5 minutes. I asked that the receptionist put my on hold and go find the nurse. She said she couldn’t have me hold and would have to wait. I said “I’m sorry to be rude but the last time I waited I was in pre-term labor and my baby died!”. She said agian that there was nothing she could do. So, I um, er, yelled: “Thanks for nothing!!”

 

Then I hung up.

 

My phone rang again. It was the same receptionist, who said mockingly that we must have gotten disconnected and she hadn’t been able to get my number for the nurse to call me back. I was too shell shocked to point out that SHE HAD JUST CALLED ME. Obviously she had my number.

 

By the time my nurse called me back I felt like I had huffed paint. My brain was malfunctioning. I ranted to her about the asshole receptionist, and she expressed sympathy. But I was already done. She told me that my doctor told me to wait and monitor how I felt and get back to them. Yes, the same doctor’s office, almost 8 weeks to the day later, told me again to wait and see. My head swam. I murmured and babbled a little, then I hung up.

 

My doctor didn’t even have the decency to have me come into her office. What Tom and I went through wasn’t enough to warrant her personally returning my call. How could this professional have the balls AGAIN to tell me that everything was probably fine?

 

I really can barely process what happened today. Tomorrow I have to do something. I think I have to call her, even though I know I’ll cry, and demand and explanation. I’ve already decided to go see my general practitioner- I will never go back to that office again. In the meantime I think I’m probably fine. But my already fragile self-confidence is crushed. I can’t help thinking I must actually be a paranoid yuppie- because several people in one doctor’s office keep treating me that way.

 

In the end it’s just further confirmation that I have to change doctors. I thought that I liked my doctor and that things would have been different if she had been on call that day. But they wouldn’t. The practices stinks, and she knows it and doesn’t care. I hope I have the guts to call and demand to speak with her tomorrow, and I hope I don’t back down when she gives me bullshit excuses. I owe it to myself and my husband and my baby.

Tom and I went to our second support group meeting tongiht. This one was much easier and at the end I felt better. I cried a lot more…maybe that’s the trick. When we got home we walked Ramona Quimby around the block and talked about our days. I said, “I was telling (my friend) today about the rats we saw in New York City and how gross it was and I realized that she has pet rats and loves them. I hope I didn’t hurt her feelings by saying I was afraid of the rats.”

 

“Oh no” said Tom “it’s like how people who have tigers as pets are still afraid of tigers.”

 

I laughed for two blocks and up six flights of stairs and while brushing my teeth and putting my pajamas on and laying in bed. And he’s right.

Everyday I touch my incision and think “this is where they took my baby out of my body”. I feel like a f-cking Frida Kahlo painting. After I wrote that, I stared at the sentence for a few minutes and thought about my thick pregnancy hair and eyebrows and tried to stop myself from thinking about signs. I keep thinking so many things are or were a sign…except I don’t believe in signs. Except I saw a Frida Kahlo exhibit in Minneapolis a couple of years ago and when I recently read The Lacuna I spent five nights in a row looking up Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera on the internet. It’s not a sign, I know it’s not a sign. But only because I don’t believe in signs, otherwise I’d probably think it was a sign.

 

Sometimes I reread my posts here and think I’m a self-indulgent turd. Other times I am so glad I’m writing like this. Most times I miss writing funny stuff. I just can’t really get there yet I guess. I still laugh a lot, it’s not like I spend all day moping around and sobbing. Not all day every day anyways.

 

If I do end up childless* like Frida Kahlo I hope I am also inspired to create something like she did. It doesn’t have to be something as important or huge as her body of work…but it’d be nice if it was.

 

 

* After I published this, a friend emailed me that I was already a mother. She is completely right, and I don’t take that for granted. I just meant childless as in no children in my arms, no children to watch grow and learn. Tommy Jr is my child and always will be, but I hope someday to have a baby at home with us too.

Tom and I went to New York City to visit my brother and sister in law. It was a great trip- wall to wall adventuring in the big city. It felt good to feel normal again, even if it was just a few days. But in between fabulous meals and tours of the city, I would remember. I would have a nagging feeling that I wasn’t giving my pain enough attention. I think it’d be better if I set an alarm and hid myself out of the way and cried for fifteen minutes three times a day.

 

When I’m in the middle of some awesome adventure I think- I shouldn’t be able to do this. I should be groaning with pregnancy and waddling around. Seeing the bright laughter in small childrens’ faces makes me smile for a moment before I catch a lump of tears growing in my throat. I see Tommy in all those soft faces and exploring eyes. I wonder what he’d look like now if he were still in the NICU. Would his skin be turning baby-pink, would he be breathing on his own, would he be feeding on my breast milk? Would his little eyes be open, and light up when he saw me?

