*I started writing this several weeks ago, the day after my last post actually. I have taken several days going over and over this, trying to convey my feelings. Changing it makes it less meaningful, shows less of what I feel. I will just put this little foreword saying that this is not about despair, or regret. But about embracing the truth inside of myself, finding freedom to love myself, and my son, as we are. Without admitting the things that bring me to my knees to myself, I never would have been able to accept the beauty and love in all the other things I have gone through. I don't see myself as crippled, I see myself as a butterfly in a cocoon. Like the Emperor Butterfly, without the struggle and pain of coming through my challenge to break free, I would wither and die. I hope to encourage others to admit their truths to themselves. We have to confront ourselves in order to be free.*
Like the plot in almost any sci-fi flick I saw the universes spread before me; small choices, ones you don't even notice, lead your life down a different path. Where time is non-linear and fluid, leading to different possible outcomes, a different life with each choice.
I took my daughter on a field trip with her class, a group of bright eyed 2nd graders all excited to be out of school, flushed from a brisk walk from their elementary school to the high school a mile or two away. This particular high school has a yearly project; the students form small groups write and illustrate a children's book, and read them to local K, 1st, and 2nd graders at a "Reading Fair". This year that included interactive puppet stations, a demonstration by the robotics team (their robot was a frisbee throwing champ!), and they had the Drama Clubs Improv Group put on a cute show for the kids.
They asked the students what they wanted them to be, acting out what the children choose; the kids asked them to pretend to be the Keebler Elves. The kids got to pick different emotions and settings for the skit, and they repeated the same story each time changing it to the whims of their short audience. The first time they decided to make cookies, but needed children for the "special ingredient" (MMMM Children are delicious!!). In the next the kids told them to do it like a "Haunted house".
As the show grew progressively sillier and more enthusiastic, my daughter climbed into my lap laughing and holding my hand. Sharing one of our very rare opportunities to just be "in the moment". No Z-man, no worrying about Fort Knox, where the food was, or using our positions to keep him blocked in so we could try to focus on the play, and pray there wouldn't be a meltdown. Just mommy, and daughter, relaxed and living a moment of other people's "normal".
Usually, I do not spend a lot of time dwelling on these moments from the point of view that it's part of a missed life, I just enjoy stress free time with my kids breathing in the peace.
But today . . . Oh today. . . This beautiful little blond girl from Muffins class, who was the same height, and of a similar bone and facial structure to my daughter came up to us, and asked if she could be her partner and sit with us during the show. I'm not sure what it was about her that grabbed my heart (oh! if you were only my daughter), but as I watched the two of them holding hands and whispering before we walked in, her hair shining in the sun exactly the same way that Z-man's does, I could only see that path where a different small choice led to having twin daughters.
When we sat down inside she was bursting with excitement, and so eager to be sitting with us. When Muffin sat in my lap, she scooted a seat closer to whisper and giggle with us, holding our hands and loving the thrill of the scary bits. Every moment was indescribably sweet, and unbearably twisted a tiny little dagger stuck deep between my ribs, burrowing it's way into my heart. (What if...)
When I found out I was pregnant with twins, I had believed they were both girls. I would have two beautiful daughters to dress in near matching dresses, with braided hair and sweet voices. Two girls to grow up together, sisters to love and support each other their life long, the way only sisters can. My dream was of watching that bond, twin sisters sharing something us singletons can't experience or understand. A dream that was squashed when I was 14 weeks pregnant and the Dr. told me my twins were a boy and a girl, but it was alright, I adjusted. Brother and sister was fine too. (A GIRL!! I get to have a daughter!!)
It wasn't that I don't like boys, but I knew these were the only three children I would have. I already had a boy, and I wanted two girls to share tea parties, and nail painting, and coloring, and paper dolls with. It was the first of my little "dreams" of my twins, dreams we all have of our future children when we find out that we're pregnant. The first that I would have to let go of.
When Z-man was born, I had to let go of every single dream I had ever had about my baby, all at once. Worse than a band-aid being ripped off, it was like a great swath of duct tape across my soul suddenly yanked off, and in a stomach dropping, heart sickening second you realize that was the duct tape holding you to the wall. You know that patches of hair and flesh have been torn away, you know you're about to sink helplessly and limply to the floor, probably smashing your nose along the way. You just don't feel it yet in that second before your nerves register what just happened. In a way it's worse, that numb horror of looking at the world as if it has suddenly been paused, knowing that what just happened is inevitable, absolute. Impossible. Not me, this isn't happening to me, I'm going to wake up any second now and life will be as it always was. Right?
Life goes on, that thing we didn't sign up for becomes our reality. Even horror and fear turn to a form of normal; busy work, and maybe an occasional sense of dread for the future are all consuming. They tell you that you're grieving. They tell you that it's normal.
