It’s almost two in the morning.
I’m in bed, under my warm blankets. Outside, the rain is falling, hard. I can smell it through my open windows and hear it syncing up with the song I have on repeat. During their breaks, the sound of my keyboard rhythmically tapping catches my ear. The light in my bedroom is broken, so the only light that brightens this dark room is from my screen and lightning escaping through my curtains.
Deep down, I know I should be asleep. I have to be up early tomorrow morning and will be busy most of the day. Yet, somehow my body is revolting against me and wants me to take in every moment of today. It’s the fifth and a Tuesday: a combination that I don’t take lightly. That’s why my mind won’t shut off. The words keep flowing even through the piano playing and the thunder rumbling my house.
I feel like I’m apart of the storm raging outside.
Jensen would be seventeen months old today. I miss him. My brain is overworking and focusing on everything else going on in my life because losing him and battling my grief is an unending battle I haven’t learned how to win. I know it’ll never be one that I can be victorious. Grief is so exhausting. You’d think I’d be in a constant slumber and wouldn’t have this surprise insomnia.
The fear of falling apart.
Nights like these, I think about how time has moved like sand through my hands and at the same time how it feels to watch paint dry. I wonder if time would feel the same if he was here or if the thunder would scare him? I always said I wouldn’t let him sleep in my bed, but maybe I would have bent if he was scared and wanted to be close. If I could have him in my arms right now, I’d never let go.
I don’t know if I’m writing to actually say something meaningful or to just… get it all out. In the grand scheme, do these grief and loss ramblings amount to anything? I hate when I question myself. It makes me go back further and further to the weeks leading up to his birth.
Whoever said grief was linear obviously never lived with it.
Oh, this is the beat of my heart; this is the beat of my heart.
How many tears does a person get in their lifetime? I wonder if they’re allocated differently or maybe they just run up. Eventually, my tear ducts will go on strike and decide their job is too much, especially tonight. I’ll have to look that up one day.
Seventeen months ago I had a baby. I felt him enter this world and that was it. How the hell is this my life? Who signed me up for this? I would never wish this feeling of falling into the deepest, darkest pit on the most evil person in the universe.
No one deserves to know what it’s like to bury their child or choose to have their perfect little body turned to ashes. Another decision I had to make seventeen months ago that still haunts me.
There are so many things I don’t talk about here, which sounds absolutely insane since I’m fairly open about my journey. I know I’ve said this frequently though. Some parts of the story never come to light. They’re too hard to process and write for everyone to know. I hate talking about the decision to cremate Jensen or to never see him. More recently, I’ve been so backward talking about my miscarriage. The most common type of loss and I’m afraid to talk about it. It’s a shame. If I’m afraid to talk about it, how many other women are in the same place? Then I think about women from the past, having to stay quiet and for people to act like their child never existed. I know they carried the love for their children all their lives, but to be shamed by something that had no control over…
Why do I feel like that sometimes?
How is it in 2017 we’re still afraid to talk about ‘sad things.’ I cannot tell you how many people have came into my house, looked straight at Jensen’s pictures, and never say one word. They see a baby in the pictures, but there’s no baby home. No sign of one anywhere, besides on the walls. Yeah, I know it’s uncomfortable. I’m so damn sick of hearing that.
Let me shove his picture in your face. I’m so proud of that little human I made. A little over seventeen months ago, you’d be asking all about him when you saw my big belly…
I shouldn’t complain. I’m sorry.
‘Cause I won’t give up without a fight.
It’s after two now. The storm has settled outside and inside my mind. Each month Jensen has been gone, I try to think of something/anything I learned from another month of grieving. I’d like to believe they’re all deep and meaningful lessons, but in truth, most of the time they’re just reminders of how I survived the previous month. They’re all probably extremely similar to one another too. It’s just how it goes.
This month, with seventeen under my belt, I’ve learned my child, this journey, and I am significant. There’s been so many times (even in this post alone) where I question my worth or think I don’t matter. Jensen, he matters the most to me. No matter if no one person reads my crazy, after midnight scribbles, I wrote it for him and I. I wrote to help me because I matter. My mental health is important and to do my best to keep Jensen’s memory alive, I have to do what is right for me. Not everyone is going to ‘get’ this journey or my process. In seventeen months, I’ve seen the such opposite ends of how people ‘deal’ with you after your child dies, that all that matter is Jensen, this community of beautiful parents and their children gone too soon, and me.
If you made it to the end, thank you. The sound of the crickets chirping and the piano playing will guide me to my dreams. Hopefully he’ll be there to meet me.
