I hate blogs that sing.

Sometimes I sit down to write here and I am at such a loss for a title that I end up walking away.

I do, in fact, hate blogs that sing. It brings immediate attention and suddenly I have 3 children and a husband hovering over my shoulder wonder what I'm looking at.

Lately I feel very much like I am living my life in denial. I go through the motions, and outwardly seem perfectly fine, almost normal even. But inside it is all dark.
I wonder if this is a choice I made at some point? To go into survival mode and leave the rest of me behind.
Did I just fall into it? Did my brain take over and decide it's the safest place for me to be right now? Or is this a normal progression?
Worst of all, is this how I'm going to feel forever?

Just over a month away from the 1 year anniversary and I feel so removed from everything. I question whether or not it all happened, or if it was just some sad story I read and adopted? Then I'll be standing in the middle of the grocery store and my brain will start screaming "YOU HAVE A DEAD BABY, DO YOU REMEMBER? REMEMBER IT NOW!"
And suddenly it's all so real.
Then I slip back into denial land and everything goes dark.

Except in my sleep. I have been plagued with nightmares for quite some time now. Reliving various parts of losing Lucy, always sensationalized and unrealistic. Some nights I have dead twins or triplets. Some nights it's someone else that has a dead baby and I need to be there for them. Sometimes I have multiple dead or dying babies that I can't find.
Night before last in my dreams I had perfectly healthy twin girls, and everyone kept telling me they were fine. But I knew better. "Just wait, they're going to die" I kept saying. "Just wait. It will happen."

Of all the things I've lost in the last 11 months, my innocence is the thing I mourn the most. There is something to be said for blissfully living life honestly thinking that for some unrealistic reason nothing bad will happen to you. Those things happen to other people. To people who for some reason deserve it. Not me.
Once you've buried a child the possibility of bad things happening goes from "to other people" to "inevitably to me." For a long while after Lucy died whenever we would drive anywhere I would go with the assumption that we were going to get into an accident, and my thoughts went from being "please let us be safe, and not get in a car accident" to "please let me die in the car accident."
I have suffered enough to realize fully that I don't want to suffer more.

I really miss things that I used to enjoy.
Last year I lovingly tended to my garden.
This year, I'd rather eat rocks than water my tomato plants.
I think I'm suffering ptsd in relation to our cherry tree. Last year the kids spotted cherries and I picked them. We spent a whole morning picking the cherries, only taking a break when the Fed Ex truck brought Lucy's shiny new car seat. Even looking at that tree makes me sick to my stomach.

Maybe all of this is part of finding the new Maria. The "I have a dead baby" Maria. The moment you find out your child has died you are stripped of your former self. The aftermath is a long progression of trying to figure out how to breathe, how to live, how to be. Who to be.
Maybe one day I'll feel like a real, whole person again.
Maybe.