 

Imagining seeing my son with his eyes open makes me feel something I’ve never felt before: utterly hopeless. It’s like my pain has enveloped me completely, and squeezed out the youthful thrill of life that made me like myself. Now I’m just some person I have to drag around everywhere I go. I show up at my brother and sister-in-law’s apartment in New york and want to say- “I’m here! But I brought this awful person too, and she has to be with us the whole time. She won’t say very much, she’ll just oppress us with her presence.” I know I’m good at tucking that person away, and I know that I can still access the other me sometimes. But I can feel her tugging at my sleeve throughout the day.

 

I think back on the hopeful girl who took a stand up comedy class and fretted about not being able to take another because my due date would be too near. That’s the girl I liked. That’s the girl who is Tommy Jr’s mommy. But maybe she died when he died. Maybe all that’s left is a sad, hopeless person who is going through the motions of life because everyone says things will get better if you keep moving.

Last night I finally cried again. I cried until I felt human, until I felt like a mother. I had to trust myself when it started, because it felt like I was never going to get control back. But once it was over I was glad, and I felt like myself again. Not my old self, but the new person I’m becoming.

 

Also of note: I have started my annual fake tan debacle. In case you couldn’t figure it out, that’s when every year I try and use sunless tanner to save people from having to hide their eyes from my bluish-white legs when I wear a skirt.

 

Many sunless tanners claim to be “easy to use” or “streak free” or “so easy even a monkey could use it” but my experience has been mixed to bad. Having only the energy to slather up my arms and legs, but none of the precision to do my feet or hands, I just end up looking like I rolled in dirt. There are swirls of rust color all along my body, including my neck (I itched myself and forgot to wipe the lotion off) my boobs (I must have rubbed an arm against a boob at some point) and my cuticles.

 

The good news about the self-tanning extravaganza is that I have not lost interest in my appearance. The bad news is that my interest in my appearance isn’t high enough to pull off actually looking good. Or even decent.

I finally caved in and ordered jeans and a couple shirts that would fit me. They arrived yesterday. Pulling on the non-maternity jeans, zipping them up, buttoning them, feeling the denim waistband against my stomach. It pulled at my heart. I knew I had to stop wearing the maternity jeans, but I realized that giving them up was like another nail in my heart.

 

Tom and I are starting to feel normal for longer stretches of time, and it turns out I hate feeling normal. I want to ache and rage. I want to feel close to Tommy Jr. Moving on with my life makes me feel far from him, and far from being pregnant. Wearing normal clothes and being able to exercise and drink wine all make me feel far away.

 

May 10 was a lifetime ago. I feel like I’m backsliding, even though I should feel like I’m healing. I don’t know what I need anymore.

 

Today is my first day alone at work again. My throat is tight and my stomach feels hot and unsettled. I keep thinking about that day. I keep feeling like I’m standing at the edge of my sanity and not wanting to hold on to anything or anyone but Tom Sr and Tommy Jr. But Tom Sr is at his own job. And Tommy Jr isn’t in my belly, or in the NICU, or with a nanny, or at a daycare. I can’t feel him near me. I can’t sleep at night, I just want to lay awake and wait to feel him again.

 

I want to pound the walls and stomp my feet and scream. I want pain and blood and bruises. Anything but this emptiness.

Today is my 32nd birthday. All I could think all weekend in anticipation is: “What am I supposed to do now?” I haven’t cried in days, and I’m afraid the raw pain is turning into something else. It’s panic.

 

When your idea of the future gets pulled out from under you, it’s hard to turn to what soothed you in the past. Things are too different now.

 

Yes, as it turns out Tom Sr and I are going to survive this. We are moving forward- sometimes it seems like we’re moving too fast. But I’ve got to find something. “Loss” is such a complete description when someone you love dies. I’m at a loss, I feel lost, I’ve lost my sense of control, I’m losing interest in the things that used to drive me.

 

So I’m going to give myself an assignment. I have to write everyday. I have to finish the art projects lying around my apartment. These two things I must commit to until August 30th. Then I’ll reevaluate. Maybe I’ll take singing lessons.

