The Seemingly Innocuous

I think one of the most annoying things that has changed in the last 6 months is how sensitive I've become to seemingly innocuous things. I am quick to react - in anger, in sadness, in fear, in disgust - to things I never would have even thought twice about before. Songs make me burst into tears, tales of unwanted pregnancies make me cringe and don't even get me started on stories about missing or exploited children. While I was always sensitive to stories about the death of children before, it is unbearable now. When I hear those kind of stories, I don't even really think about the deceased. My mind automatically goes to the parents because I, unfortunately, can say that I 100% know what they are going through. I feel terrible that they are now part of this horrible club with a lifelong sentence. Because that's what it is, a lifelong jail sentence that we will never, ever get rid of. We might move past this agonizing, intense, surreal grief that one immediately feels after losing a child but we will never, ever fully heal. The loss of Naya is a pain that will always be with me. Period. 

I am digressing though. I began this post talking about the small mundane things in everyday life that I have become sensitive to. Commercials are one major example. There are two in particular that really rub me the wrong way. 

The first one is for ancestry.com. It's a woman talking about how she found out through the website that her grandmother had something like 5 children but only two survived so because of that, we should all realize how lucky we are. At this point, you can usually hear me tell the lady to fuck off. Yes, I talk to the TV. 

The second, is an ad that is currently running for the phone company Vontage. It's a dad holding a baby and the mom talking about how they need to get rid of their "bundle" (with the cable company) before they get too attached and the dad misunderstands and thinks she means they need to get rid of the baby. This commercial just boils my blood. Whomever wrote it is fucking retarded. 

The funny thing is that to a normal person, neither of these commercials would be offensive (hopefully, normal people view the vontage one as "in bad taste" though.). But to me, a loss momma, these commercials are so hurtful, mainly because they both don't even consider the fact that people out there are really experiencing the loss of their babies and joking about it or mentioning that it is something that happened to people's grandmothers (but not to them) is just plain wrong. It's the ignorance of these companies that annoys and offends me. Also, ancestry.com is on my shit list for other reasons. Apparently, they post SSN for the recently deceased and have made it extremely easy for assholes out there to steal deceased babies identities. Guess we will find out if that happened when we do our taxes!