Feeling Broken

I do want sympathy or judgment on this. And I know Mike is going to be shocked to realize I posted something so personal, but this is my outlet. I think I am broken. I am not sure how to fix myself, and maybe I never will be fixed, but it seems like so much of life is just fake. I am not a perfect person. I am not sure I ever will be. I was pretty well stitched together before such extreme pure grief came into my life. And than 13 months later, it hit again. People tell you to move on, that time eases the pain and grief. Grief is a process. There is no set time limit on grief. I am pretty good at faking it till I make it. And much of my happiness is true and real, but I never really show what I feeling deep down inside. And really and truly, much of my happiness seems stacked on such poor foundation that I always fear the happiness is about to teeter off. It scares me to even write this. Because like another angel Mom, I feel judged writing something even like this.

I know everyone is a little crazy/neurotic on some level. And some people are able to hide the craziness a little better. But sometimes that crazy is let a little loose and you are left with something like this. I do not like to be fake. Nor do I like fakeness in others. But since I lost Lilly and Ryker I have changed. I do find joy in life. But I am also angry. I am angry to have lost two precious, precious people in my life. I did not go to the movies until about 18 months after we lost Ryker. Why, you ask? It is because I was angry that people could find such simple enjoyment and fulfillment in something so inconsequential. I love God, and I am grateful for the blessings I do have, but there is also a part of me that is always asking "why me? Why us? Why them? Don't you know I can not handle that? Don't you know how much I am hurting? Why did I have to say goodbye to my babies and yet you allow so many others that are unfit to have child after child?" I am hurt, I am angry. I loathe myself for feeling this way. I hate being the fake person I am. I hate pretending. 

I remember growing up in Ohio, and there was a family that was in our ward and they constantly acted sad and sullen. They had a little girl who passed away when she was very little from choking on a small toy. But I look at them, and although they were good people, and I was very little, I remember thinking that they looked and acted broken. And little did I know that I would be much the same. Do not think me ungrateful, because this is not what this is about. I have a hard time doing the spiritual things in my life. I think a lot of times the gratitude I do have to God is outweighed by my being hurt and angry that the world and my life is what it is, and I do not have the control to change what happens.  I do pray, but sometimes I wonder if my prayers are truly heard. Besides it being very hard to take Collin to church and have him sit for three hours, church is something I used to love to do and now find hard to do. I go with Mike every other week, but the weeks he is not there, I do not desire to go. Because I know that I will have to put on the happy persona, that I will have to grapple alone with a little boy that does not understand how to be quiet or reverent, and that people expect me that after nearly three/four years of losing our children, I should have moved on. I feel like I will end up crying the whole time, because I am tired after working the last couple of days prior, and when I am tired, my emotions gets the best of me. And than I feel the self-loathing from being so far from perfect, as so many other just seem to have perfected: the art of being perfect.

I know many others loved Lilly and Ryker, but what does it seem like Mike and I so often are the only ones that miss them? I feel like much of my grief is spent in the arms of husband. Maybe people think of them, and maybe others just think it will make us sad remembering them and reminding us, but one of the worst things as a parent who has a lost a child (especially one that is young) is for them to be forgotten. I feel like so much is expected of such a broken individual that I am. I show pictures on the computer to Collin, and today I was going through a group of pictures labeled "camera card one" which is the card that has the pictures of Ryker when he was passing and than passed. That was a very hard day. I do remember the peace we felt. But the time we had with Ryker were truly anything but peaceful. One moment in particular was one of my top three lowest moments of my life. And looking at the pictures today, and the pictures of our niece Gracie when she was born and so sick, I was really saddened. I really hope this baby is born heart healthy. But one of the parts of going through what we have gone through is that you become this sort of pessimistic/realistic person. I do not want to go back to Primary Children's Medical Center.  I do not want to hand my child over to the hands of surgeons and nurses. It makes me angry to even think about having to spend one day with this little boy there. I want a healthy baby. I want to be able to have my son in my hospital room, to be able to hold him and feed him, and do what I want with him. I do not want to be told not to touch or talk to him because his blood pressure is too high. I do not want to deal with nurses who are sub-par comparatively to their counter-parts. I want to be able to just change my little boy. I want him to be able to wear whatever clothing we want to put him into. And I want to just enjoy my child, not living in fear of the what-if's.

I understand that much of what I am feeling is contributed to the never-ending grieving process. Does that make any of what I feel/experience any easier? Certainly not. I know that there are many others sadly that can relate to this. I am not sure what will come of putting it out there, other than scaring people away. But this is who I am. This is the person I am. I am ever-evolving, changing all the time. I am not the same person I was 6 years ago when I was about to get married. Nor am I the same person I was three years ago when I said goodbye to my son as he passed from this world. And I do not want to be. Nothing is ever the same. Sometimes I wish it was. I am going to stop writing now, and maybe go take a nap, wake up, maybe feeling better and a little less angry. I am just putting these feelings out there, because I realize life is not hunky-dory happy all the time. Grief is part of life. A really hard part at that. I worry about  people who do not show emotion. But than I wish I was better at keeping it perfectly bottled in. I am who I am, and what you see is what you get. Even if I do have to fake it enough to get through the day.

Here is something I will try to be happy about today: my baby is growing and kicking harder. 

And he had his first case of hiccups this week.