The reflection of four.

Lucy turns four on Saturday and what I am not going to do is talk about my AFE on her birthday and what that has been like for me. So on Saturday come back here and I'll have a special post about Lucy and how great she is, plus we can all admire how beautifully adorable she is. 

Because that's just a fact. 

Today though, I'm going to talk about what this means for me. (If you're new around here or have no idea what I'm talking about when I say AFE, you can go HERE to catch up.) On Facebook earlier this week I shared this and it made me pause. 

I have spent a good chunk of the last four years trying to get people to understand that right now the concept of be grateful has nothing to do with trying to heal from trauma. Being grateful doesn't make my trauma go away. It doesn't make the depression go away, the PTSD, the panic attacks, the anxiety, the fear, the feeling of not wanting to be here, none of that goes away whether I am grateful or not. 

Even after four years I am still sad. I still feel terror when I see a pregnant woman. A small baby sometimes makes me cry. I still feel angry. 

I am angry it happened at all. 

I am angry my life isn't the way I worked for. It isn't what I wanted at all. I don't even feel like this is my life anymore. 

I am angry that I missed out on Lucy's every first because I don't remember any of it. What kind of God lets a person survive this and then robs you of memories? To make me feel like a constant disappointment to my children when I can't remember important things or share in their memories? To make me always wonder if I'm as good of a wife as I was? 

I cry all of the time. I cry because I'm sad. I cry because some days I don't know what I'm doing. I cry because some days I don't want to be here anymore. I cry because I feel guilty. I cry because I feel like a prisoner in someone else's life. I cry because I'm crying and because I'm angry. 

I cry because I'm not grateful. 

I am angry and I cry because I'm not better. I'm angry there is no such thing as "better". I am so sad that I never feel well. I always hurt. I am always so tired I can barely function. I am angry my memory is awful. I'm really angry that I am so short tempered and angry and that my family sees it. I'm feel so deflated because I keep trying and trying and still, I'm running in place. Its like I'm running uphill but I never reach the top. I hate complaining about my life because I KNOW people are out there who have it worse, but my therapist absolutely hates when I say that because its downplaying my reality. I will say that I would take all of the pain and ailments if it meant Lucy could stay healthy. Anytime she gets sick or worse I feel guilty. Its an endless wheel of thoughts of what I messed up when I was pregnant, how did I fail her? 

I am angry people still push their stupid essential oils on me like that's going to fix me. I'm angry people tell me if I just did a specific thing I would be cured. I'm angry people suggest memory games for me and assume I haven't tried them. Or maybe they think I just didn't try hard enough. Yeah, its probably that. Maybe I should just try harder and suddenly my brain and body will snap together and be normal. 

I am angry people talk about me like I'm not trying hard enough. I am angry these people can't see me on the bathroom floor in the middle of the night crying. That they can't see me in my therapy sessions trying so hard. I am angry they can't be in my body just to feel what its like to feel like you have the worst flu of your life every day. I'm angry that they can't see me in the shower sobbing almost every day because I am so emotionally exhausted from just going through a day. 

The only thing I know for certain, the only thing I know for sure with every bone in my body, is that Matt is my person. I know I'm lucky that he has stuck around, that he still loves me. I'm not always a pleasant person and I know that. It has to be hard for him to know I need so much help and some days, some days I just can't do it at all. I also know my kids are pretty damn great. I couldn't have a better set of kids even if I handpicked them. I constantly feel like I'm failing them but how do you explain to them that my best is really crappy and I'm sorry? 

I'm really struggling this week, as I always do this time of year, and I'm trying so hard to fake it. 

I wish I had the same connection with my family as I do with Lucy. It's not that she is my favorite or anything like that, she is the only person who knows what it was like. Some days I am grateful babies can't remember their birth and then other days I wish she did so I wouldn't feel crazy alone. Isn't that messed up? It feels messed up. I know there are other survivors and I've friended many and I listen to every one of their stories, some are similar to mine in ways but we are all different. Some days it helps but other days it makes me feel more alone. I'm surrounded by so many and I have never felt more alone. 

But I'm here. I'm acknowledging that I am here, I have worked so hard to stay here, and being here is an accomplishment. I might still be running uphill in a storm but nobody can say I'm not hanging onto every rock and branch so I don't fall. Because I might be a lot of things, but I don't want to be a failure too. I also know that nobody has the right to make me feel worse, to make me feel more guilty. So I guess I'm learning things, too. 

So here we are, four. I don't know if things will get better. I'm no longer in that "give it time, it'll get better" optimistic phase, I've moved firmly into the "its shit and that's OK" phase. I'm not even sorry about it. I'll just keep swimming, surely I'll wash up somewhere. 

