Drama Queen

I feel a little sheepish about my previous post. Thank you for all your kind comments. You are all so understanding and sweet.

I promise that I have taken Jessica to the children's centre many, many times without so much as a whiff of melodrama. Not even the teeny tiniest hint of any awkward question or bitterness. Without a mention of dead children. We have left that self same centre on many occasions without me crying into Jessica's hair. However that particular, unrepresentative visit to the children's centre is the only one, in all probability, that will ever feature here. Because I found it upsetting for reasons that I brought upon myself. Nice Catherine, real nice.

I worry sometimes that a stranger stumbling upon this blog would imagine that I live my days in agony, that I weep continuously, tearing at my hair and rocking myself back and forth in a corner mumbling 'My babies, my babies, why did it happen, why did you come so early, why did my Georgina die, I am so sad, I am so very, very sad.'

And that, when I'm not occupied doing the former, I storm around green, hairy and grinch-like snarling at pregnant women and people with twins who both lived and anyone else I consider luckier than myself.

Yes, I have been known to do all these things on occasion. Sometimes, on particularly bad days, I might even manage two or more of these simultaneously.
Storming around in a rage AND weeping.
Tearing my hair AND mumbling in a corner.
Storming AND weeping AND tearing hair AND mumbling. Now that's a sight.
Yes, even now when all it seems so long ago.

But there are in between days. When I don't feel so terrible. And because I don't feel so terrible, these days remain undocumented.

I'm going to go off on a bit of tangent here but bear with me. I'll get back to my drama queenish main point by the end of this post. Promise.

I've written in a previous post that, after the twins were born, my taste in literature started to travel in a dubious direction. I had the misfortune to read, in quick succession, two books by the same author. I'm not going to mention her name in case she (a) googles herself one day (b) has such a massive ego that she actually bothers to click on every single mention of herself and reaches my blog as the ten millionth hit and then (c) takes offence to what I've written and picks a fight with me. Unlikely but . . . .still.

Her books have pastel covers with nice, fluffy titles. They look innocent enough. However, the two most recent efforts featured dead babies. And not even well-written, well-rounded fleshed out dead babies with names, the hopes and dreams of parents attached to them, with photographs, with details.  Instead we get the kind of 'dead babies as plot device / character development' efforts that Tash wrote about so beautifully here. Both featured mysterious women who had kind of lost the plot. And why had they gone slightly round the twist I hear you cry? Yup, dead babies.

It made me angry. I myself have a dead baby. Really? I hear your gasp. Yes, me Catherine W. 100% fully paid up member of the dead baby mama club.
My daughter who I loved and wanted and dreamt about and cherished was born too early and she lived briefly and then she died. Those are the facts. But Georgina was also a real person. Not just someone that makes me sad and slightly crazy and, if one of these novels is to be believed, will cause me to move into a commune, have sex with an unsuitable man, pretend to be pregnant and steal someone else's living baby whilst neglecting my oldest daughter. Causing her to be given away to foster parents and then lose her memory in a fire. No, I haven't made this plot up. This is a real, published work of fiction that (sadly) yours truly paid good money for.

Seriously, I'm not going to do any of these things. Well I wouldn't rule them out entirely because anything is possible but it really doesn't look likely.
Do people read these books and think that THIS is what I am like?
That THIS is how I live now?
That these are actions that I am teetering on the verge of committing?

Well it isn't how I live now. I'm not going to do these things.

My mother once said that I had a core of steel, a rock at the centre of my being.
When Georgina died, that little rock was put through fire, water and ice, stamped on by numerous people, squeezed in a vice. It cracked and changed.
But it didn't disintegrate. It's still here. I am different. But I am still here.

I am wondering if my blog has run its course?
Is it just becoming part of this conspiracy that losing a child will be the end, the undoing of your life?
Because I only write when I am sad.

I still have good days, I still enjoy the company of my mother, my sister, my husband and my friends. Admittedly the latter are fewer in number since all of this happened but the ones I have left, they are true friends.
I still laugh.
I still enjoy my life.
I am still happy. I am happier now than I ever was before.
Because I knew Georgina. Because Jessica is here with me.
I am glad to have been the mother of my daughters.
I am terribly sad that Georgina died but I don't want to become part of the same conspiracy that these pastel covered books belong to.
That women whose babies die go mad and bad and kidnap other people's children (can you tell that irked me yet?) have complete personality overhauls and never laugh again. We don't. Do we? Well, at least, I don't. I am sad, I am heartbroken, I am mad on occasion, possibly even bad. I am simply . . . different. Different because of Georgina.
Who only lived for three days but because of her existence I am changed.
In ways I can't even begin to describe.

The deaths of our children aren't the end. It feels like it but they aren't the end of us.
We are still here, figuring out how to live without them.
That's the hard part.
I don't think I'll ever get it down but I intend to keep trying.

Having said that, I'll probably be back to my drama queen ways for my next post.
But I just felt the need to set the record straight.