Some days are extremely overwhelming. Some days, I feel like those migraine commercials where the woman is holding her head and the camera zooms shakily in and out to represent the pain she feels. I am overflowing with too many different emotions - emotions that completely contradict each other. Some days, I don't know how I am going to handle this for even the next few months, let alone the rest of my life. I feel like I am going to explode and implode at the same time. Explode because I am so full of so many things that need to be sorted, but just can't. Implode because the world just seems so heavy and crushing - and not always understanding of or accommodating to what I need to sort. It pushes down on me to feel things a certain way, to process things a certain way, to have some sort of linear motion to this journey. But, that isn't the way it is. It has never been that way and it will never be that way. I am stumbling through my life, like someone who drank too much, but is still trying so hard to walk upright. I'm hazy and unfocused, and I'm afraid I'll never get a handle on myself again.
I miss Kenley every day and with no less intensity than the first day she was gone. I think of her every day. I love her every day. My heart is still broken for her. There are moments of those first few days that I do not let myself think about for too long because they just hurt too much. Moments of writhing in anguish on the ultrasound table after seeing her unbeating heart - of what it felt like to walk, swollen with death, to the operating room for my C-section - of how cold and soft she was in my arms - and of how absolutely beautiful she was despite her lack of life. I can't even write those sentences without taking ten minutes to compose myself. Even as hard as I have worked to wade through this mess, I have still pushed a lot of it away. I just can't do it. I am still actively mourning for her.
And yet, I am now pregnant with her sister. How do I push all of that sorrow aside and be joyous for this new life? How do I decide which child is more important to me? Which emotion? I can't. And, you might be saying, "Well, you don't have to." While that's true - while I don't have to choose between my children - there is only so much a human heart can take. There is only so much room for such conflict. Sorrow and joy can go together in a bittersweet swirl, but not always to this extent. I try so hard to find that balance. To find that path where my devastation over losing my firstborn can live harmoniously with my excitement over carrying my second. But, I am not even sure there is a balance. I don't know how to achieve it. I am constantly faltering back and forth, back and forth. Feeling intensely guilty towards one daughter if I spend too much time on the other one's side.
I often find myself saying "I just want my baby." I want both, but I can only have one. In a perfect world, I would have both. But, in a perfect world, Kenley would still be alive and I would not have had a reason to get pregnant again right now. So, what does that say about Bean? If I give Kenley priority in my heart, then it seems like Bean is a consolation prize. If I focus on Bean, then what about my Little Ninja? You might say I am over-thinking all of this, but really, I'm not thinking anything. I'm only feeling. And I don't know how to make it manageable. I don't know how to organize these emotions anymore. I'm just a swirling ocean of one crashing wave after the next. Slam, slam, slam.
Love, anger, excitement, fear, joy, sorrow, guilt. All at once. All the time.
I still can't believe this is actually my life, and not some horrible nightmare.
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