Ramblings of an insomniac...

I always feel compelled to write. I don’t know why. I write all the time. I don’t share it because who am I? Who wants to read about what I’m thinking; what I’m doing; what I’m feeling. My life experiences are ordinary; my thoughts are not revolutionary. 

 

But tonight, tonight was different. 

I couldn’t sleep. I picked up my phone and got lost on social media. I came upon this account, which I remember seeing before, about a family who had lost their three-year-old daughter to cancer. One post. That’s all it took. One picture. One sentence to describe the loss they felt. 

 

Normally, when I go down these rabbit holes, I shed a tear or two and just pray. Usually that prayer consists of asking God why He allows this. But tonight, as I laid in bed, my heart began to scream. I was flooded with so much pain that I wanted to scream. This feeling was so powerful that I had to get out of bed and leave the room so I wouldn’t wake Tim with my sobs. 

 

I sat on the sofa with tears spilling out of my eyes, just praying to God; no, begging God; to never put me there. I begged Him not to take my children. I cried for a bit, then put my phone down. I had to control the situation. All I could think about was why had I had such a visceral reaction to this post? Then I remembered. 

 

A few days ago, I came across this story of a man who was asking strangers questions about their lives and then he would sit and listen to them. It was mostly older folks and it was heartwarming. So, I mentioned it to Tim and I tell him some of the questions. He turns to me and asks me to answer a few, but the one that I struggled with was this… “What is the worst pain you’ve felt that wasn’t physical?”

 

I couldn’t answer it. At least not right away. 

 

I knew it would fall between Postpartum Depression or Joseph. I just didn’t know. So I thought on it and the answer, turned out to be quite painful. 

 

The most pain I’ve ever felt, that was not physical, was not when I didn’t hear his heartbeat; it wasn’t when they told me he was gone; it wasn’t telling Tim; it wasn’t sitting in a hospital bed begging God to tell me what name He had used to call him home; it wasn’t the hours I sat there, waiting to have him, knowing he would already be gone; it wasn’t delivering him; it wasn’t the moment they placed his tiny body in my hands; it was a year after I lost him. When it was time to go to his grave; when I sat there on the ground sobbing; my heart seizing inside my chest; a scream so loud in my throat that no noise could form; an urge to dig up the entire ground until I held him again; feeling like I could never leave him there; feeling as though I had also been buried. It was a horribly painful moment. 

 

But, what may be more painful, is the realization that for a year I tried to bury my pain. Sure, I bore some of it out loud, the pieces that were too fresh and big to contain, but as the days and weeks passed, I would do anything not to feel that pain. I distracted myself. I downloaded games on my phone so that when I felt that pain creeping out, I would instead focus on this game and shove that pain back in. I began to read more, filling my mind with thoughts and words that were not my own. I immersed myself further into my role as mama and spent hours reading and playing with the boys, hoping that silence would not fall upon me. My pain and grief were like a shadow I was trying to outrun. I tried to hide from it every chance I got. 

 

I have always felt like I shouldn’t feel so much pain for losing Joseph. I always feel like I don’t have a right to say that I lost a child, because he was so tiny and because I didn't get to know him…. NO, because the world had not known him. I remember feeling like I had to just get over him. It was just a miscarriage. There are all these “days” for people, but Joseph and I don’t fit in them. He wasn’t classified as a stillborn, he wasn’t classified as an infant or child loss and he was so much more than a miscarriage. It feels like my grief has no home, no business being here and my mind is searching for a way to rationalize the worlds view that he was “just a miscarriage” and the very real pain that I lost my child; my son. 

 

After I lost Joseph, I felt like I had died; like a piece of my heart had been ripped from me and nothing could ever make it whole. I changed when he died… and I don’t think I’ve spent too much time trying to figure out what that means….