A New Day

I feel good today. Like a weight has been lifted. My outlook has changed somehow, I can't quite put my finger on it or describe it, but it's there. Even though I stayed up way too late last night and I feel tired, I also feel energized (caffeine from free coffee?).

I feel hopeful, where once hope was lost.

A True Engineer

I'm confused. Another therapy session today. He's been reading my blogs and thinks that I've come a long way (at least that's what I think he thinks, I am confused after all).

It's hard comprehending two conflicting feelings. That it hurts so much and all I want to do is wallow in it, but that I'm tired of it hurting and wanting to expel it from myself like a diseased organ or so much bile in the back of my throat. I am so black and white, so one extreme or the other. My way or the highway. Maybe that's why I'm so lonely, everyone has taken the MassPike. I don't want to give up, I don't want to give in, but I feel like it accomplishes nothing. Actually it accomplishes me being sad and being hung up and feeling like a failure. It doesn't teach anyone anything other than that Shannon is annoying. Shannon is sad all the time. Shannon will get upset no matter what you do. Shannon is stubborn and opinionated. Shannon is impossible.

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I feel like my life has been a procedure, a check list. Like the ones I've written for work. Do things in a certain order and everything works out fine. I feel like I've been doing that.

"How to Have a Happy Life" (According to Shannon - Version 1.0):

High school

College (get a degree in electrical engineering)

Get a job (as an electrical engineer)

Find a guy (a forever guy - a "Mr. Right", I've had my share of "Mr. Right Now")

Get house/get married

Have kids

Live happily ever after

Now I'm stumbling all over the "have kids" part but there's no troubleshooting section, just rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. And if I don't do that step, how will I ever get to "happily ever after"?

I need a version 2.0.

Mmmm... Free Coffee

Over the summer our company installed coffee machines all over the building. They're the type where you insert a packet and it "brews" you a single cup of coffee. It's Flavia if you're familiar with it. The kicker is that we got all this free coffee instead of more vacation time, because people are such lame workaholics here that they never take vacation and it piles up. So everyone must not like to take vacation. So why not give people free coffee instead of time off? Sounds great, huh? I've never been much for drinking coffee so I didn't really care for it, I'd rather have more time off. (Actually I'd just rather not be working, but we already know that.) But recently I've started to drink it. I got hard core and brought in my own mug from home so I can walk around with it and sip from it while talking to people. I feel so grown up. I make a cappuccino several times a day, mostly decaf, but with a regular in there occasionally. It's yummy. What the heck, right? It's free. It keeps me warm in the cold office and with my nasty cold it's keeping me from coughing too much.

I feel like I might as well get my money's worth, right?

Uphill Battle

My husband is still travelling for work. It's a couple days here and a week and a half there. Soon it will be over, only 2 more weeks on this project. I had been enjoying our time apart, I could stay up late and sleep in, I could watch TV or movies and eat whatever I wanted or do nothing at all. But now it's dark out early, it's gotten cold and I came down with a cold last week. I miss having him to snuggle up to at night. I'm getting tired of doing everything around the house.

I started reading stuff for my new job at work. I hope it will be interesting. I don't especially care, but I hope it will be interesting to pass the time quickly until I get pregnant and just might get to take a baby home. I'm tired of pretending to be an engineer.

Carol invited me to a seminar she's coordinating, she asked me to be on the Parent's Panel. That sounds so weird to me. I don't feel like a parent. I don't feel like a mother. I sure don't feel like a mom. I went back and forth in my head about whether or not I should go. I didn't want to because I dread sitting there crying the whole time, not being able to tell my story through my sobs. But I decided I should go because it will give me validation. Validation that Isabella and Sean existed, validation of my grief in losing them, validation I so desperately crave. It will also give me a chance to help educate others on what I thought was done right and what wasn't when my world came tumbling down all over again. Thinking back to last year, I don't really have any complaints. All the medical folks I dealt with were compassionate, I never felt slighted or let down. This April I felt like I slipped through the cracks, the time line of April 8th and the events that transpired still make me so upset. It boggles my mind that an U/S technician seriously thinks they can say "I have to get a doctor to talk to you about your case", and then leave the room and have you not freak out. And then when they send you back to your doctor's office the receptionist has no idea why you're there and why you're already crying. That was just the beginning of the mess that was another worst day of my life. I can't say it was the worst because I've had two babies die while I was pregnant with them. I can't really say that one was worse than the other. I don't even know how to feel about September. I guess I was pregnant again, but was I really? I tried so hard to make Isabella and Sean into people by finding out their genders and naming them as if that would make them more real to others, but really was it just to make them real to me? And if that's the case then what about baby # 3? A baby I was barely pregnant with, a baby I never had a due date for, never even got to wrap my head around before it was gone. Like it was never there. I have pictures of Isabella and Sean, so that makes them more real, but it's all so unreal. I feel so sorry for myself. Boo-hoo, why did this happen to me? I'm tired of it. I'm tired of life sucking. I'm tired of not being happy. I'm tired of thinking that only a baby will make me happy. Because what if I never get one? What if I never get to really be a mother, to be a mom. To be the one a child runs to to show a new treasure and cries for when they fall down. To kiss the boo-boos and tuck them into bed. To read a story to and make chocolate chip cookies for. To teach to swim and ride a bike. I don't want to be baby lost anymore. I don't want to wear it like a badge and rub it in others' faces. I don't want to be offended when people tell me "You'll find out when you have kids..."

What am I trying to say? I feel like an impostor. I feel like I conjured all this out of nothing. That I've been overreacting. That I'm milking this for all it's worth. That it really isn't a big deal and I should just get over it.

