Let go. #reverb10

Day 5 Prompt – Let Go. What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why? (Prompt Author: Alice Bradley)

Not too terribly recently (but not so long ago) something pierced my heart, and in fearful defense, I locked her away in a heavy cage.

I held on to anger.

I let fear and doubt grow strong and high, in thorny bush and tangling brambles.  I saw the deadly brush thriving, and turned my eye, rather than cutting it down, as I should.  It grew thicker and tighter around the cage of my heart until almost no light could break through.  The more time passed, the less I even noticed it.

Her wounds too painful to see, even through the dense and thorny vines, I did not visit.  With no warmth from another allowed through the thick canopy I had allowed to flourish, she grew colder, ever colder.  No longer feasting on love (she deserved), comfort (she desired), the heart inside me grew weak, famished.  She beat dimly for a great time; my body kept grinding mechanically through the motions of necessary life.

So hungry was she that, when something found its way through the tangling cover to her living tomb, she questioned it not, but absorbed it fully, wanting to consume, to be warmed.  A fine and lovely trickery, this black ink was, but not the warmth she needed.  And where had I been?  It was my job to protect her, and I allowed her to be exposed to this clever poison.

Only when forcibly lead through the darkness by another was I able to realize how absent I had been, what I had relinquished so easily.  He gave me the strength I needed to bring down those brambles and vines, though the process was painful, and many thorns drew blood from us both.

I am excellent at building cages, walls.  I am a great grower of the thorny vine.  I hold tight to anger. I harbor fear.

I’ve struggled with being truly loved.  I’ve allowed circumstances to make me doubt it possible.  That is changing in me.

I have slowly, this year, let go of the fear of being loved.

And it is warm in this light.

Reverb 10 is an annual event and online initiative to reflect on your year and manifest what’s next. Use the end of your year as an opportunity to reflect on what’s happened, and to send out reverberations for the year ahead.

Pain and joy mingle.

We purchased this year’s tree on a Sunday while John was home for a day.  That night, I put the lights on it.  The smell of a real Christmas tree is something I love so much that I don’t exactly know how to put it into words.  The olfactory sense can trigger some of the strongest sense memories we have, and I think this smell is linked into the magic and joy that laces my memories of Christmas as a child.  We never had a fake tree, so when I smelled this smell – a real pine, cedar, or fir – it meant Christmas was coming.  And that meant magic, love, and light.  It meant my soul would lift and float for awhile.

This year, before we bought our tree, I went in search of something I’ve had in a cabinet all year long.  It is a glass spice bottle with a black plastic lid.  The glass is very heavy, and the plastic is thick and sturdy.  It appeals to me in some way, and so I saved it to use for something when the spice ran out.  I had no idea when I put it aside that later I’d be gathering fallen needles to place inside.

Last year, I lost a baby (Davin) right at three months into the pregnancy.  It was my second miscarriage of the year and, for many reasons, it throttled me in different and harder ways than had the first one (in April).

I found out on December 9th during a prenatal appointment that he had died.  A D&C to remove Davin from my womb was scheduled for December 16th.

I had carried him for a week, knowing he was no longer alive.  It was both maddening and oddly comforting.  On the one hand, I felt insane knowing he was inside of me and he was not alive; my body was incapable of doing anything to help him.  On the other hand, I got to be with him and say goodbye, come to terms with him being removed.

On December 15th, the day before the surgery, I asked John to go get a tree.  I didn’t tell him, but I wanted that tree in the house with all 4 of us.  That’s how it was supposed to be, and in my fractured state of being, I was going to have it that way, regardless.

When last year’s tree came into our home with all of its wonderful smelling glory my child was still inside of me.  The next day, he was all the way gone.  I was sedated for some time after that.  When the pills ran out there was still wine and liquor.  I got tipsy regularly; I ate crappy food.  No matter what I ingested, I was empty.

I was empty in more ways than the one that made my uterus ache as it healed.

That tree sat in the living room with me.  I watched those lights flash and dance through my bleary eyes.  I sat here, numb, with that happy smell.  Each day rolled by and I tried whenever I could to enjoy them, even if it was an altered, forced experience.

