some days

some days my heart beats too big

sometimes I am utterly overwhelmed with love for this bright and lively force of a boy in my life. my love for him grows daily (hourly, even) and it has reached the point that if I reach down and really try to feel all of it, try to comprehend the enormity of it, it hurts.

some days, the ever increasing real estate he is occupying in my heart seems to shine a light on your corner--the one that is still barricaded and reserved for the daughter who will never exist in quite the way I imagined. this corner is full of love too, stuffed to the brim, but it is different. it has to be different. there is still a hollow there, an ache. sometimes the contrast of this intense joy lighting up my life draws my attention to that darker hollow, and I feel that sadness, that weight, a little bit more than usual. I seem to realize more and more what I am missing, just how much was lost when you died. it is constantly more than I could have imagined at the time.

and yet.

without you, without the loss of you, I would not have this particular incredible child. I would not have so many things that have become strong, fundamental parts of who I am. after you died, everything changed. I used to resent that change, but I don't anymore. not really. our experience together has become part of me, woven into the fabric of my life. you are gone, and yet you are in everything I do.

some days I still wake up angry. some days I am bitter. some days that instinctual mother in my heart wants to take the pregnant woman next to me by the hair and scream at her because doesn't realize just how fucking lucky she is.

some days I stop for just a moment to shed tears for the daughter that never was, for my little broken baby that I still love beyond measure. for that once stranger of a self, lost in my own life.

I am not so lost anymore.

but some days, I still miss you.