It has started. Our tree is up. The wreath is on the door...
And while waiting in line at Star.buc.ks, the depressing Christmas music playing, the emotion swept over my body, and I stood there, feeling the tears build up. Don't cry..don't cry. I chanted to myself. Then I had the angry urge to notify the baris.ta that if their desire was to depress the customers with the choice Christmas music selection, they were succeeding.
Instead, I stood there waiting, still as a statue, until he called my name.
Latte in hand, I thought it was going to be easier. But it wasn't. The grocery store was playing its holiday selection as well. Not as depressing, but when coupled with the newborn in the sling, the youngster in the stroller, the holiday chocolates displayed, it was hard not to make a bee line straight to the alcohol section. Nevermind the fact that it was only ten in the morning.
Finally I was checking out and trying to think if I forgot something: milk, cheese, nuts...
The problem was not that I forgot something. In fact, that couldn't have been further from what the true problem was.
In the car on the way home I cried. It wasn't over any one thing. Sure, my baby died, my womb was empty, but somehow that wasn't it. Maybe it is, I don't know. What I know is that I have never liked the holidays, Christmas particularly. I would cry as a child because my parents bought me too much stuff. I don't know why. But now that I have an actual reason to hate this time of year, I guess all bets are off.
I want to call it off; stop the madness of the consumerism, the debt people get into, the disappointment over material things they didn't receive. I guess that is the double edged sword of having a living child, I have to do Christmas this year. He deserves the joy.
So I will fake it for my son, because I wish him the happiness I cannot myself feel this time of year.
No wonder there are so many suici.des around the holidays.
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9 comments:
I so feel you...I wish I could crawl under the covers in Oct and not come back up till mid-January...but like you, I have to go on for my daughter and try not to make her as screwed up as I am!!! But yes, the holidays are depressing and "Others" just don't get it....thinking of you over the next few weeks...
There are so few words of comfort. For me, the word "Christmas" echoes in my head a thousand times a day.
Thinking of you.
Though I'm surrounded by well meaning family, the holidays are going to be really rough for me this year. Black Friday has a new definition for me now that I'm a deadbabymama and divorced.
It certainly is not the most wonderful time of year. It's a very difficult time of year that stirs up so many emotions.
My thoughts are with you during this holiday season.
Focus on what is important for you and your family. Time together, snow, start a special tradition that has special meaning to you, and when your baby is older you can tell him the significance of it.
**hug** I know exactly what you mean. I'm so sorry. I know how hard this is. I don't have a living child to fake it for, but I do have to do that for my husband and my family. It's exhausting...and so many other things, too.
I will join you in faking it. I have to do it for my family and husband who just don't understand why I'm so sad. Why I don't want to celebrate.
This time of year is really effin' exhausting, isn't it -- for a whole host of reasons. I need to put up a good face for the kid, too (what slays me is when she asks what *I* want for Christmas and I just stare at her dumbfounded. I can't even come up with something stupid like slippers. I just don't want anything anymore). sigh.
We're forced to find a balance, aren't we, between the land of the living and happy and carefree and the land where things don't actually feel this way. I have had these moments, even in my decorating frenzy, I have had these moments where it all rushed back to me and all I could do was cry.
We've lost so much, missing_one. More than our babies, more than our bubbles. We've lost faith and hope and a desire to live fully and with purpose. Because this desire included other children, beautiful children who came and went much too soon. What's there to celebrate, I ask? What is there to celebrate?
And yet, we have to pretend, for the sake of our living children, that life is in fact worth celebrating, when the reality of this couldn't be further from the truth. And I wonder if it will ever be?
Thinking of you, hon. XO.
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