I cried a lot.  I was angry and sad.  A lot of days I was just nothing.

The tree was there.

At some time way past Christmas there came a point when I had to admit that the tree was dried out and needed to be taken away.  I cried about that, too.

When that tree came into my house, I still had my baby inside of me.  Now the tree was about to leave, and I had to keep a part of it, because somehow, it was the last thing I could hold onto about Davin.  Is that crazy?

I got down on my hands and knees with that damn spice bottle and I gathered up fallen needles until it was full.  Then I put it in one of my kitchen cabinets.

Only a couple of times during the year, when my heart ached the very most for Davin, I went and opened that bottle.  I held it, smooth, cool and heavy, in my hand.  In my fingers, it felt strong when I felt weak.  I stared at the needles.  I opened the bottle and smelled.

Pain and joy mingle together in that smell for me now.

Not long before we got our tree this year, I went for that bottle for the first time in quite a while.  When I smelled it, I wept for my lost son.  The smell was still very strong and crisp.  It wrapped me up; it sang to me of both sorrow and delight.  Afterwards, I felt a sort of peace.

I put the bottle out as the very first Christmas decoration in our home this year.

I will think of them both every Christmas: the baby who we thought would be born in December 08 as well as the baby who died in December 08.  I don’t think I’ll ever smell that happy smell or watch those dancing lights again without a twinge of sorrow.  But I believe I will always still smile at them, as well.

Pain and joy mingle together, and that is not such a bad thing to experience, or acknowledge.

It is far better than pain sitting in the heart by itself.

You take the good, you take the bad…

Lions stalk the Jungles around us in August.

This August, Leo was hiding behind one of those particularly bushy and leafy plants in the Jungle, doing his Kingly Duties without me noticing him too much.

As the end of August neared, I walked past his hiding spot. I was expecting there to be a Virgin hanging around somewhere by that time, but it seems he ate her up, and when he saw me, he roared and reached out with a giant, furry paw and gave me a whap.

This was no friendly cat batting. His claws were out, and he threw me into September in a painful way. I landed in the Ninth Month ‘O The Year hard on my ass and with jagged claw marks on my heart.

It was September, I realized with a jar, and midway through this month, it would be a year since I’d conceived the boy who had then died 3 months later.

A deep, aching sorrow captured me for awhile. On a few occasions I cried it out. One late night, in particular, left me on the living room floor doing what is known well as The Ugly Cry. Oh, that it was. Ugly with a side of Stinkin, Holy Hell.

For twenty minutes, I lay in a heap, pouring it all out into the carpet.

My face was a swollen mess the entire next day; my head throbbed.

But life keeps moving, and you kind of flow with it most of the time. I got back to flowing. In fact, I threw myself at going, even. Lions be damned… bikes, and hikes, and picnics… oh my!

I can laugh in the sun as well as I can cry in the dark, it seems.

But then, can’t we all? Yes is the answer. (Remind yourself of that if you need to, sometimes. It can be easy to forget.)

Then I realized as the end of September ran out that someone resembling Lady Justice had me sitting on her outward facing scale. Before I could throw something on the opposing one to keep things steady, she dumped me face-first into October, and crashing into another of those dates I can never seem to forget.

I knew, of course, the whole time I was flying down the bike path with the wind slicing past my grin and throwing out my pony tail in whips and flips behind me, that this next bump was coming. Of course I did.

Today is that date, and it marks one year since the last time I realized I was pregnant. It’s been a year since I spied that little pink cross next to that little pink line.

It was an odd day one year ago, emailing my husband a photo of the pregnancy test with a message that spoke of my fear, instead of joy. A few weeks prior to that, I had finally come to terms with emotions and thoughts I’d been having and I felt sure enough about what I had decided to announce it out loud.

“I really just don’t want to be pregnant again right now. Maybe one day, but not any time soon.”

Soon after, I began having… those strange, but familiar sensations. You know, the bloating, the craving, the heightened senses. When my period was late, I pulled out an extra pee stick that was in the bathroom, and sure enough, it was time to turn off the neon vacancy sign on this lady’s uterus.

I was struck almost simultaneously with fear, anger, disgust, disappointment, guilt, sadness, and grief.

