Tongue Tied

I seem to have lost my voice. Probably temporary. I'm sure I'll be jibber jabbering away again soon.

I also seem to have lost one of my daughters. Permanently. I think. Although my mind always creates a nagging doubt that this might, just might, not be the case. That I can snag her back if I could figure out how.

Those days.

Interleaved amidst my days and hours that trudge along in their mean, unflinching way.
Sometimes in glaring bursts of colour, with sound and light.
Sometimes like thin, thin tracing paper with only the merest impression on it, accompanied by silence.

Different.
But.
There they are again.

Interposed between my eyes and the things that pass before them.
In odd flashes of the extraordinary.

Sometimes unexpectedly, causing me to catch my breath.
But at other times I know that I have sought them out deliberately.
Like flicking an enlarged taste bud over the edge of my teeth or peeling at a strip of skin by my fingernail.
An irresistible urge.
Pick, pick, pick.
Jab, jab, jab.
Fiddling about with this messy stuff because I can't seem to leave it alone.
All bodily fluids and salt.

Attempting to make the ending different.
Attempting to bring you back to me.
Still.

Wishing that I could remember.
Wishing that I could stop remembering.

In my car.
In the bath tub.
In front of the computer.
At night, as I go to sleep.

That time. It never quite seems to end.
Or perhaps I simply do not want those days to let me be.
Because they are all you left behind for me to keep.
That short little stretch of time now worn to unravelling by my anxious fingers.

My dear child.
I do miss you.

Crosspatch

*So I published this.
Then I felt ashamed of myself and deleted it.
Now I'm publishing it again.
Because, although I'm not particularly proud of this post, I do feel this way.
Angry and cross-patchy and kind of mean. Grinchy in fact.
With very little reason.

One more time.

26 weeks. The most pregnant I've ever been.
I am excited and filled with regret all at once.

I did not expect to feel so very angry.
I am tired of being angry.
Yet knowing it for the useless waste of energy it is, doesn't necessarily make the anger disappear. Frustratingly.
In a situation where there is nobody and nothing to be angry with, nobody to blame, nobody to curse. My anger is like a fight or flight response, a biological feedback loop gone awry.
Building and building a completely inappropriate response to the situation I find myself in.

I am at the age where it feels as though every other couple is having a baby.
Bump pictures and ultrasound scans abound.
Nobody else I know, in real life, of my own age, has anything other than the traditional happy ending.
Just me.
Only me.
Who sits in the corner, trying to hide behind my hair and chewing my lip whilst babies and pregnancy are discussed.

One of my colleagues laughingly says that he thought his baby had every congenital anomaly in the book as he couldn't make any sense of the picture at the ultrasound.
I want to howl.
Because it isn't funny. Not really. If he thought about it.
But nobody does. Because babies with congenital anomalies, dead babies only happen to other people. People like me who sit at the desk opposite.
But he's probably forgotten.

Most people just don't remember. Or they don't want to make any kind of allowance. Or they just don't care.
Or they aren't interested in my life. Why would they be? It is not as though I remember every detail of their lives.
But.
They think I love having discussions about the validity of screening records belonging to babies who died before they were eight days old.
They seem to think I relish opportunities to query whether any babies would STILL be in hospital 72 hours after birth. Erm . . .try four MONTHS. Or just maybe they might have died by that point.
Why in hell would you ask me this question?

That stupid, whining voice in my head persists, "Why couldn't it be me? Why did my baby die? I wanted it so badly and I was so close. I just wanted the normal run of things goddamnit. Why couldn't I do it? Why?"

I know that question is futile.
There isn't an answer.
Or not one that will quiet my internal temper tantrum.

Sometimes pregnancies do not end happily.
Sometimes babies die.
In this instance, it was my own pregnancy that did not end happily.
And it was Georgina who died.
It isn't something that other people are going to remember.
It isn't something that other people are going to care about.
I am expecting too much. I know I am.
My husband is always telling me that I expect too much of other people.
That there are only two people who are going to carry on remembering, who are going to carry on hurting.
And that's us.

There is nothing to be angry about. Not really.
I just need to remember that.