Wishing you courage

"Courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying 'I will try again tomorrow'."
- Mary Anne Radmacher

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

I wonder if I will ever re-gain my pre-deadbaby attention span.  I feel like I will NEVER be caught up with tasks at work, home maintenance, housekeeping, paying bills, homework (why did I decide to take a class?), and the list can go on and on but I'll cry before it is complete.  Of course I probably will get everything done eventually but it feels impossible right now.  This is different from the early days when there was so much grief that nothing outside of Toren and my husband really deserved much of a thought.  Now thoughts of Toren are quiet for the most part, although still nearly constant in a weird way, but actually completing tasks takes way longer than I would like.  The tornado is over but residual effects remain in the form of persistent depression and a lack of efficacy.  Is depression causing decreased concentration and memory, or is feeling so upset over being confused and behind causing depression?  What role do the anti-depressants play?  Sigh, I just don't know.

What about you?  Can you concentrate?

Friday, September 17, 2010

I'll wait

Things are so busy.  I'm so behind that I feel like I suck at my job nevermind the disaster that the house is in.  And then there's so much excitement too because Snugglebunny may move in soon.  Eww's and Ahhh's are clashing.

Then there's a huge icky issue in the background that is becoming highlighted with the change in the way the sunlight shines into windows as Summer turns to Autumn ... I'm not ready to face it yet so how about a diversion?  Circumstances of socializing led to me seeing "Goi.ng the Dis.tance" twice in the past week and now all I want to hear is this song



......

I'm scared of SB moving in.  Scared of losing my opinions.  Scared of forgetting the small amount of self-sufficiency I've gained.  Already ashamed of how much I love Friday nights when I can sit down with a bottle of wine, read blogs about parenthoods cut short, and maybe write in my own.  My therapist says that co-habitation involves a business transaction of sorts.  We have to figure out the sticky bits of how much he will pay to live in the home I own.  I already suspect that if he becomes unemployed (not a far fetched event in the US lately) I will feel resentful about having to pay for his share, only because my salary isn't big enough to share.

This house was purchased a little over 6 years ago.  X and I flew into town, the first time either of us had been here, and had 4 days to find a house to buy.  I wonder if our Realtor thought we were crazy!  On the day we left we placed an offer for a different house but we ended up buying our second choice.  I wanted a brick house with hardwood floors; we bought a split-level house with 80's siding and beige carpet.  But when I stand at the top of the stairs and look into the living room with the vaulted ceilings there is just so much space and so much air that ... there's room to breathe ... it's safe without being claustrophobic ... it's expansive and peaceful.  You can see the soul of the house there, if such a thing exists.  I wish you all could see it.

Huge rewind to 7 years earlier and we married; back when we were too young to imagine how sadly marriage could turn out.  Rewind another 6 years prior to that and we met.  I was 16.  I still cannot comprehend how he could just walk away after we had been friends and spouses for 17 years.  It's been almost 2 years since he left and that is enough to tip the scales so that he hasn't been in my life for longer than he was.  Whoever he really was.

Was he ever who I thought he was?

He had opportunity after endless opportunity to be viewed as a great guy, not a guy who is unfaithful and slimy, not a guy who was emotionally abusive, not a guy who has his wife abort an unplanned pregnancy, not a guy who abandons his wife when things get very hard.  But when he wasn't being a jerk he was my best friend.  Or rather he was the best friend of the me who was nervous, shy, afraid of everything, emotionally unpredictable ... the incarnation before version 2.bitter.

The me from the days when living together could be spontaneous and romantic and completely business transaction free misses him.

.......

I had a goal to be divorced by the end of the year and it's just about time for me to ask again if he will agree to a reasonable settlement.  Because even though he was an incredibly important person to me for 17 years it's useless to wait any more for him to turn into the person I thought he was.  I can't respect myself if I wait for him.

......

Will the heartbreak of this lost romance ever completely end?  Can the soulbreak from living in the shadow of a selfish person mend?  And how does one ever reconcile the loss and the hate?

Tuesday, September 7, 2010

How it is

I've avoided saying anything for a while because each start doesn't lead to what I'm trying to say...

after a bottle of wine (wince) what I'm trying to say is this: My sister sent a message on Saturday, after bringing her 1 year old son home from Korea the Wednesday before: the baby won't sleep, but daytimes are fun.  It takes my sister and her husband to keep up with the little boy.  It sounds hard, like a big adjustment for sure, but...

but
but
but what circles through my mind, on a current of wine, is: she brought a baby home from Korea.  How improbable is that?!  My baby boy was tucked safe inside my uterus, he was so very close that I could almost reach him, and he didn't live to come home, yet her son was halfway around the world and he made it home.

I could do it too!  I swear I could take care of a baby and the little one would know they were loved beyond the ends of what they could imagine.

Where is my son?

He is further than Korea.  And I would go any distance to get to him.

I understand that I needed this degree of trauma for my marriage to dissolve - my husband and I were joined so tightly in dysfunction that only a dead child could come between us - and I love my new boyfriend - but sometimes I think that I would sit through a dark hell for ages if only I could be with Toren.  What I would give to know that he is safe, wherever he is.

What I would give to not have time to drink a bottle of wine.  It's not a choice I have, but knowing what I know now about relationships, what would I choose between keeping Toren (and staying with my lying ex - holy shit, I can't stand the thought of him) or finding a healthy, romantic relationship?  It's a good thing that a choice is not an option because I would do anything to avoid the pain of living without my son.  I love my new boyfriend, and I'm so glad to no longer be with my husband, but I would live through anything to know that Toren was safe.  I would forgo personal growth to watch my son grow up.

I imagine this is a tiny glimpse of what other mothers feel when they have a much loved child who never would have been born if the prior one had survived.  I DO NOT WANT TO GIVE BACK MY CURRENT LIFE however, along with that comes a pain that will never end.  This is not a situation where a choice has to be made, but I still feel guilty for not knowing that I would give up my son to have a happily-ever-after with my boyfriend.

Since holding my dead child I think that happily ever after is not an option.

Simultaneously, I am so happy to be here and I hate my life.

Fuck all of the people who said that I was young and would have another baby.  Fuck those who didn't realize that Toren was a precious human being who was unique and could not be replaced.  Fuck those who think that I'm ok while I smile through every day.

At the nail salon tiday I watched, fascinated, as a mother gave her young daughter a choice of nail color then didn't approve of the silver glitter polish her daughter selected.  The mother probably saw me watching and judging her on the color that her daughter picked out, when really I was thinking that I would let my kid (girl or boy) select any color they wanted.

It's been almost 3 years, and this hurts so bad still that I don't understand how I get through each day.