This just happened

her: "I'm not sure I can do X commitment next spring because I'm about 9 weeks pregnant."
me:  "Ok.  Congratulations!"
her:  "This semester has been kind of tough.  I don't understand the women who said they felt great being pregnant!  I guess they never felt sick or forgot about it."
me:  "Yeah, it's awful.  But you really should feel better in a few more weeks."

I didn't encourage further pregnancy/baby conversation and she didn't notice my comments of commiseration based on experience and that is kind of surprising but not really, at the same time.  One reason for not noticing that other women understand anything about pregnancy is that she probably wanted to throw up at that very moment.  Another reason is that women who are not currently pregnant or who do not have children are not really recognized as ever experiencing pregnancy.  Some kind of brain filter seems to flip on and the only acceptable idea is that childless women could never have been pregnant. 

No one likes to think about dead babies. 

It's not gut wrenching anymore.  Instead I just feel this pathetic resignation that other women get babies and Toren is still dead.

Maybe I'll get another chance.  I'm trying to get a raise to go along with some new duties (THAT is not easy!) so cross your fingers that a larger salary finds it's way to me so that I can afford a baby.

First

Huge thanks to Wyatt's Mommie from Wyatt's Whisper for giving this award to my blog!

The rules are:
1. Accept the award. Post it on your blog with the name of the person who has granted the award and his/her blog link.

2. Pay it forward to 10 other bloggers that you have newly discovered.

3. Contact those blog owners and let them know they have been chosen.

I'm passing the award on to a mix of bloggers, new to me, as well as some that I have been reading for a long while but who didn't already have this award posted (and they completely deserve it!).

Amy at Surviving the Day Every Day
angelseashore at Angel Seashore
Barbara at burble
biojen at Dreaming with a Broken Heart
brianna at .daily.amos.
Carly at Soul Blossoming
Catherine W at Between the Snow and the Huge Roses
cgd at Adventures in Infertility-Land
Jenn at Jenn's Den
Mandy at One Good Thing
myskytimes at Skytimes
Quiet Dreams - Dreaming of Quiet Places
Reba at Life without my twins
vera kate at My Insides, Out.



Second

Depression is thick lately.  And I'm feeling very impatient with it.  It's different from before - now I can recognize when a certain incident is making me sad and when it's depression - perhaps that means that some progress is being made.  I think most people around me would not be able to notice it anymore because I do genuinely smile and participate in small talk without resenting that people are "supposed" to exchange pleasantries when passing.  But behind closed bedroom, office, and bathroom stall doors there's been a lot of crying lately.

My antidepressants are still being monitored and some tests are being run to see if there is something else going on that brought about this latest round of increased depression.  And I'm still in therapy once a week, and I am comfortable with requesting even more frequent sessions if necessary.  And if things feel dangerous I know where to go for a few days of inpatient treatment.  So, I'm not alone or without resources which means it's just a matter of waiting.

.......

The knee that I broke in early summer hurts on cool mornings.  Not a surprise but it makes every step a reminder that winter is approaching.  Never have I felt less ready for the cold, the dark, the bare trees, and the holiday cheer.  Along with all of that comes another round of anniversaries and wondering why the events of years ago still ache so badly.

.......

A co-worker pulled me aside on Friday to say that whenever she sees me lately she thinks that I'm pregnant.  I respond that I've just been putting on weight, then she says rather than weight it's a "glow" that I have.  Another minute of talking and she is so happy to tell me that I'm going to be pregnant soon.  I don't know if I should believe the "glow" bit since she may have been trying to cover up that she mistook my expanding waistline for pregnancy.  She is the spiritual sort so maybe she is sensing a being hanging around me, which kind of makes me feel like I'm failing an interview since I don't feel like life is so in order lately.  What ever her meaning, it was very upsetting (like go home early and go back to bed upsetting).  I can't believe her prediction because it is exactly what I think I want and also the thing I am most terrified of.  But if her perhaps-careless-promise doesn't come true I will never forgive her.



Lastly

Ugh, gotta find some happy thoughts before ending this.

a new houseplant

a new plant forming on the end of a leaf, as promised!

a new camera that's been providing fun with taking photos :)

the zoom is so good you can see the dust on Tara and it adjusts for wiggles and that has made a great difference in how photos turn out since I can't seem to hold a camera still!