I filled the prescription I was carrying around for a while- a week or two I think- I can’t keep track of time that well. Maybe it was just a few days. I feel torn about having the pills again. I took them when I was younger, but the last few years I’ve changed a lot. I tried to have more perspective and empathy. I learned to ride the ups and downs more gracefully. I’m still moody but I directed my moodiness by writing and volunteering and exercising. I liked my life without the pills. I painted, I wrote furiously, I took improv classes.

 

Now I’ve been on the pills for about a week, and I feel clogged up. I can’t just cry. When I’m talking with someone and should be crying I get this weird smile on my face. It’s like a frozen grimace, and I can’t squeeze out any tears. I’m going to give the pills another week and see how I feel, but I’m not sure I’m going to stick with it. Is dulling the pain worth the sacrifices of not being able to write easily, and not being able to relieve myself with tears. Now instead of being filled with sawdust I feel like I have cotton in my tears ducts and my ears and stuffed in the spaces around my heart.

 

In the beginning I was so amazed by my own pain. Sometimes I felt like I was stepping back and watching it overcome me, like you’d watch a thunderstorm roll in. But I’m less impressed now, and less afraid. Maybe I don’t need the pills after all. It’s hard to tell how I’m feeling anymore.

 

I went to my book club last night for the first time since Tommy Jr was born. The women in the group are so wonderful and supportive and smart and compassionate. It felt so good to be with them again and drink wine and just be girls. They let me talk about Tommy as much as I wanted, and they never acted uncomfortable or impatient. I feel so lucky to have the friends and family and spouse that I do. Throughtout this ordeal I have felt pretty understood, which I know is a rarity.

 

I wrote the other day that I felt like myself again. But really I think I’m becoming more comfortable with my new self. And I can tell that my new self isn’t that far off from my old self.

 

The clock keeps pushing the minutes forward. My Grama used to say this funny little rhyme about a doll filled with sawdust. Thats how I feel some days, like I’m full of sawdust.

 

I used to write a funny advice column here. It started as an outlet for my frustration, then turned into a practice space for my writing, then a place I was proud of: a compilation of my hopefulness, my faith in being lighthearted and forgiving. Sometimes my moodiness crept in, but for the most part I was my best self here. Even when I was joking around about being lazy or a bad worker I always wanted to be true to my belief that life is wonderful.

 

This blog has come so far from what I meant it to be. I guess I feel like so many things in my life are so different from what I meant them to be. I still think life is wonderful, I’m just sometimes consumed with grief.

 

Now what? As I sit at this tiny desk scattered with sympathy cards and insurance bills I am finally realizing that it’s time to adjust. I have to adjust my plans, my dreams, my expectations.

 

Maybe I have to adjust this blog- just the layout to start. I’m probably just grasping at the few things I do have control over. My stomach is rumbling satisfactorily. Maybe I’ll become one of those women who uses food to assert control over my life. I wish I could start by cleaning up this fucking desk. I just lifted a few sympathy cards to find several drafts of Tom’s and my speeches from the memorial service. I can’t seem to throw them away. I can’t seem to do anything that would help me restore a sense of order in my life.

 

What I just wrote is misleading- there was never a lot of order in my life. I never liked cleaning or making decisions or doing paperwork. But now it’s like all my bad habits are on rocket fuel. And I can’t stop complaining about not being able to act out. I wish I could get it through my heart that acting out isn’t going to get me anywhere. I know I’m doing this right (right for me anyway). My brain knows I am getting somewhere, that my grief isn’t going to destroy me.

 

Still, the way I cry is so remarkable. Big fat tears pour out of my eyes until they sting like I’ve been swimming with my eyes open. I sob until I can’t breathe.

It’s getting close to the time…the time I’ve been dreading since the shock of Tommy’s death started to fade and reality set in.  Soon people will be impatient with our grief.  Already I try to tuck myself out of the way when I cry.  I don’t want anyone to be exasperated, even fleetingly.  For as many times as I’ve heard the well-intentioned “take your time” I know better.  So few people understand the hollow ache.  It’s not the right thing to say because it’s another miserable aspect of loss, but it’s the truth: it’s getting close to the time.

 

This weekend Tom Sr. graduated. Watching him walk across the stage in his purple robe and his cum laude tassels was so moving. I am so proud of Tom’s hard work and accomplishments. After the ceremony we celebrated and for a few hours I felt like myself again. I was a little bit heavier hearted, but I recognized myself and it was a relief.

 

Maybe it’s not a coincidence that these two events are coinciding. I suppose that as we speed into the future, fewer and fewer people can tolerate me trying to linger in the past. I have to remember that Tommy Jr is part of my present. That’s the only way I can continue to breathe.