I am not

Usual...Normal...Most...Low risk...Routine...Common

The more time that passes the more the weight of this is getting to me. I feel more freakish as each day passes, rather than less. I'm not healing, but feeling more and more like fresh layers are being painfully peeled back until there is nothing left of me but a bloody mess.
Two nights ago I listened to music for the first time in months. Music is generally off limits for me because it allows room in my brain to think. This was particularly bad because I sat on my bed and looked at my boys' pictures on the wall while I listened. I started to cry and would have fallen apart completely if Sam hadn't come into the room to ask for help with the DVD he was watching.

Yesterday morning I was contemplating the imminent arrival of my period and thought to myself, "I can use tampons for this one....Oh God....I just delivered another dead baby less than three months ago..." I nearly fell to the ground and wept.

Everywhere I turn...everywhere I go...there are reminders of what is not. I talked to a client I haven't talked to since just after I hurt my ankle. He innocently asked, "Are the kids making fun of you?" I just said, "Yeah," without thinking. He replied, "Yeah, they love to pick on mom and dad." I hung up the phone and sat here shell-shocked for several minutes...unable to think or even move. I'm assuming he doesn't even know that Alex is dead. And I don't think he even knew I was pregnant with Travis. How did my life get this fucked up?

Time just keeps ticking past and people move on without me. Babies are born, old people die, a million miracles and tragedies take place all around, and I am on the periphery of it all...observing, but not really feeling any of it.

Today I might have been a mom of two beautiful living boys. Or I might have been a 32-weeks-pregnant-(and ready to start talking delivery options)-mom of one beautiful living boy. But I am neither of those things. I'm the mom of one beautiful living boy and two dead boys....with little hope for anything else. Two beautiful and perfect boys who would be here if not for a malfunction within my body. Nothing wrong with them. They were normal. But me?

Not usual...Not normal...Not like most...Not low risk...Not routine...Not common.

Normally (there's that word again), I would embrace my uniqueness. But on this scale, it is just too much. Too heavy. Too big. Too complicated.

Simple conversations become difficult. "How are the kids?" is an unanswerable riddle. The normal progress of time reminds me how far away I am from my boys...from that place and time when I was totally happy. I am on the verge of tears at every moment. I long to remember and forget all at once. Perhaps the roots of insanity are planted when the mind is in contradiction with itself...unable to accept reality as a single constant truth. Like this.

Unusual. Abnormal. Unique. Freakish. Uncommon. Bizarre. Out of the ordinary.

Everyone presumes there will be a future. Everyone naturally looks forward and wonders what I will do. There is no making decisions...there is no power left in me to do that. It's done and today is all there is. The time for planning for the future is long past. This is it. No forward and no backward. Just here...right now. And I HATE this here and now. I'm trapped without the dream of ever being able to escape.

It was hard enough thinking of all the missing might have beens with one. But two...let me explain what that is like...put a plastic bag over your head and try to breathe. That's what it's like.

My arms ache for my boys. I still dream of those anticipated first moments holding them...but alive. How sweet that dream was. How beautiful. But not for me...not now. Instead, I have nightmarish images from those first moments. The physical trappings of death...baby soft skin peeling away...sunken emptiness where there should be big beautiful eyes making a connection...the grey palor of the dead...silence. It all plays in my brain and won't stop. And I can't breathe. It's all there. It's just all wrong.

There is no trust anymore. No belief that things happen in a certain order or for a reason or with any measure of predictability. Our lives have been tossed around like yahtzee dice. No pattern. No understanding.

I can't stand anything. I can't stand myself. There is nothing attractive about me. I have nothing left to offer that is even remotely feminine. My basic innermost soul is tainted...sick...deadly. I dress myself each day with less enthusiasm than one would have for a dentist visit. Yesterday while standing on the sidewalk waiting for my ride home I saw this pretty young woman walk out of the tanning place across the street. She was wearing jeans and a fitted t-shirt. Her hair was up in a less than fancy hairdo. But she had that confidence...that I used to have a lifetime ago. But I have none of that left.

It rings in my ears like some sort of childish taunt. You're broken...diseased...empty.

Not usual...Not normal...Not like most...Not low risk...Not routine...Not common.

I am...so very tired.