Monday, October 11, 2010

A Mask

I am having one of those confused days today. BLMs, I am sure you can relate. I don't know whether to wear the happy mask today or the sad mask. I feel like getting dress in the morning requires one additional step, putting on a mask.


Over the past four months, I have come to realize that life as I used to know it is over. It is gone. No more are the days when the worst thing in my life was the fact that I was over tasked at work, or that I had to get gas on the way home, or that I was locked out of my own house, or that another bill came that was to be covered by insurance. Instead, I face a new reality. The reality of living my life without my son, when I did everything right in my pregnancy. The reality of not knowing if I will become pregnant on my own, as it had never happened before. The reality of knowing that we have hit the lifetime maximum for IVF coverage and I only ever had one egg, one chance, and it didn't work.

Today, like many others, I don't know whether to wear the happy mask or the sad one. I struggle with this everyday. I know that Wyatt would choose the happy one. But happy isn't all that easy. There are days when I look at his photos and think to myself, "Really? Are you really serious? He is gone forever, and never coming back, but why???" Then there are other days when I think, "Thank God. I am so grateful that my child didn't have to suffer for long. He didn't have to come out and face this cruel world with an issue that would set him back from the "normal". He is at peace now."

I feel as though some people may think that since I have hit the four month mark, that things should be easier. That things shouldn't upset me as much. That life should be starting to get back to "normal". But um, hello, that is not the case. My life will never be back to "normal". Never.

I will always have this empty void, this hole in my heart. This empty place where so many dreams and memories were suppose to exist. A place that is now vactant, desolate, and abandoned.

A place that regardless of how much time may passes, it will always require something to hide the pain and the emptiness, something only a mask can cover.

5 comments:

Tiffany said...

what a beautiful and heartbreaking post mama. Hugs. I know what you mean about the masks. sigh....

Whittney said...

I hear you... I wrote a similar post like this the other day about how I feel like my shadow is the one carrying out my every day life... and the real me is still in the parking garage outside the NICU wondering how I am supposed to leave without my baby.

Laura said...

I am sad to learn this detail regarding your IFV coverage...somehow I hadn't known about that part of the story. Oh... wow. I'm just shaking my head thinking, really? Really?

And...on what you and Whitney said. Masks. Shadow's. ditto on the sigh... The "peace" we are supposed to have found by now...that the world wants us to have...

Two people are solidifying in me I'm realizing... one that is still holding my baby as tight and close and the other that pretends I'm not dying inside. I now can "read" people real fast and I can call up whichever one I need, or well, more correctly they need. I wear that mask whenever it is required... and am shocked sometimes at those who I must wear it for (family...some good friends) and I feel myself loosing some close relations and changing the way I relate to everyone I know (evaluating are they a mask person, non mask person)... and these people have no idea I'm sizing them up (the mask, it works, they buy it, and to them all is well and baby loss isn't THAT bad)... so then I just watch my world I once knew and everyone in it no longer be the same place or people I used to know even as I often have to still pretend to be.

Wyatt's Mommie said...

I totally understand the "loosing some close relations". I feel as though most friends from before the BLM days are now nothing but a figment of my imagination. I feel as though I can't relate to them. I can't listen to them talk about their babies and their sleep/eat patterns. I feel like their life issues are nothing compared to the pain that I live with everyday. I fully understand. But, I have developed a new bond with so many others. Although it many be only on FB and blogger, I feel like you girls are my new family. A friend is someone you can go years without talking to and then picked up where you left off. Well, that is what I have with my BLMs. We all have something in common, and that makes our bond that much stronger.

Laura said...

Thank you Wyatt's Mommie! :) It's funny because I often get self conscience even here - why would anyone want to listen to me... and really, by now, why I'm I (and my husband) so affected... but I go to you all and there you are, different stories, different paths, but you know... and oh, how horribly you all know. I LOVE to think going forward you all will always be there to pick up where we left off... cause yea that's just comforting to think of in the future. Years from now we can still check in and miss our babies and reflect on all the years between when they were here... together. :) I know to the non-BLM world that seems odd for that to be comforting... but I think you know what I mean.