Its Been a Whale of a Day or Two (A delayed post)

So holy buckets full of tears.  Cant seem to stop crying the last couple of days.  I know that it is part of grieving, and I know I have every right to be crying right now, but it still sucks.  It is this horrible tricky tricky guilt that gets to me.  I seem to have set these expectations, that are absolute bullshit, and I was talking to a friend of mine at work about them, and she suggested that maybe I should try and read more of the grieving books or read stories online written by baby loss mamas, so I can see that it is okay to not meet the expectations I have for myself in my head.  So I realize that I'm not a bad mama for not having looked through all of P's pictures and videos yet (I have 6 CD/DVD's full), and that its okay that I haven't been able to write her birth story yet.  I don't know WHY I feel like I should have done these things.  Same reason maybe that I don't read more of the grief books, or stories online, or journal more.  They are all triggers, of sadness, I know I'll cry, some of them will cause instant panic attacks, horrible anxiety.  Who would WANT to do things that cause all of the above.  Its like sticking your hand in a boiling pot of water.  No rational person would do such a thing, because they obviously know that it will hurt like hell, and that the hurt won't go away anytime soon, and then how can you function with your burned hand?  You can't very well go to work and be expected to use your hand can you?  For me its the same with doing any of these things.  It feels like I have to wipe a day off the calendar and have nothing else planned because I won't be sure that I'll be able to function when I've done, or maybe even just started the task.  And its so exhausting, so tiring, it just takes everything out of me, I just wanna crawl in bed.

Then there is the unspeakable, the thoughts in my head that I know are mine but that don't make any sense to me.  The thought of suicide.  Its absolutely ridiculous. As horrible as losing my daughter was, I want to live, I don't feel hopeless, or helpless, I have days where I laugh, I still enjoy life, there is SOOOO much more I have left to do, I am not done living, so it can be so confusing when these thoughts enter my head.  And please, my friends, try your best not to worry. I have many many many people who love me who I know I can reach out to, and I do.  I know when I'm not okay to be alone.  I ask for help.  I can be honest about this.  It totally sucks, but it is part of my life, and I am blessed enough to be surrounded by people who love me, and who are able to hold me up when I can't stand myself.

I am so very grateful to all of you, who talk with me, and listen to me, laugh with me and let me cry.  I read the term somewhere, and have found that I have them also.  They are called grief-eaters, and you, my friends are that to me.  You, by listening, and sending me your love, and thoughts, and virtual hugs, and comforting tweets, by just letting me know you're thinking of me, bite by bite you ease my pain.

I began this post a few weeks ago.  I needed to take a bit of a break, refocus, and now I feel that I am able to come back and revisit it.  To admit that I have days like the ones when I began this post is difficult.  I am normally a pretty well contented person.  So to have these raging emotions flowing through me is hard at times to handle, and sometimes I just don't know where to put my emotions.  My counselor says that is me, trying to control the situation, and to put some form of order to what is chaos.

I have found several new blogs to follow, they are also mothers struggling with the loss of a child. I find a certain terrible kind of kinship in their words, having thought or felt nearly the exact things they are pouring out through their keyboards.  Sometimes it makes me feel a little less alone in my grief.   I can only hope I may lend that comfort to someone else.  

Downturn of a Day

Today I received a letter from the geneticist in the mail explaining exactly the type of OI my daughter had.  I knew the letter was coming. That didn't make reading it any easier.  I've not worked my way though my feelings about this.  Relief, maybe, I'm just not sure.  This came on the first day of my cycle.  That brings a different king of sadness.  I guess I didn't figure that it would take us long to get pregnant again.  And just writing that down, really does make it ever so much more real.  I feel very out of sorts.  Maybe its my brain just withdrawing from the overload that is this day.  Maybe a glass of wine and some knitting while kind of watching a movie will help.  It's worth a try at this point.  Tomorrow is a new day, with running and back to work.  Work always seems to get me back into the swing of things, whether I want to be or not.

Also, I never made it to the apple store, here's to hoping that my power cord doesn't melt down my computer before I cane get there tomorrow.

The beginning

I knit because it brings me peace, because I create something of beauty with my hands, two sticks and some string.  It passes the time while I wait, it calms my nerves when I'm on edge, it quiets my mind when the wheels just won't stop turning.  I just finished a hat for my father, to date it has been my fastest completed project, a little over 48 hours and it was done. I used Malabrigo Rios in the colorway 850 Archangel, and the pattern Hive Hat which I downloaded free from Ravelry which is hands down my favorite pattern site.

I just started on my third pair of christmas socks, by the way, by christmas I mean LAST christmas.  I have three pairs of socks and two more hats to go, and then I'll be caught up.  And today, I ordered two baby tulip sweater kits.  I love the kits that Finger Lakes Fibers have put together.  I got both the Monet and the Summer Lake kits, and also the pattern for the small hat shown above the Monet sweater.  For now I'm going to run, my cord to my MacBook Pro is frayed, and finally took a crap.  Thankfully they have one in stock at my local apple store.