Being Torched in the Refiner's Fire

Well, the software was true to dat, and I actually started my period as scheduled. Once that stupid ovulation happens, it’s all predictable from there. I’m a wreck though. Exhausted, cramps, mess; the tears have finally let down like a hurricane nightmare from hell. I don’t recommend 80day cycles to anyone.

And to top it off, I worry that it very well may interfere with my plans for tomorrow. When I get to gushing from every orifice, I can’t go but a few feet away from my bathroom. And yet, there’s a memorial service for Anne and the other NICU grads that didn’t make it through their first year. Missing it seems out of the question. I don’t get recitals or graduations. All I get is a scattering of memorial services with a program mentioning her name as one of the honored saints.

Do you know how infrequently I get to see her name mentioned in real life?
Do you realize how rarely I get to have my daughter acknowledged by the “real” world around me?
Do you have any idea the excruciation of having such an incredibly important part of my life ignored and abandoned by those who live around me?

This memorial service is all I get. I have to take it any way I can get it---especially since I’ve not been invited out to any type of social event in such a long time. I just worry that I’ll be too much of a bloody disaster trying to get there, and that [i]staying[/i] there for the two-hour event will be impossible.

I worry that the hospice people who may be there will bring on a flood of emotional heartache & anger that will send me over the edge. Moreover, I’ve been a sobbing wreck for days and I don’t really want to be with people, even though I do so desperately want to attend an event that honors my sweetie. Such a miserable Catch-22!

And then there’s my sweet Scarlett Jayne’s second birthday tomorrow. I pray she and my girls will go with me to the memorial tomorrow and help get me through it. I pray she sprinkles rainbow sparkles on her daddy’s birthday, and blesses her mama’s aching heart with her butterfly kisses from Heaven. My heart’s been all in a pinch, but I get like that over love’s sentimental journey.

I had lunch with my mom, sister & nieces yesterday. I hadn’t met with them in a few weeks. I was in utter misery by the time we parted company. My sister is one of these clueless idiots that actually fails (refuses) to grasp that this situation of grieving & heartbreak is not something that came & went with the funeral. She literally refuses to realize that my girls are forever etched upon my heart & mind, and there is NO getting over them. She met me several times yesterday with an attitude that very much reeked of “nothing lost/nothing gained and I don’t know what your problem is.”

So rather than try to actually express myself with her, I sat in silent sadness for most of our lunch--a most typical way of taking my meals with my family. She, my mom and nieces all made small talk about stupid trivial things they’d seen on TV through the week. I wanted to run screaming from the room.

So when my sister got up to take Elizabeth to the bathroom, I then made my attempts to talk to my mother about the memorial service. But then my sister came back entirely too quickly, and expected me to repeat everything I’d been saying to my mother. It was as if she just couldn’t stand that I would dare tell my mother anything that didn’t include her.

So I proceeded to repeat all I’d been sharing with my mom about Anne and the service, but then my sister was rather exasperated when she realized that the subject matter was about baby death & grief. She then proceeded to make several trite remarks about her own exhausted life--as if she can compare her selish exhaustion to my living prison. It was as if she was trying to say in a not so subtle a manner that, she’s got it rough too, if not rougher cuz I'm so lucky to have my "me" time--and I swear her attitude when it comes to stillbirth is that it's a nothing lost/nothing gained situation, so why do I keep on harping on missing someone who never even really existed??? it's not like she was 10 or some "real" age or anything--and she's even said outloud to me that, "they're in Heaven, so I don't know what the problem is" (yea well, let's send Elizabeth to Heaven and see how she feels).

I actually wondered if she didn’t want to tell me that she’s tired of me trying to talk about my girls cuz they’re not "real" anyway, and I’m just using them to get attention. She didn’t say that, but I felt it. I felt it like a locomotive plowing me into hamburger as it speeds through a dark tunnel.

My family sucks. My friends in real life suck. No problem. I've known for years that I’m just a door mat for feet-wiping whenever it’s convenient--as long as I'm not too sad or pathetic or ugly to be around. God forbid any of them actually know what it means to extend a supportive shoulder for all the bullshit I live through. Talk about people vanishing after the funeral--try having TWO funerals and see how many are left...

Alone! Life after baby death is very alone. Friends vanish. Family gets fed up and frustrated. No on in my family grieves my children but me. And how many IRL "friends" even remembered to wish me a happy birthday, let alone remember that my heart & mind are always focued on my children (their minds are focused on their children, why wouldn't it stand to reason that my focus is in the same direction). Morons.

You end up paying good, hard-earned money to have someone so-called over educated specialist sit and listen to the same old story---cuz when the child only lived sixty-one days, the story doesn’t change much. It’s like that finite set of photos---there aren’t any more, so you just recycle the ones you have. It's the same with a listening ear--they hear the same song over & over until they wish you'd go away. Finally, they leave instead. So you pay someone to sit and listen since no one else will. But at the end of their 45-minute hour do they really care??? What’s to care about as long as they get paid?

And I hate to sound like a gloating, vengeful bitch, but Ben had a chance this week to give my niece an ear full. It made me feel better to know that he’d had the courage to tell her off. Of course, last time I did that with my sister I got cut out of the entire family for three years, and have to have two kids die in order to be let back in. Ben expressed years worth of pent up crap about how she, my sisters and mother have hurt us literally to death---especially since Elizabeth was born and they cut us off at the knees, not letting us even know she was born, and then not letting us meet her until after Abigail was dead & three months buried, and then being told by my other sister that I got what I deserved. And then, how they’ve rubbed even more salt in the wounds since Anne died too. sigh

Of course, that obviously had no impact on anything since all my niece did was defend how right she feels like they were, and how stupid we are to feel so hurt (and that in some ways we did get what we deserved). I could barely look at her at our lunch yesterday, and it was clear that nothing has really changed after all these years.

I guess I didn’t really expect it to change. It was just nice that Ben got a chance to speak his mind over how hurtful they’ve been the last four years--he got to let some of it go so he can move on.

In the end, our challenge of practicing Biblical forgiveness has been one of the hardest tests of faith we’ve ever had to endure--burying my girls and "counting it all joy" has, of course, been the hardest test. Truly we have been refined in the Refiner's Fire these last many years!

Anyway, my life’s a total drag and my attitude is complete shit. But at least I’m finally being beaten to death by [oaf] and in a few days hopefully my attitude will improve as the hormones readjust themselves.

In the meantime, for my lurking critics, I just want ya’ll to know that I’m fully aware that my outlook sucks. I’ve had a lot of crap on my shoulders and on my heart--more than most deal with in an entire lifetime--and I've dealt with it all with limited resources & stuggling support systems---and I’ve not even touched on the debilitating chronic pain or fatigue. I think a vent is about due and seemingly acceptable. I'll work on being more encouraging as the saline ocean drains from my bleeding heart.