peanut butter and honey days

Today is one of those days when I just can't pull it together. I've frittered away four hours trying to fix a glitchy laptop, responding to non-urgent emails, and watching videos on hu.lu. I've got work to do, checks to write, food to cook, laundry to finish, a week to organize. But I can't get out of this space - this slow, sad space. I'm craving sugar. I don't feel like turning on the stove or doing a dish. It's a peanut butter and honey day.

It was never jelly for me growing up. Peanut butter and honey sandwiches were my fast food of choice, and my mom was always happy to feed them to me to avoid dinner time drama, or when the going got rough. I put them away in my 20s - a natural graduation - but found myself craving them incessantly during my pregnancy. Baby food.

On tough baby days, when I can't get out of my seat, it's PBH time again.

* * * * * * *

Coming up on the one year mark, I've turned a few small corners. One came on my birthday weekend last month. I was away in the mountains with some girlfriends--a pretty big step for me--and they took me out for ooey-gooey, delicious, organic, sourdough pizza for my birthday treat. And right there at the table, as dinner wound down, they started talking about birth experiences. About contractions and pushing.

I lasted about three minutes before the anxiety attack set in. I excused myself to the ladies room and locked myself in just as the vertigo hit. Crouching low to the tile floor, I held my head in my hands and breathed deeply and shed some tears until the room stopped spinning. I felt oddly grateful--I noticed that by then I'd had enough of these to know what was happening, what had triggered it, and how to get through it. Standing up again, I tested my legs for balance. I felt fairly calm. I used the toilet, washed my hands.

Looking in the mirror, I stood a little taller. This is who I am now. This is what my deal is. Those people at the table, they don't understand it and they never will--and that changes things between us. I am a girl who went into early labor and pushed out a dead baby, and sometimes I have anxiety attacks. But I can handle them. I can handle myself. That makes me feel a little less lost.

By the time I returned to the table, they were paying the check and bustling with coats. One friend asked if I was okay. I doubt anyone else noticed my absence.

* * * * *

Another small corner. I said it out loud to an almost stranger, a new acupuncturist at the clinic. I said, "I lost my baby about a year ago." A year ago. A whole year. I can't really believe it. Hearing those words come out of my own mouth tripped some kind of wire in me.

This year, this one impossible year... I am ready for it to be over. I am tired of days like this one, days where I stare immobile at the computer screen for hours on end while the clock ticks above my head. I am tired of limbo, tired of waiting for life to begin again, tired of sometimes wanting to die, tired of feeling fat and stiff. I have to live. I have to be a woman who Angel Mae would have been reasonably proud to have as a mother. I cannot give up on myself.

For some reason I've never been quite sure of my right to occupy the space I take up in this world. I've always felt a little bad about it, willing to concede it, deferential to others who seem to need it more. But now I know my rights. By virtue of having survived my birth, and by still being alive at 38 years old, I am really here. And she is not. So I have to run on that treadmill and finish that novel and cook those beans and pay these bills and fill the car with gas, because that's life and she is never, never, never going to have the chance to do those things.

It's like a knife to my heart. And it's exhausting. And I think this is what is meant by living for two.

Live. Live. Live. That's my mantra now, getting me out of bed in the mornings. Even when it hurts. Live. Live. Live. Even if all it propels me to do is to bring the laundry up from the basement, that's something. Live. Live. Live. Take no crap, and Live.

* * * * *

So, the head space I described above? I managed to think like that for about ten days. Not bad really, considering. I know it doesn't work that way out here in the land of the lost. We each come back to full life in our own time, in our own ways, gradually, and as grief lets us, or not. But it was a decent ten days, and something to look forward to. A branch to grab when the water comes.

And it's coming. It's gonna be a full week of peanut butter and honey days. Around this time last year is when things started to go to hell. I mean, the pregnancy was hell from the beginning, but this was the week the wheels started coming off the wagon. There are lots of triggering dates and days--lots of moments of overwhelm.

I'm still no good at remembering it without reliving it, and I don't want to torture myself unnecessarily. I'm not looking at her things or the little album I made for her due date. I can look at them any time. I sleep by her at night. This week is no different than any other. The 28th will be a day no different than any other. Still I worry. I feel like I should do something. I'm sure there is more grief work to be done. Maybe I could make something lovely of all this. A poem. A drawing. But I just don't want to do it.

The truth is, I don't want to look too closely. Because more than anything this is the anniversary of my failure. How should I mark that occasion? How do I celebrate her brief life and my love for her during a time so strongly marked by ignorance, fear, lack of help, lack of information, stubbornness, confusion, and decisions made far too late?

I can't untangle all that and just say, "Happy birthday, baby." This anniversary doesn't mean that to me. Maybe someday it will. Right now it just means I fucked up.

I am working on this. I really believe that at some point I will release myself from the grip of guilt. That someday I will feel enough grace, and gracefully let go. That some year these dates will be met simply with longing and wistfulness and a few tears. But not this year. This year it's "bye bye, baby" all over again.

For the next week or so I will just take what comes and paddle hard. I have a house full of chocolate and peanut butter and honey. I have paper and crayons. I have roses from my hubby and a blooming hyacinth from my sis. I have hot showers and warm blankets and figure skating on TV. I know 100% that if all I do for the next week is eat myself alive, I am still loved and cared for, and the waters will recede.

Because this is the gift of being one year out. This is what we learn. We've had enough days of grief to understand what happening, to know what triggers us, and to know how to get through it.