No News

It seems as though whenever I start to feel like things just might be a little bit okay the other shoe drops and I'm back to being an utter disaster.

The other shoe is always dropping.  The rug is forever being pulled out from beneath my feet.

The surprising thing is how surprised I am every time it happens.  I should know better.  And I do, in my head.  But it's my heart I have to worry about, it just doesn't seem to learn.

More bad news, you're thinking.  Someone's hurt or sick or dead or in trouble and the meager footing I've found isn't enough to keep me balanced in the face of more tragedy.

If only.

Just another baby on the way.  There are so many, always on the way, always fine, often unplanned or unintentional but a wonderful surprise every time.  Right?

But that's where I fall apart.  This good news not ours cuts me to pieces and then I crumple at how awful that feels.  

These days, I can handle bad news much better than good.  I'm like the welcome committee to Disaster-Land. I hear bad news and I'm like oh let me help.  A friend lost her father suddenly and it was the easiest thing in the world to ring her right away and share tears with her and hold her close and make sure she knew I was there for her if she ever needed anything.

I'm good at bad news now.  I can be sensitive and strong, caring yet practical, forthright and easy with the most difficult and painful of subjects.  But throw a little happiness at the people I'm close to and all I want to do is crawl away and hide.

We don't get to do that happiness thing anymore and that empty space where it should be swallows me whole.  It swallows my dignity.  It swallows my hope.

Everyone else but us.  Here we stand, frozen in the long, sad moment of our son's death, unable to achieve the only thing we want as everyone just zips on by, their lives moving forward with new children and new hope. 

It's the heart/mind divide all over again.  I'm thrilled for them in my mind, but inside my chest my heart cracks open and falls to pieces and I almost follow suit.

I want to be happy.  I want to be happy for them totally and completely.  I want to be psyched and loving and everything correct, but I'm not.  I'm twisted and shriveled.  I'm bitter and disgusted with myself and once again way beyond the edge of tolerable limits.

I thought the worst was behind me, literally.  I thought that the worst possible thing had happened to me and that from there it could only get better.  But instead it has been an endless slog through deep, smelly shit.  Obviously nothing is more painful than losing Silas but the problem is that we lose him over and over again in a million little ways.

The ripples of our loss continue to radiate outward from us, and there is nothing we can do to stop it.  Our tragedy causes pain in the people we love the most and prevents us from sharing in the happiness of those around us.  That is so ugly and revolting I can barely stand to be in this skin.  But there is no where else I can go and nothing else I can feel sometimes, besides sadness and anger and loss and grief, especially when the phone rings and it's good news at the other end of the line.

If this is a test then we are failing.  We are not excited when we get the wonderful news that someone is pregnant, and that just sucks.  The ring of that call is always a little shrill in our house.  So here's the deal, all of you that are currently pregnant now, you're all good, but after that it has to stop.  The rest of you, no more hanky-panky until we give you the okay.  We're up next.  We've been up next for so long.

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So what are your tips to help us get pregnant?  Tinctures?  Chants?  Meditations?  Roofies? And don't even think about telling us to just relax and let it happen because that's just not going to work.  Unless there's wine involved.  Should there be wine involved?