Waking up to reality

I keep having that dream….

 

More like a nightmare I guess.

 

It’s hazy in the room, but I can see the silver cage around the round lights above my head. I can hear machines, and I can see people buzzing around me. I can’t quite make out faces or voices, I just hear a lot of chatter. My chest feels like its cracked open and it feels like my heart is sitting right there, out in the open. It just hurts. It’s a pain I can’t describe. Then, as clear as day, the anesthesia doctor is looking down at my face and he says “ I will be right here by your head the whole time, you’re going to be just fine”. I try to nod but I can’t move my head. All of the sudden, a nurse appears to my left and all I can hear her saying is “they will be fine, you will see them back in your room”. The only thing at this point I know for certain is that there are tears running down every inch of my face and I can’t stop it.

 

 

This is about the time I wake up from this stupid dream. This week alone, that was the 4^th time I have had it. It’s the exact same part of that dreadful day.

On occasion, I will remember the first part of that day. The news that my sons would be born, and shortly thereafter would die. On an even rarer occasion, I will remember their delivery. Most of the time, it starts with the emergency surgery following their births because of the complications that came with it.

 

When I sit a certain way on the floor or on the bed, sometimes I see them. For hours after their birth, I held them. I laid them down beside each other in my lap or in front of me on a pillow on the bed. I traced their beautiful faces. I would hold each of their little hands and I talked to them. I told them about their brothers. I told them about their dad. I told them how much we were looking forward to watching them grow up. I didn’t want to fall asleep, because I didn’t want to miss one single minute with those boys. At one point, I did fall asleep, and Cris gently laid them on my chest and surrounded us with pillows. I woke up to look down & see my boys facing each other within minutes of that, Ian passed.

They allowed the boys to stay with us through the night before they had to take them to the morgue. They gave us the chance to decide when it was time. It was early in the morning hours, I had kissed my boys for the last time and handed them to Cris. I watched him bounce them like you normally would a newborn baby. He cried and tried to talk. He told them that “It wasn’t supposed to be this way”. When the nurse came in and took them from the room, I truly believe a piece of their dad went with them.

 

Sometimes when I am in the car by myself, I feel that same sting of pain I felt when I got in the passenger seat on July 25^th 2011. There was no music playing.

 

I don’t know what the significance is of the surgery part of that day. When I am awake, that part really doesn’t seem to bother me much. But, there is something in my subconscious that is stuck on that 1-2 hours of the entire day.

 

I’m not sure I will ever have the answer to it.

 

I have been feeling guilty lately. The day Maddox was born, I was at home within a few hours of his birth. While my kids were asleep, I had been to the hospital, had a baby, and was on my way home by the time they were getting up. Maddox was born a little after 3am, and I was home by 6:30. I was complacent with his birth and death. I didn’t want to deal with it again, so I just buried the emotion and moved on with my life.

 

I think I am paying for that now. I still feel absolutely nothing when I talk about Maddox birth and death. For whatever reason, it doesn’t affect me like the birth and death of Ian and Owen. Maybe that makes me a bad mom, a heartless woman, I’m not sure. But, I can’t find emotion related to that situation.

 

After the chapter on those traumatic events closed, I assume I wasn’t paying close enough attention to God. He somehow saw fit to continue the earthly pain and suffering for me by allowing sin into my marriage. This eventually resulted in not only the loss of 3 children, but also the emotional and physical loss of a husband. Outwardly, I did as any human would, and I expressed my emotions by tears, anger, bitterness and revenge. Inwardly, I opened that little box where my serious emotions were being held captive, and I added these feelings to it. I refused to accept my divorce. I refused to accept the changes going on around me. It became easier to just wake up, work hard at work, come home and lay in bed.

 

 

Sadly, I don’t know how to express those emotions. The world around me has continued. But, I can see now, how harboring all of those feelings is allowing me to keep walls up and keep people out of my emotional world.

 

For the last month, I have cried more out of pure anger than I have probably my entire life combined. Tears are ridiculous, they make no point. They make your nose stopped up & your eyes puffy and they solve NOTHING. But, when I can’t get words out, the only thing I can do sometimes, is cry.

 

I threw myself into work as a distraction from real life. My job was a blessing to me getting through these times when I wanted nothing to do with anyone outside of my walls. Now that I have a desire to be a normal human being again, the damage I have done to myself is deeper than I realized.

 

Somewhere in there, I forgot how to truly feel love. I forgot how to accept love. I have been so focused on HIDING the numbness and trying to forget the pain that I have hardened my heart and am having a hard time accepting and feeling love from others.

 

Everything in my head is so complex yet so clear to me. I can’t get across how broken I feel when I am talking to someone. I am blessed that my ex-husband is still someone I feel very close to because we went through this together. However, at the same time, he should be someone who knows me better than anyone in this world, and for some reason, I can’t convey my pain at all. For someone who spent more than ½ their life with me, he doesn’t know me at all anymore.

 

The kids have done very well through this divorce. Our middle son has had the hardest time of all because he is like his mama. He is a sentimental emotional train wreck 80% of the time. When he asks questions, or melts down, I find it really hard to do the whole “mom and dad can’t live together, but that doesn’t mean we don’t love you or your brothers any less” speech. It opens that wound all over again and I spend time trying to suppress the feelings.

 

So, let us be real here. I didn’t take care of myself. After everything happened, I just decided it wasn’t worth it. I’d rather sleep and cry and eat my emotions, rather than find some kind of healthy outlet. For a long time, I threw myself into work and “positive projects”. I thought I was doing good things for others, but it wasn’t coming from the right place. It was desperation, and not salvation.

 

I lost all self-worth. It became easier for me to believe the world was against me. I felt rejected from God. I felt rejected by the sanctity of motherhood. I felt rejected by my own husband. After that feeling because so real, I just stopped caring.

 

Unfortunately, I am now trying to climb out of the hole I dug for myself.

 

Anyway, these are things that have been heavy on my heart for a few days. I have found that when things start to pile up in my head, it’s necessary for me to find a healthy outlet. So, you friends, are my healthy outlet.