Joining in

It has been 3 years, 4 months and 29 days since the 29th of August 2008, the date of Georgina's death. Since Angie's Right Where I Am project, I tend to check more often. Who knew there was even a handy site to help you do just that. I never could bring myself to install one of those tickers, so I could see her fading off into the distance.

I don't know who I am. I used to be a person. Now I feel like a conduit. Just an empty tube for pouring feelings through. Love seeps out of my fingers on to skin, hurts drip slowly through, saturating to collect in a pool. I long to feel . . . nothing. Just nothing at all. Because I don't want to feel and reflect and ponder any more.

Pondering is nice, thinking is nice, melancholia can even be pleasant. But the price was too high. I don't want insight, I don't want to understand, I don't want any of this.

I have to join in again. Worse and more impossible still, I have to want to join in again. With the world as I used to know it. To play nicely with others. For the sake of the two children I have with me, if not for myself.

I go into the post office, bearing my bead to join a birthing necklace in one hand and Reuben tucked up under my other arm.
The lady behind the counter wants to know why I am sending a single bead all that distance.
"For a friend of mine who is having a baby, it's to make a necklace with. Many people across the world will be sending one and she will string them together to wear when she gives birth."
"Ooo must be an American thing."
It's quite common amongst women who have lost a baby at, or shortly after, birth actually.
"When is the baby due?"
"February I think. She's having a planned section so I should really know the date."
"Ooo, I've only ever had sections." Wistful sigh.
"Well, I'm sure that every way of giving birth has its good and bad points."
I don't like the way this conversation is heading and I need to get out of here. Panic is starting.
At this point the older lady behind me starts asking to see the baby. So I'm turning around to let her see Reuben's face and trying to maintain two conversations, one with the lady behind me in the queue and one with the lady behind the counter. My blood is throbbing around my brain.
"I had two babies you see."
If you think I'm responding to that you've got another thing coming lady. You with your wistfulness over your section births that presumably resulted in babies that lived and now I know exactly what you are going to tell me next. You're really pushing my buttons here.
Slightly raising her voice, "Twins you see."
Whoop-de-doo, how very nice for you.
"Yes, I've heard you often have to have sections with twins as they are slightly more risky aren't they. Thanks for your help. Bye now."
Smile until I get to the doorway.
Crumple the moment I get outside.
So did I. I had twins too. But it all went wrong and I'm now I'm broken and I can't talk about normal things anymore. Sometimes I think I shouldn't go outside of my own house anymore. I don't want to join in, I don't want to play. 


Surely it shouldn't still hurt so very much. How can I stop this happening? This crumpling. How will Jessica feel when she is older and I cry every time that somebody mentions twins? That isn't fair, I have to do better than this.

But sometimes I feel that is all I am now. A hurt. I hurt and I hurt other people by still being hurt. A flinching anticipation of being hurt. Exposed. Scrabbling around trying to tie something around myself. Every morning I try anew, to be braver, to smile, to be sociable. Then the world scrapes on my skin and I only want to get back in my car and turn the heater up and cry.

So I get back into the car and switch the radio on.
It's Woman's Hour. They are talking about when you should announce your pregnancy. To avoid raising the hopes of others. I'm thinking . . . ummm, after the baby is born. Possibly not even then.

Then they are interviewing a group of pregnant women on this issue, when to choose names, when to tell people. One says, laughing, "When we were choosing names we went round the cemetery. Because, well, they're not using that name anymore." Giggles.
And I can only think of her calling her baby Georgina Jane. Even though Georgina doesn't even have a grave, let alone a stone with her name on it.

And I sit. And I think to myself, I can't join in. Not with this.

My not joining in feels like defeat. But equally, joining in would also feel like defeat.
So I sit. Ready to fight. Wanting victory. But very uncertain as to how to achieve it.