The irony of the situation did not escape me. Luckily, a new set of emotions rose quite quickly from deep inside, as well: Hope. Longing. Joy.

Guarded, those three were. But they were there, unmistakably.

You can follow posts back through my miscarriage tag and find me talking about the feelings I had being pregnant again after a miscarriage earlier that year. You can obviously also read the posts that detail what I went through emotionally when this new baby also died, in early December.

This, right now and through December, is a hard span of time for me – it is the first anniversary of the pregnancy that ended in a second miscarriage. I know, it’s confusing. But I think the first anniversaries are hardest. I tend to believe that while the dates will always have a sting, these initial ones offer the deepest blows.

And if you think I should be over this, I forgive you. You don’t understand, and that’s okay.  I sincerely hope you never do.  If you think I’m dealing with it all so very bravely and I am very strong,  you are sweet and kind. I appreciate that, but I’m just like you.  Some days I’m so strong. Other days, I’m nothing but Jello. In the sun.

October 3rd is the first blow of that second time when I decided I could let myself hope. I wrote a post about that hope. I damn near internally promised my dead son that I would never give up the hope that he taught me it was okay to have.

And yet?  I’ve spent a damn lot of time this past year being pissed off, signing off on hope, and mentally giving the finger to anyone who dared suggest I hold onto it. (Not you, really.)

Did he really teach me, in those short 3 months that it’s okay to hope again?

I have to believe that was the truth, no matter how things turned out. I have to, even if I don’t feel that way every day, you dig? I just have to keep believing that the lesson Davin taught me was true. About hope.

Because if you don’t have hope for something new and maybe even better, if not every day, then at least with some consistency, how do you keep moving forward? How, without hope, can one keep flowing and going, smiling and laughing, growing and loving?

I just don’t think you do, and so I know I still have it.  Even if it’s a bit dented and has lost some of its shine.

Today I’m going to be sad, that’s for sure. Really, really sad.

And that’s ok.  But I refuse to allow myself to wallow in misery this time. This will actually be difficult for me – it seems I’m an innate misery wallower. (Spell check wants me to change this to “swallower.”  So you hear it here first: I don’t spit misery, I swallow it, folks.)

Yesterday, I said, on Twitter:

“Oct. 3, 2008 I took a pregnancy test & it was positive. Can’t decide if I should let myself be miserable tomorrow or fight it tooth & nail.”

I got a variety of answers, and lots of support. Thanks to all of you who reached out then, and to those who have done so in the past. Even when you don’t hear back from me, please know that if you’ve done it, you’ve been a part of a support network that I value deeply, that keeps me going, and I thank you sincerely. (Even later, I come back to these posts and read your comments again.)

My favorite response yesterday was from @wbgookin (author of Daddy Is Tired), and I thought I’d share it with you. It is simple, and yet seems powerful to me. That’s the best kind of advice, isn’t it?

It’s what I aim to pull off today, and hopefully any time this same kind of question arises inside of me.

“Be both. Be sad for what might have been, be glad for what is.”

So yes… Today, I’m going to miss Davin. I’m going to be incredibly sad about what could have been, but was not. I am going to wish he was with us while I still rejoice in how wonderful it is to play in the sun at the park with Braden.

I’m going to do the Sad, Sad, Happy, Happy, Joy, Joy Dance.

Here’s hoping your Saturday is peaceful and beautiful, even though you live with a sorrow, too.

Puppies: They’re just better.

I wrote a very, very short and moody, desperate and pathetic post a few weeks ago about getting hit upside the heart again by the desire for my lost babies.

It really never goes away. It just hides a little sometimes, lurking; waiting for the right time to shit on your world. Or mine. Guess I can’t really speak for others.

Or yours, maybe, is true, since I’m publishing this crap.

I thought about sharing that post with you now that the bewbs of BEWB Fest 09 have been filed away… because really? Sharing it with you right at the same time as going, “OMG LOOK! IT’S BEWBS!” just didn’t feel right. And everything about bewbs generally feels good, so why ruin that? I mean. Really.

