The Bleed Out

I wrote the following on February 17, 2014 in remembrance of my miscarriage in January of 2006.

How did you want to handle the burial the nurse asked……burial.  I hadn’t even realized I needed to think of that.  At not quite three months along, dealing with the grief of losing a baby was enough, not to mention the surgery needed to remove the fetus.  Now a burial?  Shell shocked, she just moved me along through the process, asking if I understood what was going to happen.  Yeah, lady, I just lost a kid.  She died.  My baby girl.  I bled out.  On a cruise ship.  Just a couple of days after I lost my dad to death.  On the same cruise ship.  Stuck in the ocean.  Yeah, I kinda understand this death thing.  I just went through it before being thrust into it again.

On the day of departure, already vacated from the room on the cruise ship, I felt a sizeable gush.  I knew it wasn’t right.  Rushing to the bathroom in the magnificent ship’s lobby, there was blood.  Lots of blood.  With nothing but my carry on luggage (the cruise ship takes care of the large bags for you, and meets you with it on the dock after departure) I did the only thing I knew how – I wiped and wrapped up with toilet paper and rushed out to my then husband.  I was given a listless pat on the back, and a graceless ‘it’ll be fine’ line.  We’ll just call the doctor once we get home.  With that, he leaves me to my carry on bags as well as to Christian and his bags.  The man just walked away.  Luckily, my brother in law at the time overheard the conversation, and saw me struggling to pull two bags as well as hold Christian’s small hand.  He comes up, whispers that I shouldn’t be doing all this with the situation, and grabs my two bags, attempting to haul them out along with his.  He doesn’t say much, but his eyes convey that he knows what I know.  I just lost my baby, only days after losing my dad, and the douche of an ex husband just walked away empty handed in more ways than one.

The doctor’s visit was a slow, extended, painful process to confirm what I already knew.  When the ultrasound girl only looks but doesn’t say anything, when she leaves the room to get the doctor, when the doctor just looks and sighs and asks me to meet him in his office.  As he sits behind his massive desk his glasses come off.  He rubs his eyes, looks up.  What else can he say…..I already knew.  I asked why.  A million reasons was his response.  A million different complications, maybe even a combination.  But I want to KNOW.  I want to know why……there isn’t a good reason why.  This happens many, many times I am told.

I am walked through the process, how I have to have surgery to remove the baby, that more than likely I’ll have kids again without a problem.  But that isn’t the end of it.  You just don’t remove “it” and move on…..years later I still keep track of how old she’d be, and wonder what she’d be like.  I did have another perfect kiddo, with no adverse affect from the miscarriage.  Christian has told people before that he has two siblings.  A brother AND a sister.  But that his sister is already in Heaven.  He states it very matter of fact.  Even though she does not exist here in the physical realm any more, she does exist.  She’d be eight this August.  I still cry.  And wonder.  And in many ways, I still bleed out, but this time it’s my heart that just pains and bleeds for the baby I knew, and loved, and held, but never got to truly meet.

The Bubble

I have created a perfect, happy little bubble in which I call my own. 

I exist inside this atmosphere content yet all alone. 

If and when I wander outside its mighty walls, 

I tread carefully to and fro so as to not induce a fall.

I seem to wander aimlessly when sent out on my way,

For to leave the bubble is to face the crowd and all they have to say.

At times this crowd hollers angrily, and their words do surely pound

And others walk right past me - as if I am invisible - without even a sound.

To feel the judgment on my face, or the quiet words unspoken

Cause silent tears to fall upon my heart and more memories to become broken.

So I run back to my bubble,

At peace amidst my own rubble.

For here I know at least I am protected,

Even though I am completely unconnected.

Many may wonder why I use the bubble as an excuse –

Try the years and years of prior abuse.

Having broken free from the pain,

I am tired of always having to explain.

Let me learn to be my own foundation

And to come away from the stagnation.

This bubble is what I call my own;

I am so happy to be home.

Heart Particles

Sometimes our biggest fear is the fear of fear itself.  As a survivor, I can recall countless times that I did not do something because of the fear of the unknown.  Even though the past is completed and behind me, I still hold remnants of trigger points that can send me spiraling back to a previous moment in time.  To continue my journey in life is to continue on into the unknown, which can ultimately be the scariest thing – survivor or not.  I am a broken individual, but to some extent, aren’t we all?  Each of us holds pieces of our hearts that at one point or another have been smashed into nothing more than mere dust particles that could be swept away with even the gentlest of breezes.  We hold onto these heart particles tightly, envelope them deep within our souls, and do not want to let go in trepidation of what may happen if we do release our grip.  For to release our grip is in essence to let go of the control we all so desperately want. 

I am no different.  I grip and I grasp those buried, minute pieces of my heart until the breath is ostensibly sucked right away from me and I am left gasping for air.  The after affects can be monumental as I look around bright eyed at the authenticity of what is before me, which is nothing like the reality I once knew so well.  The truth of the current day is a stark and drastic difference to the life I left behind.  I struggle to identify myself as I am now, compared to the “I” I once was.  To be able to recognize and classify myself now, I must learn to let go of the particles of the heart that have been crushed beyond devastation.

Those tiny particles will always be a part of me, but the remarkable thing about dust is that it only builds up if you let it.  So, at least for today, I take a deep breath, and I blow.  I propel the heart particles that have accumulated throughout the years out as far as my breath can take them.  I watch as they drift and soar and disperse.  I exhale, and feel the gentlest breeze begin to float through my heart.  And I know the “I” that I have been looking for so long to return is finally beginning to reappear.