Forgetting It Sucks

I feel like it's been awhile since I've posted about what life is really like. Away from book reviews and kids being fun (and sometimes not), there is a lot going on in my life. Some of which I'm not ready to share because I haven't quite worked out how I feel about it. And that's OK.

It seems like every November I really struggle with life. Last year was pretty bad and I guess the good thing is I forget how bad its already been. I know fall of 2016 was really horrible because I was planning my suicide. So, I guess we've gone up from there. 2017 was bad. 2018 was really bad but by then financial issues were catching up with us and they are still here so that really sucks, but every year it's like the depression morphs into something new, if that makes sense.

I've really struggled this year with the realization that this actually is it. I'm really at the peak of my depression treatment. I've really come to the end of the road medication wise in some areas and my mood stabilizing medication can obviously be increased but I've been waiting to do that to make sure I really need it so I don't max out sooner than I should. Nobody can ever say I'm irresponsible with my medications because I'm scared of everything so I'm willing to suffer until the absolute last minute before I change anything.

Every day though I sit at home while all four kids are in school and I just think about how difficult life is. How hard it is to just get out of bed, then to get dressed, then get them to school and back, and all of the stuff a mom does during a day. I'm barely keeping anything together as it is and I'm just so mentally exhausted. I just don't know how much longer I can do this, you know? I'm not sure what I'm doing as a mom, I'm a really crappy wife and I know that Matt is absolutely tired of always correcting me and double checking what I'm doing because I probably screwed something up as usual, I have no desire to do anything, and I just don't know how I manage to get through every single day.

Last week I brought Penelope to school when she had no school. I had almost left her there. I was late for a therapy appointment and that wasn't good. I had to pick Jackson up from school for an appointment, I went to the wrong school. In fact, I went to a school none of my kids have ever been to. Explain THAT. We had family pictures taken and I inexplicably ordered 168 photo cards. We needed 60. Thank god Matt was able to get that fixed and save us $82.

Needless to say I cried a lot last week. I forget something, get frustrated, so then I forget more, and get more frustrated, start messing things up more, so now I'm angry. It's a spiral. I get upset because I'm frustrated my brain doesn't work right. I'm angry that any of this has happened to me. I'm exhausted because pretending I'm OK is really hard.

On my really bad days I obsessively "clean" and "organize". I put those in quotations because that's what I call it when in reality I'm really just moving things around. I move books from one shelf to the other. I organize pencils in a cup. I take everything out of a drawer and put it back in. Over and over again. (I found this note on Wednesday that I had kept and it was just everything that day. I needed it.) I can't even tell you how many times I've written and re-written our Christmas card lists. I have to be nearing 30 times in the last two weeks. I'm not kidding. I'll see that a letter doesn't look right and now I have to re-do the entire thing. I know it's obsessive behaviors but I can't stop.

I have a lot of big changes and stress happening in my life and 2020 is going to kick my ass. I already know that I won't handle it well and knowing that I am not in a good space to deal with them scares me. While I still think of wanting to be gone, I'm now medicated to the point where I know that isn't true so now I scare myself. The last two years death didn't scare me and I just wanted to be there. This year I'm so medicated that while I want to be dead I am absolutely terrified. I am having my nightmares again of dying and I'm waking up terrified and crying. It's horrible. I'm tired of feeling like I can't share how bad things are for me because it makes people feel guilty or feel like I'm a burden. In my head I know I can't control how other people feel and that's on them. I know that. My feelings don't know that so they are always reminding me of what a pain in the ass I am.

I hate talking about it because I often get the "is therapy even working for you?" question and YES. Yes, therapy is working. Therapy is the only reason I'm even here. If I didn't have therapy I know without question I would have been dead by June 2017. No question. I had one attempt and several days of toughing it out on the phone with my therapist, praying to anything to get me through the day. So yes, I know its working. I know people are sick of it and god- nobody is sick of it more than me. Nobody. Try living this EVERY SINGLE DAY. It's Groundhog Day. Every day its the same version of hell. No better, no worse. I keep being told I didn't die for a reason, I haven't fulfilled my purpose, but I sure hope that purpose is shared with me soon because I just don't know. I'm not nearly as strong as people think I am.

It's just a shitty season. Every year I get through the winter and days get easier, and I think it's OK. It's just a bad season.

Then that season rolls around again and I'm reminded that it sucks and every year it seems to outdo itself. I'm just tired.

The cusp of 3.

I often wonder if I am always going to feel the way I do now about Lucy's birth. My therapist says it might change over time but it might not, because your body will always remember what happened to it, like a reflex. I might not remember, but my body does so there is a natural fear response happening. Which is such a weird thing to think about but I suppose it's true.

It's hard to tell you exactly how I feel on this day. The day before Lucy was born is my last real memory and that's not even really true because I don't have memories like you, I can't replay a scene like an old movie in my head. What I remember are the actual snapshots that we took of the day.