.........

Wishing you all a beautiful day!

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?

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?

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.

Your body knows, you know.  Even if you didn't jot down that date on the calendar.

It has been well documented here how agitated I've been this week and days ago I consulted the wall calendar to see if it was the anniversary of Embryo M.'s (who I don't like to talk about) positive pregnancy test but that's on the 20th.

.......

Reviewing the past, you can point out the life changing events; August holds three for me.  Both of my pregnancies existed during an August and while I was thrilled about Toren's pregnancy, the way it ended and the loneliness aftermath, August where Toren is concerned is .... bittersweet?  no... ironic?  no... acrid?  perhaps.  It's a huge slap in the face, like, "here you go, here is a baby, conceived in love, inspiring further expansion of spousal love, making it look like you are finally on the right path and things are about to become beautiful - heeheehee ... HaHaHa ... HAHAHAHAHAHA!  Just kidding!  I can't believe she fell for that one!" 

What's the word for that?

August is also when I found proof that my husband was a cheating liar.  It was August 2004.

I could search through old handwritten journals to identify when I started to suspect that hubby was searching for lovin' outside of our home but I know the suspicions were there by August of 2003.  My undergrad degree was completed in May 2003 and we were taking a year to save money and figure out where to move to, which would depend on the graduate program I got in to.  At some point that summer I said that we need to re-evaluate our marriage and if things do not improve by moving time we would go our separate ways.  But we got so caught up in the excitement of buying a house in a new city and moving across the country that we forgot to consider if we wanted to be together.

It felt like a new beginning for our marriage since we were so far from the girls he had crushes on and for about 3 months I was very hopeful for our future, after all, we had our first house and I got into a competitive grad program which surely would make me more attractive to him.  Intelligence and drive are pretty, right?

A tangent that is important to the story:  There was no college prep in my family.  I graduated from high school and floundered around the west coast until deciding to attend college.  That didn't work out so well.  Coming from a poor family means no college fund and my mother, frustrated from paying on her student loans for decades for a degree she didn't finish, told me not to take out student loans.  So I worked 2-3 jobs at a time for a couple of years to save money for college and let me tell you that it is very hard to pay for college on minimum wage and it's hard to attend classes while working enough to pay for college.  I got married, moved away from my mother and her advice and got student loans to attend a state university.  I loved undergrad!  Loved, loved, loved!  So much that I wanted more.  A class taken in my junior year pointed to the direction for graduate school and I wanted the best program!  It was almost ridiculous to think that a person like me (poor family, state university) could attend a top school but I got in and when the email stating my acceptance arrived I jumped up and down like a kid.  All of this to say that attending this graduate program was the most important thing to me at that time.  There was nothing I wanted more.

During grad school orientation week in late August 2004 I was using hubby's computer and found Yah.oo chats where he was asking to see photos of girl after girl and if they sent one he would say "very nice", even if they weren't.  Some engaged in chats and he would ask to meet them and described his penis and when questioned further confessed to being married but not being sexually compatible with his wife.  There was one where he made plans to meet the woman, for a discreet adult encounter, and it was set for a time a few weeks prior when I  was out of town.

Again, there is not a good word for the feelings upon reading those messages.  I suspected stuff but seeing proof is ... life shattering.  I remember sitting on the floor of our bedroom in the house we bought 3 months earlier making this noise that I didn't think was possible - it was between a wail and a moan and a scream.

It's hard to learn something new and horrible about the person you think you know best - the person who promises that he loves you.  He denied it all at first even though I was reading what he had written back to him.

That was a Wednesday.

As cheated on folk know, then comes the question of what to do next.  As a teenager I had promised myself that I would not stay with someone who cheated on me; I had seen that pattern and the accompanying lack of self esteem many times. We were out of money having spent all of our savings on the house and move.  I didn't have a job since we planned that I would just go to school.  My options were to stay with him to attend school or move back to the other coast and live with my mother. 

At 10am the following Monday I was in class, appearing "normal" while secretly hating myself for not being desirable enough to inspire marital faithfulness and completely lacking self respect.

.......

