Not Easily Offended

I've always been a person that isn't easily offended. I typically take things people say with a grain of salt and have an astounding ability to remember that everyone has a unique perspective and background that causes them to say the things they do, act the way they do, etc. With the exception of blatantly racist or misogynist comments I tend to assume people mean well, and even in those cases I usually assume they do not really know what they are saying.

So, when people started telling me about all the stupid things people would say to me after Emmy died and how much they would hurt, I assumed I would be immune to this particular form of hurt. After all, I'd always been able to blow things like that off before. So, imagine my surprise when even the most mundane of comments sends me whirling into anger and despair. A comment as simple as, "I'm not ready for my 12 year old baby to be starting puberty" makes me seethe with rage about how I would give anything to be watching my baby do just that. I realize that other people are allowed to have their feelings. Hell I still have my own feelings, though I am just as hard on myself about feeling ungrateful as I am on other people.

It sucks because I want people to be normal around me. I try to not let on that I'm upset when someone starts talking about how they think their relationship with their sister is the most important in their life, but I'm not very good at hiding my feelings. They show on my face and in my body and rarely, in my tears. And then on top of feeling hurt I feel like a clod, like I've just pushed my grief onto someone else, like I've just knocked them down and discounted their feelings. Basically it makes me feel like shit.

Just another example, I guess, of something I am tired of yet powerless to change. So far as I can tell, there is no light at the end of the tunnel of this grief journey. There is no end in site. The thought of continuing to feel these things forever, to feel so unlike myself is so tiring, so crushing.

Life Lessons

I've been watching a lot of TV lately. Between that and screwing around playing mindless games on the internet it's pretty much all I have the energy to do. Normally I watch pretty trashy tv; mindless, reality drivel that is all, in the moment, and not so heavy on plot or theme. But every once in a while I watch an actual scripted show. Something trying to have plot and a point and trying to move the viewer or teach a lesson. And what lesson have I learned? I've learned that my life is the lesson.

I suppose there are other lessons that appear from time to time, but by far the most prevalent thing the shows like to teach is that you should appreciate what you have, that things could always be worse, you could like have a sick, dying or dead kid or something.

So what's a person supposed to do when everywhere they turn they are reminded over and over again that they are living everyone in the whole world's worst nightmare. What lesson am I supposed to learn from that, where am I supposed to find hope. I know things could be worse. I do know that. I have much to be thankful for in my life. But the sad fact is, I had much more to be thankful for before M died. And I was thankful, truly I was. I had learned the lesson already, believe me. I had watched plenty of TV even before I was left in a stupor when my baby died.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind

This is probably going to go down in history as the most self absorbed whiny blog post ever written, but here it goes.

This sucks. It's not fair that my kid died, I wish it had never happened and I'm tired of being the woman with the dead kid and the person who loses her temper at the drop of a hat. I'm tired of everything that having a dead kid entails. I'm tired of having to figure out how to parent a not dead kid and how to be a wife to a man with a dead kid and I'm tired of thinking about the fact that my kid died every single moment of every day. I'm tired of the guilt, I'm tired of the guilt I feel when I momentarily don't feel the guilt. I'm tired of being the person that people thinks now understands their grief. I'm tired of being strong, tired of being weak. I'm tired of trying to figure out what people think about every action I take. I'm tired of caring, I'm tired of not caring. I just don't want to do this anymore. I don't want to have a dead kid. I want it all to go away. And right now if that meant that I had never had her, I might just, maybe think that would have been ok, because this is all just too much. Too too much. And that makes me feel like shit. But I feel like shit most days, so I guess that's all I can hope for anyway.