after a year of tears... boredom?

Thank you to each and every person who sent emails, comments, cards, and flowers to us around February 28. It helps us so much to know that we are loved and remembered and that our baby is loved and remembered. It is, in fact, the only thing that helps. Much love back to you. xo

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The first year is over. And I feel… bored. So freaking bored. I am cranky, irritable, and my feet are itchy. It is 55 degrees today, and I want to claw down all the plastic wrap on our windows, and let some air into this place. But I can’t because this is New England, and we could have a blizzard next week.

I once read a comment on a babyloss blog saying something like this: What most people don’t understand is that holding, seeing, touching our dead babies is the “fucking highlight” of this experience: it’s the living without them for the rest of our lives that is truly awful. (Sorry, truth-telling-blog-commenter, if I could remember who you are I would credit you and quote you better!)

So yeah, what she said. I actually miss, if you can believe it, the end of February – the awful love, the gorgeous grief, the time set aside to just be in it, to be with her. So far March has been all dead air. Just the everyday dullness of life to get through, with a cloud of wow this really happened to us hanging over me. Nothing to open my heart for. Nothing to sink my teeth into.

That sounds so wrong. I am trying to conceive another baby. I have a good contract job that pays well. We are going to move, start a new phase of life. But who cares? This week I just can’t feel it. I have energy for nothing. I stare into the future, and it’s just a flat, dry, boring blank. A dead leaf of a future. I feel... removed.

I hate talking like this. I think it hurts Brian. I’ve told him it’s temporary, that I need him to be the one to carry the hope and confidence for a little while. He is good at that. But still, I'm sure he hates to hear it.

I may be creating drama to pull myself through this. I had a stomach virus last week and convinced myself it was either diabetes or pregnancy. I wouldn’t let the dentist give me a filling at 6DPO so now his whole office thinks I’m pregnant. I asked my GYN for a blood draw at 7DPO when I hadn’t even tested at home yet (she said no). At 8DPO I asked my husband if my areolas look bigger. I took an EPT at 9DPO and now feel like an idiot. It was way too soon and I don’t want to be that girl. I. just. don’t. I feel profoundly bored just thinking about an upcoming week of obsessive pregnancy testing. I’ve got to find something better to do with myself.

I miss myself a little. I used to always be able to get up to something. I had a general policy of living that went like this: If you don't like it, change it. (Someday I'll tell you how many times I've moved.) But now there are things that cannot be changed--things that I can't fix and can't flee. I've got to grow something positive, or at least interesting, up out of a fixed point. I'm so bored I can't think what.

I figure this boredom is a cover for something. Fending off an incoming wave of grief? Disguising my anger? Fighting against "acceptance"? Sticking my feet in cement so I don't have to "move on." Who knows?

I have nothing neat to wrap this up with. I feel like a cranky bitch. And why shouldn't I? I've got a whole life stretching ahead of me with a big empty whole in it. It's hard to be excited about that.