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. <\/p>\n
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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? <\/p>\n
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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. <\/p>\n
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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. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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 … Continue reading “Running In Place”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2062","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2062"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3516,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2062\/revisions\/3516"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2062"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2062"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2062"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}