Bitter

November 23, 2010

Feeling a little bit bitter tonight. I got two different sets of news over the weekend and while one should have been happy and the other a relief, they both brought me down since they came at the same time and one more or less competes with the other. I keep getting faced with really tough situations and choices and it seems like I can’t win either way.

The doctors finally figured out what’s wrong with me and scheduled me for surgery to fix it, only now I can’t have it. I can have it eventually, but to do it now would really jeopardize my health so I have to wait and just keep taking pain medication. How long is this going to last? A week, a month, two months, a year…who knows.

I was thinking back about being pregnant with Toby and how alone and isolated I felt and now I am feeling that way again. It’s not a nice feeling. A couple of days after Toby died my doctor gave me some anxiety meds and said that for the first couple of weeks people would come around and be helpful but that eventually that would end and that’s when I would need medication and counseling. I couldn’t imagine her being right, considering how many people were around at the time, but she was. We rarely get invited anywhere. Mostly, we do the asking. Melissa and Karen stop by to visit sometimes and that’s nice. But for the most part the e-mails, texts, and messages have stopped. People move on. Nobody wants to be around us. We’re depressing, even when we’re not depressed, and besides that people have their own lives. It’s hard to find fault in that. But even if you do understand it, it doesn’t change the fact that you feel lonely.

I tried to talk to a friend the other night about the news I got and how upset I was and they completely cut me off and changed the subject. Nice. I understand that in the past year it’s been one thing after another with us and that I might sound like I’m being a drama queen, but I’m not making this stuff up and I’m not causing it to happen. And yet, I constantly feel like I am. Sometimes I have to stop and remind myself that when Simon said that “all these people” had a problem with me he was really just referring to him and his girlfriend. (And their other two friends with whom I have exchanged exactly 23 words with in the past. Four of those being “Where is your bathroom?”) What I SHOULD have said back to him was something like, “Yeah, well, you’re talking about 4 people. You want to know how many people around here have a problem with YOU right now? A lot more than 4.” I hate hindsight.

Anyway, sometimes it does feel like people are angry at us or upset with us because this crap keeps happening. I even apologized to the doctor today and she looked at me like I was crazy.I start thinking about things too, like were we not thankful enough to people? Did we act unappreciative? Should I not have talked about Toby? Did our friends have to do too much that week that he died and now they resent it? I mean, we must have done SOMETHING. That's what I think sometimes, anyway.

It’s just been a sucky year. I had to cancel my 30^th birthday party due to lack of interest (although the dinner I had with 4 close friends was probably a lot better than a party would have been AND we got to eat at the Melting Pot) and I had to throw myself my own baby shower. It was kind of all downhill from there.

I’m reading over this and it sounds depressing. I don’t actually feel depressed right now. Just sad. I jumped onto Robbie yesterday because when I told her about the news that I got she told me everything would be “fine.” People told me that all last year and nothing was fine. When the most positive thing that you can get out of a pregnancy is that your son was able to live 6 weeks instead of dying at birth, that is far from fine. I want to be positive, but it’s hard. I heard that I would be “fine” when I had the headache that lasted for two weeks. (It turned out to be the preeclampsia.) I heard that I would be “fine” when I complained about the pain in my abdomen. (It was the placenta abruption.) I heard that Toby would be “fine” when I was concerned about his breathing and the tremors he was having. None of that was fine. I don’t want to be mean, but being positive is very, very difficult.

I keep thinking that things have to get better, but every time I think that they just seem to get a little bit worse.