I remember Penelope standing next to roses at the Rose Garden in Duluth. I don't remember Olivia or Jackson. I don't remember Matt, but I remember taking this photo. It's so weird, but mostly scary, to look at this photo and know that that person died the very next day. It doesn't look like me. Well it does, but I don't recognize it as me. To me it's like looking at an ex-wife of Matt, which is weird because I know it's me..... but its not. 

It's strange to know this woman is dead. She died the very next day and somehow I'm here in that body and nothing about it feels familiar. I cannot tell you how many times I have stood in that exact same spot to see if a memory would come, would I remember standing there? Would I remember what it was like to be pregnant? Would I remember what it felt like to have a baby inside of me? 

To say this has been a hard three years is an understatement. I can't remember all of the doctor visits, the medical buildings, the procedures, the lab work, the waiting rooms, the hope, the disappointment, the frustration, the desperation, the resignation that I've had in these three years. I know its there and I guess its best if I don't remember it all. 

Not one person in the whole world can tell me that I haven't tried to get better. That I haven't marched forward, kept swimming, climbed the mountain, done the work. I have taken bad news like a champ and not told anyone. I have accepted the looks from people who think I'm crazy, I've been told to "just deal with it" and kept my mouth shut even though I want to scream, "I FUCKING AM" but I don't. I've become a better person because I really believe if I do good I will get good back and I just so desperately need that some days. 

I have confronted really awful truths from my past that I haven't told anyone, ever. Matt doesn't know. My mother doesn't know. My best friends don't know. I can see things around me a little more clearly now which is bittersweet because I realize how awful some people are and I never saw it before. I have lost friends. I at least know which ones are fair weather friends too but that comes with its own wave of disappointment. I have battled crippling depression, I have sat in darkened closets and in my car in the dead of winter wishing I could just die and thinking that being alive is really the cruelest punishment of all. 

I have confronted the things that hurt me the most. Did you know that I never look at my scar? I think sometimes maybe I don't lose weight because if I did the scar would be more prevalent on me. It's just a scar, millions of people have them and ones just like mine, it shouldn't bother me, but it does. It brings feelings of anxiety and panic. I get a tingling in my chest and I can't catch my breath. I feel fear, like something is trying to get me and I need to run.

So I don't look at it. I don't look at myself in the mirror anymore because I don't know this person or this body. I want to be old Sara so badly and I know I can't and so I feel shame. I feel shame because I'm not pretty and I'm not skinny, and no matter how many times Matt assures me I'm still attractive I don't believe him because he has to say that. 

I hate feeling broken. I hate feeling like everything in my body is malfunctioning and there isn't a fix. Sometimes I lash out. Sometimes I scream in a pillow until my voice is raw. Sometimes I go on walks and cry so hard neighbors look at me, probably wondering if I'm OK or crazy. Sometimes I sit and my car and cry. Sometimes I cry in the shower. Sometimes I cry when the girls nap.  I have to deal with everyone else and their problems and I'm dying a little more inside. I know it's daunting when I tell people it's going to be like this forever, like "Ugh, we have to help her FOREVER?!" and believe me, what you feel? I am more angry than you are. Trust me.

And then I have Lucy.  Lucy is really the best thing in the whole world. I wish I remembered what it was like to be pregnant with her. I wish I could have seen her born or remember what it was like the first moments with her. I wish I remembered what she was like as a baby. What she smelled like. I wish I could remember what her fuzzy hair felt like. How little she was. I wish I could remember her looking at me like I was the greatest thing in the world. Or what it felt like to rock her to sleep, or hold her on my chest. The irony is that I don't do well around pregnant women or little babies because they scare me and are a PTSD trigger... which I never knew was a thing until I'm in the thick of it.

It's weird to think I took this picture on Sunday, but I don't remember. I can piece things together. I know we were at Thomas the Train, I know we were on a train, I know it was summer. Anything else? I have to ask Matt because it's not there. I know I think I'll remember, I always do, and then I don't and I'm angry that I'm so stupid and thought that in the first place. But I forget how quickly I forget.

So tomorrow Lucy is 3. Tonight I'll go to bed absolutely petrified of what will happen. I'll be scared, panicky, and sad all day. I will try not to show it because I don't want to ruin her birthday. I will cry when I go to bed. I will pull it together because on Friday she has a doctor appointment and I need to pull it together. On Saturday we have her party and I will try to not cry and not ruin it. I will try to smile and be happy. Because ultimately, nobody cares. And it's OK. It's not your burden. It's not your PTSD or depression. It's not your trauma. It's not your stolen memories. You aren't broken. You don't understand where I'm at. You don't know that all the therapy in the world can't fix this and suddenly make me normal. And it's OK.

I'll keep trying anyway. I will fake it until I make it. I will get through today. And the next. And even the next after that. I can only do what I can do.