Another day

So much for being funnier, I guess. Today I just feel lousy. It doesn't help that I have a cold, and this is one of those weeks where I don't get a day off. I'm feeling bitter and dark and resentful about everything at the moment--just irritable and grumpy and down. I've been having all sorts of unpleasant thoughts. For example, I've been feeling like the only thing about you that you got from me is your lower lip and your birth defects.

Another month has past, and again we are trying to make you a big brother. I wonder if you will matter as much to your sibling as my brother Frank who died at your age did to me. I used to pretend he was my guardian angel, and had long, involved conversations with him in my journal. But then, I was a very lonely child, and your Uncle C. (who has the same defect you and I do) was pretty heavily favored by my father and his mother. We're only planning on one more baby, and I dearly hope he or she won't be as lonely and isolated as I tended to be. But at the same time, I want you to be a part of that child's life.

I wish I could either cry or get back to my usual noisy, wisecracking self. I feel sometimes like I'm two different people--there's me, and then there's me-the-deadbabymama. The grief and pain feel alien. Probably because I've never before lost something or someone where the pain and grief didn't spend itself in a few months. You've been gone almost six months, and most of the time I feel like my normal self. And then I see a baby and the pain comes back.

It's lonely, this sporadic grieving. I don't feel much like talking about it to most people, because it's just the same old grief--and most people assume (correctly) that I'm fine. The people who know that I'm not always "fine" are still more than willing to listen during my episodes of sadness, but I find they generally only come when I'm alone--and then, I don't want to talk much. Even write much. Which is why my updates here are equally sporadic.

I don't know.