Eff this blog meme for a bit.

I don't want to write about a piece of art that inspired me. I can write about my wedding any time. I don't want to write about a talent of mine. (And not just because spotting a font at 100 yards is a super lame talent (I have others, also super lame.)) I understand the importance of expressing that there is a person who did things and was happy before the shadow of baby death loomed, and that person still exists. I can get back to that.

I want to write about the stuff that is in your every day life that you don't talk about. The things that make you feel crazy, and second guess yourself about how you must somehow be the only person on the planet who has ever had an emotional breakdown in a pumpkin field. Because you're not. I'm not. Probably.

I want to write about those things because they're real. Because they're the little broken bits sprinkled in your reality. And they're just there now. And they're going to keep being there. Because if it's never happened to you, you probably have no idea that there's just shit like that in your life now. You have no idea how you can get blind-sided by these things. How they happen unexpectedly. How you can't ever simply just go to a pumpkin patch again. Because they happen. Because I know they happen to other people, and every now and then you will read a blog post and realize that you're not the only person who has a physiological reaction to just going back to certain buildings. That you're not the only person who has fucked up dreams about your dead child. And these things are hurtful, or embarrassing, and you don't talk about them. And how does one say things like this in their regular conversation: "So I had this dream where I saw my dead baby again and they had this weird thing where their veins showed through their skin, blue and red and you could see how the circulation wasn't right because of his heart defects. Oh, and then he died again because my subconscious wants me to suffer repeatedly."

Because I'm not the only person that has these things happen. And you're not. And sometimes it helps when you feel like some dysfunctional crazy person to realize that you're not alone, and that you're not that crazy. That this is just what happens to your life when you have had that kind of loss. And at least if you're a little crazy, you're not alone on the boat. That this is just part of the package.

Because man, it's hard to not feel at least a little bit unhinged when you have seen your fill of pregnant ladies and babies and children all over the pumpkin farm, and you're barely holding it together by a thread, and you're hoping nobody cares enough to see some strange lady with a tear on her cheek... And then your husband asks you what's up and you lose it in a blubbery snotty mess as you shove your face into his shoulder and blurt out something about wanting to go home.

I want to write about that, instead of being embarrased about it and hiding it. I want to write about how I am not alone. I want to write about these things because it makes me feel better to hear that I am not alone. And maybe it will help someone else let their breath out a bit and think "Oh my god, it's not just me. I'm not crazy."



Sometimes, I see Caleb when I am out around people. In other people's kids. It's like there's only so many archetypes of people in the world, and every now and then there's just a flash of recognition of a similar feature set or something. It's visceral sense of familiarity. Except it's not. And when you see a tiny little sandy-brown hair boy, in his little jeans and his blue shirt with the trucks on it toddle by as you're standing in line with a wheelbarrow full of pumpkins, and that flash hits you, and you just LOSE YOUR SHIT.

That happens to me. It happened another time last year, when we were at the local zoo with some friends and their kids. A little baby in a stroller went by us, and that flash. It knocks you on your ass. It makes you feel like you're hallucinating. Or desperate, and seeing your child where they very much clearly aren't. Your baby is some dust in a box. 7.5 lbs of your heart that never got to go outside, not even once, and never got to grow that big. Definitely not this child, this life, that's walking in the dirt, under the sun.


And it happens. And I know I'm not alone. You're not alone.

When you feel awkward and simple social introductions because someone is going to ask you what you do (Answer: nothing. No, I'm not "raising babies" either because I SUCK AT MAKING THEM) and you consider making up a fake job just to avoid the issue. Or because you don't know what the right answer to "How many kids do you have?" or you find yourself planning dental work around when you might ovulate, a prediction which all the calculus and crystal balls in the world could never answer, you're not alone.



Then there was the time where I got lost. See, the pediatric cardiologist, the perinatologist, and my current OB are all in the same building. A building that's directly across the street from the NICU, and the children's hospital. The hospital with the window to the room where my son died. This building, this block where so many bad things, so much delivery of bad news keeps happening. I can barely go back there without crying. I start having to fight back the tears just driving down the street to the place. I have to mentally prepare, to gather and gird up what's left of my sanity and stability to do it. To take the offramp we took every day to go visit Caleb.

Or to go somewhere else entirely in the city that requires using that same offramp, but a different branch of it to go the opposite direction. Where you're not prepared to be hit by your grief. Where you're just trying to read the signs, and then you realize the exit you need is off the RAMP OF DOOM, and you just start crying. Let me tell you, I have gotten really good at seeing well enough to drive with tears streaming out of me, but reading is prettymuch off the docket at that point. Especially the small, dark, faded, and hard to see signs in Tacoma.

More concerned with stamping down my crazy, and not hitting anything, I took the wrong turn. As I'm driving down the road, not finding the name of the street I needed, and noticing the high proportion of payday loan places, pawn shops, and bail bonds to normal buildings, I come to the realization that I am definitely not where I was headed. So if you've ever gotten lost on the wrong side of the tracks because an offramp makes you crazy? Or you have a place you can't go back to without being reminded of everything? You're not alone.

If you have to preface every vital signs check with your OB's nurse with "This building makes anxious, please don't medicate me I promise my blood pressure isn't 140/80 anywhere else." You're not alone.

I'm not alone.