Usually my thoughts are more together before I write a blog, but that’s just not happening tonight. I’ve had a hundred thoughts running through my head these last weeks and I haven’t been able to grab a single one of them long enough to sort out something coherent. So, here I go in the hopes that something will make sense at one point in this ramble.
I’m feeling sad. That much I know. Not debilitating sad, but background sad. Not sad enough to cry, but sad enough to not be completely happy. The feeling is getting stronger, so the crying will be kicking in sometime soon (probably by the end of this blog).
Exploring why I’m feeling this way and blogging about it has always helped to make it better and get me through it. The trouble is, I still don’t know what’s going on. I haven’t run into any triggers. We aren’t close enough to Brayden’s birthday to where I’m feeling down. Although, now that I’ve written his name, I’m realizing how long it’s been since anyone said it out loud. Okay, now I’m crying :-(
He’s not been forgotten, but he’s not first anymore. My grief isn’t first and hasn’t been in some time. It hurts that our lives have moved on…it almost feels like it happened too fast and Brayden didn’t get his time with us that he should have. Even if that time was just for us to grieve his loss.
The last few times I had “down days” where I cried (or just wanted to) I realized something: I’m not really crying for Brayden anymore. I don’t know how to explain it, but I think I’m crying for just me. Sometimes I feel so alone and it has nothing to do with my family, friends or other BLM’s. It’s between me and Brayden and he isn’t here, so I cry because I’m sad for me. I cry because the connection a mother feels with her child is severed forever and I’ve never felt so alone – I think not even in those early months after our loss. It’s not stabbing pain, but it is steady...I feel like I’m reaching out into the dark and there’s nothing, just vast empty space.
The weird thing is, is that it doesn’t feel selfish to grieve for myself. I can only assume that it’s a new development in the grieving phase and I’ll get back to the normal routine of grieving later. Time will tell.
Something that has been on my mind, randomly, over and over, were a few things that were said to me after Brayden passed. I’m going to go ahead and throw out there that I’ve always tried to give “outsiders” the benefit of the doubt when listening to what they say to a grieving parent. Honestly, most don’t know that there’s nothing to say to make it better.
That being said, I’m really hating the “You can have more children” and “Be grateful you have other children” comments. I guess it’s having our rainbow baby that makes me see those for the crap that I think they are. I didn’t take comfort with those words at the time, but now they just piss me off.
Nobody would say to an amputee “Be grateful you have another arm” or “You can always get a prosthetic leg in the future”. Why? For obvious reasons. Why aren’t the reasons so obvious after losing a child? I don’t know. For some things, there just are no replacements…and there is no comfort in the pretense of otherwise.
Okay, feeling a little better now. Confessional and vent over. Hopefully I’ll have more coherent or insightful things to say the next chance I get to sit down and blog. For now, I’m content with getting some of it out…regardless of how random it is. ;-)
