The First of Many

Before this year, I loved Halloween. The dressing up, the carving pumpkins, the celebrations of Fall. Everything. Now, I am just going through the motions to create a tad bit normalcy for my son. Yesterday, we went to the grocery store to get pumpkins (no pumpkin farm for us this year) and we carved them last night. I didn't cook the pumpkin seeds or anything, just let him carve his pumpkins and left it at that. When I was pregnant with Naya, I was really looking forward to shopping for a costume and dressing up my baby in for the first time. Instead, I bought a small pumpkin and we put it on her grave. I supposed that's what we will be doing for every Holiday from now on.

Perhaps that's why yesterday was so hard for all of us. Everybody else is going on with their normal lives of costumes and parties and celebration while we are sitting here in pain and heartbreak. I suppose this is just a preview of how the rest of the Holiday season is going to be for us. (Yea!) I have absolutely no urge to participate in the Holidays at this point. My goal is to just get through the next 2 months without a complete mental breakdown like I've had over the past couple of days. They have not been fun.

I did okay this week, I went in to work for a few days (four total!) and although I didn't spend the entire day there, I did it. I faced some of my fears. I also went to get my haircut on Friday - usually, not a seemingly big task but for me, it was like facing a firing squad. It went all right at first. My wonderful hairdresser also cuts my stepmother's hair, so she is aware of what happened and did her best to make it seem "normal." Until about midway through the cut when the girl who cuts hair next to her started talking to her client. The girl is about 4 months pregnant (which I could handle because she's not crazy big yet) but the client started talking to her about her profession. She is a nurse in the family birthing center at the Hospital where I delivered. Yep, figures huh? She started telling the girl that she should definitely choose her hospital over the other hospital in town because (and I quote) "it is much better and safer and we never lose babies." My hairdresser just looked at me in the mirror and saw the pain and anxiety in my face and said "I'm going to start talking about something else and I'm going to do it loudly." We spent the rest of the haircut talking loudly about which restaurants have the best Bloody Marys while trying to drown out the lady talking about how "wonderful" her hospital is. After my hair was done, I gave her a big hug and said "can you please tell her what happened when her client leaves and beg her not to go there?" She said she was already going to and that maybe me being in there at that particular moment wasn't just a result of my shitty timing but a blessing because I could provide a warning to someone else and hopefully prevent it from happening again. That's the only way I can choose to think of it without going completely crazy.

Ughh. Life. Please start getting easier. I don't know how much more I can handle.