So I thought about sharing it with you now, in all of its deep and philosophical questioning glory (read: whiny and pathetic yearning-filled, demanding inquisitiveness). I thought about making you read trite crap like, “I’m stuck whining the same things, being the same pathetic empty, yearning bag over and over again.”

And

“When will it get so old that my heart just implodes from feeling the same tortured longing one.more.time?”

And the rest of it, too. But no, I saved it as a text file entitled, “baby nonsense.”

I did make you read part of it, now, didn’t I? Manipulative, emotional arse, I am.  But you’ll not have to read that in its entirety.

Instead, please enjoy looking at this cute puppy.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/conwayl/ / CC BY-ND 2.0

I like puppies.

They are way, way better than fetuses that are ripped out of your uterus.

Of course, then they grow up and pee on your baseboards and shit on the kitchen floor.

I have such a positive outlook.

I could use a few glitter coated unicorns flying out of my ass on rainbows during times like this.

Hurricane Season of the Heart and Soul

A couple of weeks ago, I was fine.

As the end of this first week in June nears, I’m realizing that I am pointedly not fine. There’s a date approaching that’s been making my stomach turn a little lately and it seems that with every day deeper into June I go, my heart clenches a little tighter in my chest.

There’s a pressure change occurring in there.

I’m having a very hard time seeing new babies right now. It makes me feel like a jerk, but that’s the truth.

A couple of weeks ago, I was fine.

Right now, seeing someone’s brand new baby or hearing about them approaching a due date or going into labor stirs strong currents deep within.

An emotional tidal wave has been building in me recently, deep inside, hidden under cover.  The sunny, blue skies you can see from up here are foul trickery.  Not even I was really aware that such a storm was gathering until just recently as little leaks have sprung here and there.

Every time I think of the baby boy I thought I was going to birth this month, I feel the lip of the wave pushing higher, the base of it growing stronger.

A couple of weeks ago, I was fine.

Today, there was more than a small leak. There was a huge gushing surge. I broke apart a little bit under the sudden forceful gale.  Something tells me it was just the leading edge.

I drew up the pieces again and stood tall.

Generally, I fill my days with other things of a mostly jovial nature. The biggest part of my every day is more important and precious than anything else, and in that I find solace.

He needs me to stand tall.

Still, the wave is pressing.

But in a few more weeks, I’ll seem fine again.

I just wish I really was.

Even if it’s a crooked rainbow with colors missing. It still counts, damnit.

This past Sunday was an anniversary.

But not the kind you celebrate with an extravagant weekend getaway.

If you’re like me, it’s the kind you await with anxious trepidation, wondering what sick emotional games your head and heart will play with you.

A year ago last Sunday I suffered a miscarriage.  It was the first (but not the last) time I would experience the realized loss of a living being within.

The bottle of Prometrium prescribed by the kind, helpful, and compassionate doctor on the other end of the phone with a sobbing, fretful, worried mother that night, one year ago last Sunday, still sits in my kitchen cabinet.

I still don’t have the heart to throw it away.  Yet, I have no use for it.  Seeing it reminds me of the baby.  That’s not a great thing, but it’s not altogether a bad thing, either.  It’s just… a thing thing.

Even though that first miscarriage ripped my heart out, and then I got an injection of Unexpected Hope only to suffer another Cosmic Sucker Punch, I have experienced a bit of healing in a whole year’s time.

But I don’t want to forget.  And I don’t mean forget the babies (which I most certainly will not).  I mean the pain.

There is something about the pain that is left after something that tears at your heart so fiercely.  There is something about it that I don’t want to lose.

That sounds crazy, doesn’t it?

Perhaps it’s just the idea that this pain is the only thing I have left of this baby (of both of these babies), and the thought of letting go of it and moving on is just… well, shitty.  Unpoetic as it may be, that is the best word for it.  Letting go of that pain feels shitty.

If I can smile all day long every day (even when I’m looking at the damned bottle in the kitchen cabinet), then it feels as though I have nothing left of them.  As if it does not matter that they were here one moment and then gone the next.

Fault me for it if you will, but nutty as it sounds – this pain is a tragically beautiful thing, and I don’t plan on letting go of it until I am holding my babies somewhere.  Whether that is in some eternal dream or Heaven, or wherever else… that’s when I’ll release this gnawing grief.