Anyhoo, August holds memories.  August holds the anniversaries of choices made that led down a road that would be questioned later.

I should have correctly interpreted the glaring signs in August 2003 and left the marriage.  August 2004 was a second huge sign.  That's bullshit, it was more than a sign, it was more than a suspicion that could be debated away, it was PROOF that he was a liar and had no regard for my feelings or those stupid vows we made to each other on the day we married.  But I didn't have the perspective and resources that come with experience that I do now; the events of August 2003 and 2004 would have inspired very different responses if I knew then what I know now.

.......

August 13, 2007 was the day when I took a home pregnancy test and found out that Toren existed.  I didn't know anything about him but I knew that I loved the little being that joined our family.  It's been 3 years and 1 day since my being has been focused on Toren's health and happiness.  It feels like yesterday.


Two years ago, on the anniversary of the last day that I didn't worry about Toren (8/12/200), I wrote:

What would I tell my self of a year ago who had no clue that a nightmare was tip toeing up right behind her? It would be "My Dear Girl, you have mere hours of blind bliss left, enjoy these moments of being young and carefree". A year ago I would have argued about that carefree bit since my cares started rather early in life; who knew those were relatively lighthearted days.

What I would give for thoughts from my self a year from now. Next August 12 will I be remarking on how much beauty and joy has entered my life or will it be another shell shocked statement of "didn't see that coming"?

A year later the response:

Well Anna from the past, if you could have heard your thoughts from the future, this is what you would have been told ...

You will still be a bit shell shocked from living another year without Toren and a good portion of a year without your husband - yes, he will leave your ass without hardly a word. But by August 12, 2009 you will also be so thankful for the joy that entered your life. You never would have believed that housemates would be a good situation for you but it is so great having C and L around! Also, you will spend this terrorversary with a boy - he's nice and fun to be around and tonight we see if he can cook. 

Three years later?
Anna of the past, that boy from 8/2009 stuck around!  He is super sweet and you are eager for him to move in with you.  Life is still messy and when Toren died almost 3 years ago you would have run away screaming if anyone told you that you would still be mourning for that little guy today.  The comparison of what was lost is still overwhelming any gains BUT you gained things that you didn't even know were missing!  You have your own thoughts and are learning how to stop suppressing them; this is harder than it sounds.  Life without your husband is necessary and should have happened a long time ago, but the past is what it is.  By the way, you still can't stand your ex and sometimes stalk him on facebook ... maybe that will change by next year.  Of course your present life began with Toren's death, would you trade self-awareness and a non emotionally abusive relationship to have Toren with you?  Well, this question is unanswerable.  Toren DID die.  It already happened and cannot be undone.  All you can do is try your best no matter what horrible situations you are dropped into, I suppose.

Thus begins year 3.

Trying to kick ass

My rewriting the story post is mentioned in Mel's Blog Roundup.  How embarrassing that since then it's all just been ranting and TMI - too bad I can't say that the rants and mood swings are not the norm!


.....

Thoughts on personal training, aka, the longest 30 minutes of my life each and every time:
Over a year ago I signed up for training so I could work with a boxing coach because I was so angry that I needed to hit something.  Then my coach left the gym.  Then, a year later, I was feeling fat and blobby so renewed my contract but instead of once per month I purchased one session per week.  I had a lot saved up though so I can go to two session per week for several months.  I hate it.  I hate weight training with a trainer.

While getting ripped is supposedly the goal of training, the larger point of working with a trainer seems to be overcoming mental barriers.  So they say to do so many reps for so many sets, but depending on how happy you look they will add weight for subsequent sets or add "just one more" as soon as you think you are done.  If you can't lift the weight on your own towards the end the trainer will assist you so that you complete each and every rep of each and every set, thus realizing you can go beyond what your brain says you can.

That part of it is good for me - it is cool finish a goal that you thought was impossible.  The problem is I get hurt frequently.  I don't want to let down my trainer or complain so I end up with strained muscles.  But again, is that just me saying "I can't physically do this", when actually I can?  The strains heal after a few days.

......

What do you think about being pushed beyond what you think you can do?  Is it important?  Is it important for recovering from huge life failures, such as pregnancy loss, divorce, infertility, job loss, or an infinite number of events that can make you lose trust in yourself?