Do I have to carry this pain with me forever?
When will it stop?
When will I be able to just live, like all the normal people out there who aren’t coping with the death of their mom and sister their screwed up family relationships and the deaths of their wanted and loved children?
When will I not face these emotions on a daily basis?
These are the questions I asked my counsellor the other day. Clearly, based on all my posts this week, it was a loaded session.
Her response was simple: If I could answer that I probably have a lot more money!
Of course she went on.
We discussed how new grief likes old grief. By that, I meant that new grief tends to bring up all the old stuff, and makes you re-process it. And deal with layers maybe you hadn’t before. Similar to how our miscarriages and losses have brought up so much for me with the death of my mom and sister. In fact, we discussed stages of my life, generally speaking –
- my teens were defined by The Accident and simple survival.
- my 20’s were likely defined by trying to live and the accident wasn’t front and center in my daily life.
- my 30’s have all been about miscarriage and death and my mom and sister are a bigger part of my daily thoughts again.
We also discussed complex grief or complicated grief, but that part of the conversation didn’t stick of me since it’s not what’s really going on with me. So I cannot paraphrase it very well, but if you are interested I think google can.
But, the real answer to my big question, is that I will probably always carry this with me. It will ebb and flow depending on my life circumstances and events at the time.
But, simply, I will never just close the door on any of this. My mom and my sister, our lost babies, all of them, they will never vanish from my memories. I will never be able to pack it up in a box and put it away for the rest of time.
And so I’ve thought about this more over the last few days. And I think, as much as I don’t want to live in the place of daily painful memories and thoughts, I also don’t want to fully move out of it and part of me fears that moving out of it will mean I’m forgetting. I don’t ever want to forget my mom, my sister or any of our babies. I want to remember each one of our children who never took a breath for who they were and would could have been. I loved them, Mr. MPB loved them and they deserve to be remembered in their own right.
And, I also want their memories to remind me to embrace life. I want their memories to remind me to encourage our future child(ren) to embrace life, because no matter what happens we have something to be thankful for – we are living! By the very fact that I’m living, I have an opportunity to make the most out of life, and so, I simply must!
I guess I know it’s not always going to be easy, but I am hopeful that it will get easier. And one day their will be more easy days then there will be hard days.
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As I mentioned the other day at my most recent appointment with my counsellor we had an amazing conversation. In many ways, it was life alternating with at least one pretty big realization about the long term impacts of The Accident on how I have processed any accident/mistake that I’ve made since then (you can read that post here).
She specifically instructed me to ask myself two questions whenever I have an accident/make a mistake:
- Is someone going to die because of this?
- Can I forgive myself?
Since then, something has continued to bounce around in my mind:
My bodies accidents/mistakes did kill. In fact my body killed 5 times. And we know it was my body, we have medical fact that tells us that my body cause our children to die. And in one circumstance we chose to abort/terminate our child due to medical necessity. And we know that in all likelihood our children, with their healthy genetic make-up, would have lived if they were in another women’s womb. They simply had no chance with me.
I realize rationally that this was not a conscious choice on my behalf, I did not for a second want to have any of our children die. In fact, I wanted nothing more then to have them to live and take their first breaths.
But, I also realize no mistake I have ever made has been a conscious mistake. So, in some ways they are the same. Kind of.
So, how do I process this? How do I work through both of these questions in relation to our losses? It’s simple and yet it’s so incredibly complicated all at the same time
- Is someone going to die because of this? Well yes, in fact 5 lives were lost.
This is the only time in my life that I can answer yes to the first question. And never, did I ever expect to be able to say yes that something I did will cause death. But in these 5 circumstances, yes, my mistakes (as the result of my genetics) did kill. Something i never thought I’d ever say. And yet, it’s become easy enough to say because it’s my reality. Yet how the heck does one process that and live with that?! How does someone who has only ever dedicated their life to positivity accept this?
So, onto question 2.
2. Can I forgive myself? I don’t know. Some days I think I have. Other days I know I haven’t. Most days I think I never will.
How do I even start to forgive myself for my body’s mistakes? I try to look at it rationally and say that my body has a disease that I was born with, just like someone a heart murmur. But, I also realize my disease resulted in five lost lives that could be living today if it weren’t for this mistake in my genetics. I’m yet to hear of another disease that results in the loss of life to others. I really don’t know how to rationalize this and how to be okay with it.
I know part of my acceptance of this is the fact that we stopped trying the second we knew the cause and our inability to fix it. For me, the only step I could take to ensure my body didn’t make another mistake was to prevent my body from ever having the opportunity to again. Done, IUD in. Adoption happening.
But, I know answering question 2 is a lot deeper then that. And I’m honestly not sure how to even begin to answer it. The emotional consequences of this are undoubtedly going to last my lifetime. Of that, I have no doubt. But, what I don’t know is if I’ll ever be able to say with confidence that I forgive myself, I do hope I can continue to understand it and work through the emotions. As my counselor says to me frequently, keep doing the hard work, it’ll pay off just look at how far you’ve come in the last few years. And so, I hope I can continue to do the hard work to continue to live a healthy life. But, does that mean full forgiveness of myself? I truly don’t know if that day will ever come.
And I guess, my next appointment is going to be interesting as I have no doubt I’ll bring this up with her.
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My Perfect Breakdown 