Sometimes I just stood in the shower and cried, but even then I didn't really have time for a shower, and there was even less time for crying. So I jumped out and throw clothes on over my still wet body, not even bothering to dry my tears as I kept moving. (Breathe. Do one thing, just one. Breathe. Remember what you were doing. Breathe, Do something, anything. Just breathe.)
When the moments come that remind you, you are a grieving parent, it hits you full in the face. It feels like the world is coming undone, as if you have failed to love your child enough, failed forgive yourself enough. It feels like you have failed to pass a test, and you're wrong for grieving that normal life you didn't live.
I love Z with everything I am, more than I could ever write in some trite little blog post, for anything ever written is trite compared to what we parents feel in our souls for out children. Words can not contain it. I feel blessed to be walking this path and rejoice in the changes to my life, to my soul, that having Z-man has brought about in me. I have no doubts that this is the ONLY path that could possibly bring this growth and change about in me; I don't ever want to be the old me again.
But that little girl, that one blonde, stunning, ordinary little girl, she ripped off another strip of duct tape revealing another wound that I'm not sure if it was covering, or if its sudden removal caused. One small insignificant little decision in my past might have given me her instead. Had I been grieving already for her loss? It was a moment, just a moment, but I saw clearly into that other universe. The one where we were normal, where we didn't know you could have bio-metric locks in your house, or how to count calories and fat/protein ratios in my head. That one were I wasn't dreaming of a Prader-Willi Island for us to live on with all the other PWS families.
The funny thing about life is that we, as human beings, are so rarely happy with our situation in it. I know I would still dream of things I thought I was missing out on. I would probably still have dreams of an Island to go live on with my friends, where there no judgmental annoying, defiantly ignorant people, or whatever my definition of the life I wanted to escape from is in that other place. I am sure I would still think about the what ifs, who doesn't? (What if I had found out I would be a single parent sooner... What if I had the chicken instead of steak?... What if I knew the truth the first time 'round... What will we do if there are really aliens living on Earth already?) I'm positive I would still grieve for my children, for something they didn't do that I had expected them to do. Of course I would have false expectations, we all do. We all have a picture in our heads about who our children would be when we were growing them inside of us. And like all human beings through out the history of all time, each child is their own person. They do not turn into what other people expect them to be, they disappoint and fail our exuberant dreams for them. Maybe they don't love cooking, or chocolate, perhaps they prefer a different genre of books and can't stand the taste of artichokes. Sometimes they don't have quite the sense of humor we expected because that's "what our family" does. They don't go to the college we had planned, or perhaps even go to college at all. If you believe you are entitled to your dream of course you won't be able to stand the loss of those dreams.
I don't believe in levels of grief, for we all grieve, we are all effected by our disappointments. I do believe in lengths of grief; some of us holding on bitterly to our loss as if it were the only thing that matters. We all grieve, to varying extents, we all do it silently keeping it hidden even from ourselves, burying it deeply and hoping that no one sees it.
Dark and formless, silent, waiting for some blond little girl to hold your hand and smile at you.
We hide our feelings because we are afraid of what others will think, of what they will say. We think we are protecting our image, and perhaps even being considerate to others who don't need our emotional vomit on their shoes. But the reality is the person we hide our feelings from the most is ourselves. We blame someone else for how we're feeling, or blame it on hormones, anything that keeps it from staring us in the face. We swear, "I don't miss him," "She never mattered," "You can't upset me," as if saying it makes it so. As if others can't see through us. We cover it with band-aids and duct tape and perch on our walls precariously, ignoring the peeling tape and seeping wounds.
We all do it, not just as grieving parents.
I am grateful that I had that strip of tape pulled off. Perhaps I'm a bit morbid and I like looking at the wounds and analyzing how they happened, poking and prodding to see if I can find the EXACT spot where it hurts. To see if I can decipher the exact cause and severity. But until I know it's there I can't do anything, it just festers away under the surface, safely tucked out of sight and eating away at me slowly. So while I went home and cried ( Which path did I take? Do you know what is the exact point of this path split I'm on? Was it the wrong choice? Who can show me which choice brought me here?!?) I also celebrated acknowledging this sudden revelation. It brings me a step closer to that mystical land they tell you that you will reach when you're done grieving. What they don't tell you is life evolves, and so do the things that disappoint you, things that feel like loss when they prove impossible.
Will you learn to evolve and change yourself and what you expect from the world? Will you still expect the things in your daydreams to not disappoint you? Or will you step outside, weeping and stunned as the bandage is ripped away, shivering in the cold air as the unexpected and impossible changes you into a person you never dreamed you could be in your wildest dreams?
