Bored with me

I have always admired the other loss bloggers out there who could write about things other than their dead child. Those who can weave intimate details of their back stories in to their present life and explain how the dead child fits in around it.

For me, in this space, that's really all there is to talk about. The dead child, that is. Well of course now there is Angus as well, but when I speak of Angus here, it is in relation to how he fits in to our life post said dead child. I could try and write more about me, but I also feel a bit tongue-tied and shackled because so many I know in real life read here, and it doesn't always feel comfortable. Not because I necessarily want to talk about them, but I just want to say more about me without feeling like I'm being watched or judged. This space isn't really the safe space I intended it to be when I started it way back when.

I think as a result, it has all become very boring. I think I am boring. My grief is boring.

I was just 28 when Hope was born, a few weeks shy of my 29th birthday.

I was young. So young. Not much interesting had happened in my life. My parents got divorced when I was a kid. That sucked, what else is there to say? I went to school, and despite getting teased for being fat, I was mostly pretty popular and pretty good at my studies, too. I went to uni, finished my degree, met Simon at 19, had a few good jobs - nothing extraordinarily exciting though, then married Simon at 25. Travelled overseas for two months the year later, bought a house the year after that then later that year I was pregnant. The following year she died. And then she was born. Apart from funny nights out with friends, getting drunk here and there and cooking and eating, there isn't much more to it. It is boring, really.

Like I said in my last post, my life feels defined by my motherhood and my motherhood feels defined by my dead baby.

I wish I could write more about me and who I am, or at least who I was post noon Monday 18 August 2008, but I can't. She's so gone.

Friends seem fed up with this new Sally. Many, I think, still wonder when the old Sally will come back. I don't know how many times I can say it - that person died with Hope. A double tragedy, really. I didn't half mind the person I was and little life I had created for myself. But she's as gone as Hope is, even if some friends and family can still see some glimpses of the old Sally in there. On the inside, I'm not even close to being the person I once was. I've seen how bad life can get.

I function better in the world now and Angus certainly helps facilitate that. I have to grit my teeth at mother's group when the girls all speak of their c-sections (seems all of us in our group had one) and how they wonder what a vaginal delivery would be like. I could tell them, but I doubt any of them would ask. And most of us in the group have boys (and let me tell you, that makes it a whole lot easier to go) and one was saying the other day how all of us with boys must just be hanging to have a girl. Yeah. I had one. She died. I guess it is easy for them to forget, when she's not toddling along with me. Then there's the girl who came with her toddler niece one day, and her baby boy. She was lamenting how hard it was and saying "whoa, two kids, no thanks!" Hah. Double hah. Jokes on me.

I think I'm in a winter funk. I want to write here more, because I think it helps to process the mess inside my head, but I really don't know what to say. August is looming now and with little money in our piggy banks and little idea of how we are going to spend another August 19 without her, I'm starting to get a bit panicky and edgy.

I miss the old me. But I miss her more. The thoughts of what could have been still threaten to ruin me daily.......