heavy

I am weighed down by guilt lately. Heavy. I don't even have words.

It is incessantly nagging in the back of my mind, what could have, should have, might have been.

The sight of baby girls that are about as big as you would have been makes my heart seize, makes that fragile, broken, instinctual mother inside me curl into herself and try, unsuccessfully, to protect her wounds. Like blaring reminders...IT COULD HAVE BEEN DIFFERENT.

I have nightmares about arguing my agonizing decision with people who will never understand, arguments littered with words like "kill" and "pro-life" that inspire the deepest rage in the pit of my soul. I have dreams about having a baby, but it is a daughter, not the son who is alive and kicking in my belly. She is too small, and I can't see her face, no matter how hard I try.

You have been gone for so long now. So much has changed, will change. It's been a year since your tiny life began, and I find myself longing for those days, the final, beautiful days that came before the conclusion of my old life.

I am not sure where I go from here. Your brother is the only thing keeping me on some kind of designated path, but even that feels all wrong sometimes.

I find myself caught up in the if-only's. If only I had known then what I know now. If only I could change it. I blame myself, still, for your poor little spine. I am so angry. It is my fault, my body's fault, and yet I did not know any better.

People don't understand. It's been 8 months, I should be over it. I should be unabashedly celebrating the new life that is thriving inside me without hesitation. But I am not immune, and I know it. And I will never get my daughter back, and I will always miss her. That is something many people can't quite process, because they did not see her, feel her, hold her. Say goodbye to her.

Sometimes I feel like I minimize your loss even to myself. And then I find myself justifying it--I have your ashes, you were real. You did exist. I am a mother of two, no getting around it. I have every right to miss the one who is not here, even if no one else understands.

I feel a million years old. I want my daughter. I don't want to be this version of myself anymore.

I thought of you and where you'd gone
and the world spins madly on