Until then, that very pain helps me appreciate every hug, flower, and ray of light in this world.  Because I’m a foolish girl, and when the light of the sun shines too prettily for too long, I have a tendency to take everything that’s good in my life for granted.

This pain?  The way it lingers and sometimes flares up?  It taps me on the shoulder and says, “Be grateful, woman.” It’s my reminder.

I refuse to even want to let go of that.

This past Sunday, I planted flowers for our lost babies, who we call Taylor and Davin.
They were purple alyssum, a choice made in order to simultaneously bow my head to another soul that was spirited away too soon.

I could want to be numbed (and some nights, I kind of am) or I could wish for complete healing, to leave these feelings behind and forget them.

Instead I’m going to hold onto what’s left of this pain, and when it feels the most raw, I’m going to try as hard as I can to turn that prism of pain toward the light, so that it creates the most beautiful rainbow I can make that effer shoot out.

Waste away, young lads and lasses. Enjoy your time.

I miss my youth.

Now, before you go brow-beating me about how I’m still young, how I have so much longer to go before I lose my youth, or how much older than me you are and yadda yadda yadda (oh, yeah, I totally just ‘yadda yadda’d’ you), hear me out.

I mean not only youth in body, but youth in spirit, feeling, knowledge.

I miss the bliss of ignorance, the forever stretched out before me. The feeling that anything is possible.

With the passage of time comes experience; with experience comes knowledge, understanding (of sorts).

They say youth is wasted on the young. However, you realize, that is what makes it worth it. If the young knew the value of youth – the desire they would feel to have it back when it was gone… they would never really be able to enjoy it, would they?

With knowledge comes the shift.

The more you learn about the true nature of humans and the things of the world, the more you have to let go of the naive idealism that kept your young cheeks rosy and new.

No, there is no need to let go of hope, determination, and wonder. I am wide-eyed at the world still, believe me.

You could not freely wander the earth with your eyes, heart and mind open and not find a new and amazing thing every day if you tried. This is why I take photographs. Because over and over… again and again, even within my tiny sphere of movement, this happens to me.

So lecture me not on being able to capture the wonder of youth even with age.

But sit beside me for a spell and mourn with me this thing that must happen to us all. Some of us more than others, or maybe just a little bit sooner. But to all of us, it happens, to some degree or another.

The truth is that we must open our hands and let the fancy daydreams of childhood slide from our palms sometimes. Some things which happen steal them from us like wicked trolls, whisk them away to dark places; hiding them from the light. Only a child can pluck them out anew and let them grow for a time again.

My hands are too old to hold onto things which must escape them, already. The effort of trying has worn my fingers tired and weary.

We move through life, rolling along, and suddenly things assault us from this direction or that. The human tendency to ignore these possibilities on a conscious level from day to day allows us to function; it allows us to keep those wheels rolling, greasy and smooth. But no amount of greasing stops a rock from throwing you off your axel. You’ll have to reconsider concepts like need, desire, and love when your cart overturns.

It can take a long time to grease that wheel again. I’m workin’ on it.

I’m workin’ on it.

I speak in riddles because the words are too painful and tiresome to lay out in detail and push around into the proper order. It has been yet another day of remembering so many things that I would sometimes like to forget.

Sometimes.

So many things, some of which I’ve shared before, others which I may never tell you. Time will tell.

For now I close my eyes, take a deep breath in, push a long, tired breath out, and put one hand inside of the other. And hold on.

Tomorrow, I’ll open my eyes, and move those wheels along again.

On a somewhat related note: man, I farckin’ hate PMS.

Trying hard every day to heed my own advice.

Today’s Photohunt Theme is “Thankful”

July, 2008

It’s a word that causes cliche
to flood through my mind and still
those things I cherish and value
can’t be labeled as cliche and tossed aside

I hold him and him dear; they are my world
Things happen in life to make you realize
that every day with the blessing of love
ticks by so fast, if we let it

It is easy to sing a song of pain
and hold on to heartache
It is easy to ignore love as
the way things should be

Let the cliches fill your mind
let yourself get caught up in the meaning
the word evokes in you
Be thankful

And live it.