So while society or whatever has been drilling this into me why haven't I just given up? Why haven't I just rolled over and taken it? Am I glutton for punishment? Do I just like conflict and adversity? Am I only just going against the grain and making a mountain out of a mole hill?

I think it's because it's such a fight that I keep fighting it. If it was easy and clean then I probably wouldn't bother. If people fell all over themselves and said just the right things when your baby died wouldn't it be easier all around? But they don't so it's not and it's back to me and my principles and the inevitable disappointment that other's behavior doesn't live up to my expectations. I'm tired of all my principles, I'm tired of always trying to prove my point. I'm tired of my uphill battle, but who am I battling? My husband? My husband's family? The world? Maybe I'm just fighting myself.

There's no way to win that battle.

"Just Because"

Today I had an interesting appointment with my therapist. I feel like we're really getting into the meat of my neuroses. He said that he's read a bunch of my journals and that it seems like I have very high expectations for how people should act and that is why I'm disappointed a lot. I can understand that. I feel like I hold myself to a standard. A code of conduct, and I feel like I treat people the way I would like to be treated. So when people do things that I wouldn't do it upsets me. I feel like if I knew someone in my situation I would be more supportive/sensitive etc etc. But can I really say that if I hadn't gone through what I've gone through? Maybe I would be an insensitive slob like so many have been to me. Every life experience changes the person you're becoming. So I guess the reason why I feel the need to "educate" people about my experience/grief is so that maybe when the next person comes along they'll know better.

Fat chance right?

My related issue (one of many) that we discussed is how uptight I am because of my high standards. Maybe I live in a bubble with high ideals and notions of how things would be if everyone was nice and did what they were suppose to do. That is what intrigues me so much about the "concept" of the Catholic church. If everyone lived by those rules there would probably be a lot less yuck in the world. Forget the Catholic church, how about just the Ten Commandments? Or for secular folks - the Golden rule? (Add in there other necessities to be what people would say in olden days was respectable/moral behavior.)

But we (I) live in reality. I have no control over the actions of others. Just how I react to them. Now I just need to learn how to react to less extremes. I know deep down when my husband's family does or says something that hurts (like invalidating me/my grief) that it's really just my perception of what they did or said and that they weren't going out of their way to hurt me and that I get upset not because they did it but because it's easier to point the blame at them and be angry with them because I know there was nothing that could have been done to save Isabella or Sean. So who can I be angry at? Who can I blame for all my hurt?

"Just because" just doesn't do it for me.

Getting There

Work is interesting, I've been enjoying what I've been doing, crunching a lot of numbers and doing math that I haven't done since college. With budget and other considerations going on I've been working on finding a more permanent assignment, and I think I have. I talked to another manager yesterday and before I knew it, he had added me to his organizational chart. So I guess I'm there. I hope I enjoy it.

My husband left for Virginia again this morning. He was home for a long weekend and it was nice to spend time with him. We did some yard work and took some naps.

My cycle has been pretty messed up. I had started my "period" on September 9th. I should have not been so curious, but I did 4 separate pregnancy tests between 9/11 and 9/15 and they were positive with varying degrees of darkness for the line, getting fainter as time went on. Which explains my post on September 16th. After talking to my OBGYN many many times, he decided I should go on progesterone suppositories starting around day 18-19. I didn't think I should have bothered this past month since it was so messed up and I didn't take clomid but he said I should. That was unpleasant. Day 30 I had a blood test, negative HCG. Then on October 10th I started on Provera to make my period start. Today it did. The only problem is, my husband is still travelling a lot for work so it seems pointless to take clomid and not be able to make the most of it. I'm not even sure if he'll be home on weekends. It's frustrating. I feel like if we did try our best I could at least get my hopes up and it would make it worth it to take the yucky suppositories again. If I have to take another month off, then that is ok with me. I just want to have a plan.

I've been seeing a new therapist, I don't feel like we've made a lot of progress yet, but I feel like we're going to. I feel like I'm getting there. I went through my journals for the last 2 years and highlighted things of interest to talk to him about. He has some homework before next week's appointment.

I think I always knew deep down, but the reason why I go to these appointments is because I can talk about Isabella and Sean and it's not weird, it's not awkward. I don't feel like I'm bumming someone out. It helps me to talk about them and remember them, to validate that they existed. So even if I cry for some or all of the hour, I feel like it's worth it. Otherwise I'm not sure if I would find time in the week to really think about them, really find some other way to make them part of my existence. It's like making time to pray, I haven't been doing any of that, mostly because I'm still angry with God, but I'm sure He understands. But with anything, if you don't set time aside for it, it will never get done. I want to be happy and not have to go to therapy every week, but I need to find some other outlet. I told my husband how I felt about going to therapy and why and he said he didn't feel the need to talk about Isabella and Sean, that "it is what it is". My new therapist is going to help me teach my husband to be more sensitive toward me since it's come to his attention from everything I've told him that my husband didn't learn how to be sensitive from his family. That's something to look forward to.

I also met briefly with the woman who monitors my medication. I haven't been sleeping well lately so I wanted to try something different. Back in July I started taking Zoloft, then because of that I couldn't sleep at night, so I took another thing at night to help me sleep. But since then my level of Zoloft has increased and sleeping is getting weird again. I told her that I would rather not be on anything at all. I feel like it's a band aid on a broken arm. It's not going to help me get pregnant and it's not going to make me forget all the pain from these last two years. I will never again be that naïve woman who's never been pregnant before and only has hope for the future. If I could go back I would shake that Shannon from two years ago. But I can't.

I can only move on.