Grateful

I was telling a friend earlier that blogging is my way of saying things that I don’t have the balls or guts to say out loud. I write my thoughts to get them out when I can’t really talk about some of these things in person. It’s just too hard.

I realized last night as I laid in bed rereading my blog on my phone that it could easily be misinterpreted that I am not grateful for the things I have in my life. As I hung out with my best friend today I explained it this way, “I could have a billion dollars and no children and still feel empty.” It doesn’t take away from what I do have in my life, and most of the time I am not focused on the fact that we haven’t conceived yet. May is 

hard month for me. It’s the anniversary of my stillbirth, and its mother’s day.

I have spoken about what I am grateful for in this post: http://rebekah2011.blogspot.com/2011/01/post-35-grass-is-always-greener.html

There are many things in my life I am grateful for. I wrote in that post, “Being content and satisfied and happy in what you do have instead of wishing for something more, or different, can make a world of difference on your attitude and your life.”

And I feel like I am being a hypocrite right now. Although, to me it is more a change in opinion, or attitude, at the moment and less of being a hypocrite. I allowed myself to mourn this month, I don’t do that. Any of my friends who have been around for awhile know I tend to ignore the emotions and never publicly display them.

At one point in the not so far away past I was a happy happy woman. I laughed a lot. I went through a lot of therapy to deal with my past. I dont know, I learned to cope but never really gave it the burial it needed. But, more so during this deployment, during this year of living in a house alone I have felt so much pain of the loss of my babies. I would have a house full of children right now, I would have a reason to get up in the morning, something to keep going for. Children make deployments harder and easier. Having a huge empty house, without love or laughter. The silence. Its overwhelming. 

I dont know if I will ever be able to have kids. Weve talked about fostering, weve talked about adoption. Both we are open to and both we are willing to do. But with my husbands military career and his deployments, its been a hard path to pursue. 

He is 30. I am 28, soon to be 29. Not only have we already experienced the pain and loss of pregnancies ending, and in the second trimester, but now we are adding age to it. The older I get the harder its going to be. We are ready. Weve been ready for five years. We just want to be parents. Something that so many, undeserving and horrible people get, and it comes easy for. We have had to fight for everything, every single thing in our lives. Everything. We dont have families to turn to in bad times, we didnt have help starting out, we pulled ourselves up from our bootstraps and did it, with love for each other. We want to share the love, weve got all the love in the world, and yet, once again, good doesnt overcome evil.

My husband and I have always wanted children. Multiple children. When you have carried and lost the children you have wanted more than anything in the world it begins to get you down. I would rather not be able to get pregnant and know that then to continuously have to have surgery to remove the dead baby from inside of you. I don’t miscarry early, I miscarry after I have seen the baby on ultrasounds, heard the heartbeat, and in some of my pregnancies felt the baby move. Any woman who has been pregnant and has a child; try to imagine what it is like to lose that baby at 26 weeks. Now imagine; there are no answers from the doctors of why the baby died. I don’t bleed during miscarriages, (not since the first one) the baby stops growing and it shows on the ultrasounds. No heartbeat, no fetal pull. Then there is the surgery to remove the baby. They run tests on the baby. Everything comes out normal. Still no answers. Then do you try again? When do you say enough is enough? I don’t know. Do you try IVF or do you use a surrogate? It is a hard place to be.

I am grateful for what I do have in my life. I have a roof over my head, clothes on my back, food in my belly and dogs that love me unconditionally. I’ve written that as status messages before on my facebook. I have been one who has been homeless, has been starving, have been poor. So I appreciate them so much more. When you’ve gone without you appreciate having it so much more. I don’t want to sound ungrateful about that.

I am just angry at the world and upset about the lack of interpersonal relationships in my life. It is no one’s fault but myself. I keep people at arm’s length. I don’t ask for favors or help, I do it myself or pay a professional to do it. I don’t talk about deep personal things. In fact, when Im going through things I tend to lock myself in my house and deal with it myself. My best friend is constantly asking me if I want to talk about it, or if there is anything she can do to help, and the answer is always no. Ive been so hurt in the past that Im scared to open up and let anyone in. In addition to that I feel like a lot of people do a lot of lip service. I will get a facebook comment or an email but not an invite anywhere, or a phone call or anything more personal. I don’t know, I guess I feel that a lot of people offer help but they don’t really mean it, they are offering to offer but hoping the person doesn’t take them up on it.

Ultimately I feel like I am a burden. I don’t want to be that way. I don’t want people to think Im taking advantage of them, or using them, or in any way being a bad person. I don’t want to be a hassle. I even apologize when we are shopping and I take too long looking at an item, or see myself as taking too long. I don’t want people to have to wait on me. I don’t cry in front of people. I cry in private if I cry at all. It is a sign of weakness, something I can’t accept.

Right now Im drowning. It seems like all the hopes and dreams Ive had will never come true and that’s hard. Its hard when I feel all alone in this world, and often, I do. I feel abandoned. Abandoned by people, by God. I would have done anything to have had a family who loved me as a kid. Didn’t happen. I got dealt a bad hand. Ok. I was adopted in a bad situation. Ok. I dealt with all of that. Ive burred parents, a  boyfriend, and four of my best friends. FOUR. So there should be no surprise that I keep people at a distance. What if they leave again, what if they die?

My blog last night made my husband emotional. He called me to tell me that he loves me, and I think he could say it a million times and I would doubt it. Why would you choose to love someone who is so broken? And I really do feel that I am unlovable. Its not bullshit on the page, its how I really feel. I think people, like my former foster parents, convince themselves what they are feeling are love and then someday they wake up and see that’s not the case. That’s all Ive known my entire life, people waking up and seeing I was a mistake. Like an old junior high boyfriend you thought you loved until the next one came along.

I don’t know why or how anyone could love me. I don’t. I don’t think Im deserving of it and I don’t want them to if that means they’ll end up hurt.

The other thing my husband told me was not to worry about a headstone or being buried anywhere. Since my home is where he is he will have me cremated and put in a urn and he’ll pcs with me. Im sure that sounds morbid to some people but to me it was very romantic. I don’t have a “home” anywhere that I have a family who would take care of my gravesite or continue on remembering me. I always say home is where my husband and I are together. So, that comment took away some of that. I always thought Id make a home and a family as an adult.

I thought I would have children running around, dogs in the yard, cooking something delicious at the stove. That was my dream. A 1950s household with love, laughter, memories, holidays and warmth. That is all Ive ever wanted. Knowing I may never get that… I cant tell you how that feels.