Nothing About Grief (TW)

My fingers are timid.  They touch the wood of the bedroom door.  Graze against the rough surface.  Is this my home?  Is it time to give up on the day and go to sleep in the bed in the mess in the house I don't own by the child who doesn't know under the row of soft drink cans on a mattress on a carpet on a foundation on dirt that isn't in the right place?

Shh.

I touch the door.  Twist the handle as softly as I can, and slowly, quietly ease it open.

In that moment, through the suffocating door frame.

Like those moments, through the front door.

Or those moments, out of the car.

A transition.

It's hard to go through doors.  It always has been, but now the weight is tangible.  Now I feel the mask around my face.  Now I want to be naked.

...

I have a hard enough time being sure that I am where I am.  Now I sit here on the couch, wondering where I am emotionally.  Mentally.  Grammatically.

Tell me why I even made the call if I was too fear-struck to do the real work.

It's a knee jerk.  A tensing of muscles.  An immediate and overwhelming NEED to run for the door, to physically get away.  It's thinking about how many steps to the door.  It's a spinning of wheels while I simultaneously prepare for defense and analyze how many of my cracks have been spotted.

That's it, isn't it?

Locking eye contact and listening to every syllable while I try to determine how much of myself has been exposed and how can I disarm the situation without showing weakness.

...

Just tell me where you are.

Just open the door.  Look at it.  And tell me.

...

Tonight I am upset because I read through my old text posts.  I saw revelations being had over and over again as though they were brand new.

That's what it is.

I'm not any better.  I.  Am there again.  I am there again.

...

Where are you at with your grief.

I'm exactly where I was before.

I'm laying in the bed at his parent's house, the sun coming through the sheer blinds and hitting the pale blue comforter.  The basal body temperature thermometer is on the speaker on top of the safe that serves as a side table.  The mess of prenatal vitamin bottles, snacks, trash, drinks, and clothes are piled up along the edge of the bed.

With the pregnancy journal, green, with its strap keeping it shut.  I can't look at it.

The phone was in my hand when I heard Kari was pregnant.

The phone was in my hand when the doctor said "it will probably take all weekend."

I played the song that broke my heart over and over again, and when Jack was taking up that space, I played it to him, too.  AJ laying next to me, oblivious, with his book of fetal development complete with transparent stacking illustrations.

My heart was breaking again and again each time I woke up, and he was telling me what size the new baby was.  And I was nodding along because THAT IS WHAT YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO DO.

I just laid there after they took her away from me.

I just laid there

I wrote her a letter

The people on the phone

My mom, upset that I hadn't told her until I was on the way to the ER.  My boss, upset that I even wanted to have a baby.  Why do you fuckers even have opinions on this.

Picking fights over the island in the kitchen over everything, because WHY ARE YOU NOT UPSET.  Just at least remember that I can be upset, that I get to be upset, that I have no choice but to be upset, that this person isn't even in here anymore and it is all I can do to keep moving around.

Did they think I had any level of control?

Do I have control now?

Counting everything out.  Walking the same number of paces.  Chewing my lip to pieces.  Keeping the clean clothes, food, and water in the car.


"Yes I know what you think of me, you never shut up"

Where am I?

Where am I.

I don't fucking know how to answer that.


My baby is dead.  I'm not there.  I'm not anywhere.  She's in the trash and I'm walking around like a living person would.

It's not reconcilable.


I will try this again later.