07-12-2008 - My ongoing journey

My mood while writing this blog: calm

I find myself wanting to tell the world what I am going through...like somehow if everyone in the whole world knows what I am thinking I will feel better. I have even caught myself challenging people with my emotions ("sure I'll come and see you but you had better be prepared as I might cry!"). I have been seeing a lovely therapist for 3 months now. once a week I go and spend an hour pouring my heart out and trying to fit all the pieces of my life into order.

my therapist tells me that my losing Jonathan is not the only thing I am grieving right now. That when we lose someone we grieve and when we lose another we grieve not only for the recent loss but for every loss prior.

when I lost Jonathan my world crumbled. my whole life stopped. for a while I was just numb... too much in pain and drugged up to do much and having to many hallucinations and nightmares and waking nightmares to even think about anything else. and over time I stopped feeling like everyone was going to try to kill me, I could sleep with the light off again... and the angry babies stopped watching me through the bars of my headboard.

and then i tried to rejoin the world and when I stepped back on it was different...I no longer fit on it the way it was...it kept going...my life was obliterated and everyone else kept living. I wanted to yell and scream at them to pay attention and to just stop and mourn for my little baby with me. how dare they move on and leave me stuck.

and so through circumstance, grief and post traumatic stress I became isolated. I still am isolated to a degree. we had moved into the country as we wanted to live near a park and live in a place where I could find other mommies to befriend. but we lost Jonathan only after living here for 3 weeks. so where do I go now to meet people? i wasn't able to even look at the mom's in the playground for weeks! do I now go up to one of them and say "hi! I'm Andrea, my baby died will you still be my friend?" thankfully I found this site. this site full of so many wonderful and understanding and amazing people. somewhere I can finally say hi. and joke around, and say I am having a crap day and everyone just understands. I don't have to justify my feelings to people here. that is so important.

i am also isolated by my experience. A good number of friends have simply stopped contacting me. my therapist thinks it has to do with their fears of facing the reality that you really can lose a child. it really does happen and it is not a myth and it is not always the friend of a friend who has gone through it. it could be anyone.

my Post Traumatic Stress hasn't helped. I was just too terrified to leave my house for soo long that now that I am able I find myself procrastinating. whats the point of going out? where would I go? I work from home now so there's no need to get dressed. noone to chat to throughout the day about whatever. its just me and my computer.

and then I realised something. something I was in denial about for a while. I have slipped into a depression. I thought I had done sooo well! thought I had avoided it this time. but no I was sitting there with a box of chocolates in my hand and I looked down and the whole thing was gone. the whooole thing! and then I knew immediately I was eating to cope again and depression had just wooped me in the butt.

so what do I do now? my therapist tells me I have a long long road to cross. having a ....lets call it complicated life history and living through at least 10 family deaths in about 15 years has taken its toll. not to mention my parents depression, family alcoholism and a terrible body image and the fact that I had a full beard for my teens and twenty's!

I made it through all of those things, so now I keep going... I just really want to feeel goood you know...like christmas morning as a child good. its all so heavy. and every week I go to my therapist and we try to lighten the load a little and every week I leave her feeling exhausted and emotional and sooo very vulnerable (apparently that means it is working..lol)

so I will take it all day by day. today I will get out of bed and commute to my living room and work, tomorrow I will have friends over or go to the shops, and someday hopefully soon I will wake up and it will feel like christmas morning. I will feel put together again, the hole in my heart will be filled some and i will feel valued and needed and full of self worth. for I know in my brain that I am strong, I know I clean up nice, I know I am valuable and loved, I know all these things I just have to convince my heart to believe it.

and as I sit here thinking of the journey ahead I am so very glad I have this site to go to. it has been my saviour and I find joy and excitement in the people here.