(7 Years After) Losing A Baby

As a woman, when a pregnancy ends and there is no baby to hold, it can feel like your world has literally exploded into nothingness around you. It can feel like there is no hope left in the world. It can feel like you'll never know happiness again.

I know because it happened to me seven years ago when I miscarried and lost my daughter, Elyssami Faith. It felt like my soul was being torn from my body along with my baby.

After 7 years, that morning and the first few days that followed are still etched in my memories as vivid as if it were happening now. It's not something I think I'll ever forget, just like I won't forget how much love I felt for that little life growing inside me.

There are some things I wish I could forget, like how I went to work that day and all I could do was cry; or how the physical agony ripped through me as my body let go of everything that had kept her alive; or how my own husband created deep emotional wounds asking if I was "over it" two days later and told me he was glad I had lost our daughter. Some things are better forgotten but they stay in my mind anyway.

There are some things I hope I'll never forget, like how it felt to have that little life growing inside me; or what a miracle it was; or how it felt to love so deeply and wholly even before meeting that little person.

And then there are the things I couldn't keep hold of, just the way I couldn't keep hold of her. That's the thing about a pregnancy that ends without a baby - you don't just lose a baby (as if that wasn't enough on its own). You lose all the hopes and dreams you'd had for her. You lose your sense of safety. You lose some of your innocence. You lose confidence in your body's ability to create and sustain life.

You lose a part of yourself.

And then... nobody wants to talk about it. Nobody wants you to say you had a baby and she died. People don't even want to hear you call a miscarriage a baby, let alone help you honour and remember her. Nobody wants to acknowledge you as a mother, like you don't deserve membership into that special club because your baby never kept you up crying all night -- but they don't realise, she did. The only difference is that it wasn't her crying, it was you.

I've been told that given enough time, all wounds will heal. I don't believe it. After seven years, though, I do believe that we learn how to live around the wounds. You don't get over losing your baby - it's not a hill you get to climb and when you're at the top you get a great view - that's not how it works. It isn't a gap you can fill, a wound you can heal - there is a piece of you and a piece of your life that is and always will be missing.

The thing is, though, you don't have to get over it. You just have to get through it, accept it, learn to cope with it... and live around it.

I'll never forget my daughter. I don't want to. However brief it was - she lived. She was loved. She deserves to have her name spoken, to be remembered and loved. And she will be because I am her mother and I will always love and remember her.

Tsunami (Otherwise known as "Where I'm At")

Some of you may know/remember that November is often a difficult month for me, and despite last year's improvement, this year was something of a set-back. I don't know how obvious it's been (either here or elsewhere), but my mental health has been declining for quite some time. There were several things feeding it, including another visit with my father, but the result is that for particularly the last several months, I've been very unwell.

I've been increasingly paranoid, guilty and ashamed, and withdrawing/guarding my comments, because my thoughts lead me to believe I'm unwanted anyway -- every comment or lack of comment has looked like a closed door; I've been losing large chunks of time and not even realising it; the hallucinations that are part of either my depression or the BPD, and indeed my entire sense of reality, have all gradually spiralled out of control; and all my efforts to right the roller coaster have only confused the issues more.

As a result of all this, after what had been I think around 3 years, I was admitted to the hospital's psychiatric unit for just over a week. I suppose I think that if I had just worked harder at being well, if I had tried harder, this wouldn't have happened. I find myself feeling deeply ashamed to have been admitted back there when I know that I don't think badly of anyone else who is admitted.

The upshot of all this is that my medication and my diagnosis have both been changed, and that there is talk of more intensive support being available, especially since the program I've been seeing my private psychologist (Sonia) under has now ended, leaving me with four sessions until next year (quite a drop since I had been seeing her 2 to 3 times a week). I'm not certain exactly what that support will entail but there was mention of a case manager to help organise some sort of housing, a public psychiatrist once a month or so and someone from the Mobile Intensive Treatment team to see a couple of times a week.

In the meantime, what I do know is that I've been put back onto Avanza (mirtazapine) - though how long that will last (as its sedating effects are already beginning to wear off) remains to be seen - and my diagnosis has been officially changed to also include Dissociative Identities Disorder. I must admit, it feels quite surreal to have that on my record after spending 12 years knowing but undiagnosed. I'm still sorting through how I feel about it, that's for sure.

There's been a lot of upheaval. There's still a lot of upheaval. I'm doing better than I was prior to my admission, but I'm still very unwell and struggling with many of the same issues I was having difficulty with before I went into hospital.

Life Isn't A Fairytale

Eight years ago, I donned my fairytale dress. I stood in front of my family and my friends and I promised to share my life with him, and only him, for as long as we both should live. We promised each other forever.

A lot has changed. Two years ago, we finalised our divorce: signed all the papers, made it official that things between us were over. I still hate that word, divorce. I hate the finality, the way I feel like a failure when I apply it to us.

Today he has a new relationship, a new family. I'm supposed to have moved on as well, and sometimes I think I have. And sometimes... sometimes I'm still so sad for all that we had that is gone. It's hard to move on without accepting it, but it's hard to accept it without moving on. I'm not even sure I want to accept it, sometimes. I know that might sound a bit silly, but accepting it means giving up even the ghost of a hope that it might be different some day. I suppose it probably sounds even sillier to those who know a bit more about our relationship. Still... I'm afraid to give up that hope.

It's like I live a fairytale, in my head. Like I think if I just hold on long enough, things will work out in the end, just like in a romantic comedy. I really need to challenge those thoughts. Life isn't a story, it's not going to work like the movies. It doesn't matter how long I hold onto him in my mind - I'm still not going to get him back. And the truth is, I don't really want him back. What I want is for my life to have gone the direction it was headed in five years ago. I want to be 22, again, with the world at my feet. And I can't have that, so it's time to let it go. It's time to learn how to want to be 27, 28, 29, 30. It's time to learn how to want to be something I can actually achieve. It's time to make new goals, time to make a new life for myself.

Tonight I'm going to let myself feel the sadness, the loss. Tonight I'll let myself cry for the woman who promised forever to someone who didn't keep it; for the hopes and the dreams and everything that we shared that never came to fruition. But tomorrow?

Tomorrow I'm going to remember that this isn't an ending, this is just another new beginning. And it's my choice what I do with that.



Cheer-leading Statements:
What we had is over. It's okay to feel sad about that.
Life doesn't work like the movies.
Sometimes it's more important to let go.
I can survive this. I can tolerate this, and anything else that comes my way.
Being divorced doesn't make me a complete failure as a person.



Take care of yourselves until next time, and may we all find our own small fences along the way.