Hurricanes and Ocean Waves

It has been way too long since I have set aside time just for me - time to nourish my own soul so that I am able to support those around me.  Working from home, I have been so busy growing my business, keeping sales up, and figuring out why sales just dropped while still raising the kids, playing with the animals, and trying to maintain the house that it had all consumed me from dawn till dusk.  It had enveloped me to the point that I didn’t realize how much it had encompassed me, until I broke down a few days ago in a scrambling mess of insanity.  I woke up from this bad dream called life to realize my house though still standing was a mess – there was stuff – everywhere.  Even in the bathroom.  How did random stuff get in the bathroom? 

I came back to reality and it hit me just how exhausted I was, both physically and emotionally.  The past few months I had not even taken a reprieve in the shower; I would rush in only to emerge a quick few moments later.  The goal was to get clean in as short of a time as possible, so I could get back to whatever it was I was doing before I had gotten wet.  And the time I had spent in the shower (outside of using soap) was used to think about how I could grow my business, how I could get my oldest son more stability in the midst of the chaos he experiences at his father’s house, or a good solution to get the baby to stop screaming immediately every time he needed or wanted something.  Although I constantly tell my children to have patience, that I am only one person, I forgot to repeat that mantra to myself.  I was trying to be all things to all people in all situations, except the only problem was that I forgot about myself in all of it. 

The forgetting of self led to one late night where I literally stopped in the mass chaos of movement, looked at it all, thought about it all, dropped to my knees, and broke into tears.  The enormity of the situation and all I had to do completely overrode all I am and all I have to offer.  As the tears flowed freely, one of my cats carefully approached.  I grabbed that cat and hugged tight as tears dropped on to his back.  The poor thing was just dangling there – too afraid to move even though his back was drenched by this point.  Good for him, at least I taught him enough by this point for him to realize not to move in the midst of a crises.  After a few moments I let the cat go, not because I wanted to, but because I was getting tons of cat hair sticking to my tear stained face.  Even in a breakdown I did have some self respect.  Things probably looked bad enough without cat hair on the face.

As I began picking off the hair one by one, I knew something had to lighten up.  I just did not have the time to remove cat hair like that just because I had a breakdown.  Goodness, I had enough stuff to do that was actually important!  After the cat realized I had reached a plateau of being a bit more stabilized, he quickly (albeit calmly and quietly so as to not attract attention) slid into the other room.

Days later, I can now realize and point to the times during the past months when I should have stopped and taken a deep breath.  Even hurricanes have their down times in the ocean where they relax in order to pick up more speed to head back to land.  I am no different.  Just like a hurricane, I need time to step back and gain speed so I can conquer the land mass ahead of me.  Today is just as busy as last week, and there are still the same demands, but through my crises I did come to realize just how little time I was taking to recharge my own batteries.  The night I was crying on the poor cat I found my batteries to be dead.  No one – not even supermom – can function on a dying energy field.  So, just like a hurricane, the past few days I have found myself veering back out into the ocean to take some time to stop and gather energy from the waves around me.  Turning, I have headed back to land.  There are more land masses to conquer, and I need all the energy I can get!   

Exhale

Today was a beautiful day in Kentucky – fresh, crisp morning air, beautiful sunshine, and just that right amount of heat that can lend to taking off the long sleeves and sporting one of the first short sleeves of the season.  Driving to church this morning with the baby in the back, I had the windows rolled down and the radio tuned to an upbeat Christian station.  It was one of those mornings filled with promise, when you knew it could hold anything and everything you wanted it to and you felt as if you could conquer anything.  And then smack – it happened.  One of those moments where a memory of the past was triggered, joggled free from the brain bank, and the feelings and emotions of preceding times shot so strong through my being I felt as if I was back in that moment.  It rendered me speechless.  The entire switch of atmosphere was caused by…..a road sign.  Yes, I saw a road sign.  Advertising a bridal show.  The exact same bridal show in the exact same location that was pivotal in years past with my baby’s daddy.  And that one plain blue sign brought in a rush of emotions that caused my breath to suck, my heart to palpitate, and my brain to temporarily forget just where I was and what I was doing.  In just a few short seconds that felt as if they were a millennium, a cascade of emotions hit my soul.  From the euphoria felt at a new love, to the steady beat of the growing relationship, to the jolt of what happened and how it all ended.  In that short amount of time, the sun seemed to dim, the radio though playing could not be heard, and the road ahead of me seemed to blur into a colorless haze.

When I came out of the buzz of the past, my breath was shallow and my grip was locked on the steering wheel.  I had to force myself to concentrate on the roadway and the cars around me.  The sun, once warm on my cheeks, was blazingly bright.  I blinked, not only to take away the glare of the sun, but to take away the rushing, harsh emotions that had just radiated through my being.  I again heard the radio playing, and realized one of my favorite songs had turned into a commercial break.  I switched the channel to another Christian music broadcast to help bring me back into the present.  Still shaky, I realized I could let this throw me back into that time when things weren’t as bright or I could stand straight, pick myself up, and keep moving on.  Shaking the rocky breath out of me, I chose to conquer the past yet again.  Looking in the rear view mirror at the road behind me I realized it was just that – behind me – and as my gaze fell forwards I caught my baby in his car seat…and I smiled.  Focusing ahead, I was at peace. And I exhaled.