Daughter-less mother

February 8, 2009

I feel my mood lifting some today. It's only been a couple of days since my dose of anti-depressants was doubled, but already I'm noticing a difference. I don't think about death every time I experience pain. It's such a relief I could cry.

I had a dream the other night that Martha Stewart was over for dinner and I had a baby boy who was fussy. He was probably 8 or 9 months old. He was arching his back and looking me straight in the eye like we were going to get into a power struggle. And you know what? I didn't care. I wanted to parent him well, but I was just so happy to have him I didn't care that he was fussing. I didn't care that Martha was there either.

There is no sound that can fill a home the way the sound of a child can. Just a thought I've been having.

I've been kind of angry at God tonight. I feel like he's talking to all these people around me, and not to me. I have been telling him how much I need comforting - a deep down kind of comforting, but I'm not feeling it. My heart is aching. Why isn't he comforting me? Am I looking for something too grand? Do I want a miracle that isn't going to happen? I don't know. I'm really quite frustrated.

Oh, there it is. There's the pain and the anger. I can feel it now. The tears are hot behind my eyes. I thought when I was pregnant that I had finally figured out what I was supposed to do. I felt this peace that I had never felt before - never. All the time before I was pregnant I spent thinking about what I should be doing with my life. I was just trying to occupy my empty time. Then when I got pregnant, I had this sense of purpose. It was amazing. I was totally amazed by the process. And all the thoughts that had swirled around in my head about whether I should do this or do that; they were all put to rest. I imagined my empty evenings filled with caring for my baby. That was all I needed.

I don't understand why God would allow that to be taken from me. How could something that brought me such peace be taken from me? And now, now I just don't have it in me to try to figure the future out any more. What's the point? What the hell is the point? What's the point of dreaming and hoping for something so good and wonderful? It can all be ripped away so quickly - and so painfully.

There are so many dreams and hopes for what this time in our life would have been like. The other night as I lay in bed awake I realized that Harper would have been almost six months old right now. And I'm going to be doing that for the rest of my life. She would have been . . . And it hurts just as much to imagine her as a six month old little girl as it did to imagine her as a new born. And I'm stuck here, the daughter-less mother.