Effing February

It's February again.   I can't function in February.   I think about Kenley often throughout the year, but in February, my mind is nowhere else.   I think about the days leading up to the 25th three years ago. The excited comments on my maternity pictures album.   My baby showers - the one my friends and family threw me and the one given to me by my co-workers.  I think about how from February 1 through the afternoon of the 25th, I was simply a mother excited about preparing for her daughter.   How I fully expected to bring her home.  

February is nothing but a countdown to doom for me.   Tick, tick, tick.   As the 25th inches closer, I remember what it was like to be innocent, to be blissfully unaware of the dark underworld of motherhood.   I feel like I am watching myself wander blindfolded toward a pit of knives.   I can't stop thinking about who I was and who I didn't get to be - about the little girl who never got a chance to be anything at all.  

 I can't stop thinking about that day.   Doomsday.  The day my heart and soul shattered into oblivion.

I remember it in pieces.   Driving to the doctor unaware.   The silent, still ultrasound.   Rushing to put on my pants, trying not to panic, thinking somehow, there was something that could still be done.  A second silent, still ultrasound.  The frightened phone call to my father.   And then the waiting.  The waiting to get admitted.  The waiting to get my information into the computer.  The waiting for my parents to arrive.  The waiting for whatever would take my dead child from my body.  The waiting for the needle in my back.  The waiting to hold her once I woke up empty.  The waiting to be jolted from whatever nightmare I had stumbled into.   

Doomsday is a day I try very hard to push away from my consious thought.   It hurts too much.  But, in February, it consumes me.   February is a cloud of poison and pain.   In February, I can't escape.  

This is the third February to rip me apart, and I know there are so many more to come.   

February 25th isn't a day of celebration for me.   It isn't a day where I make a cake and try to be happy.  Truth be told, it's the most hated day of the year for me.  It shouldn't be her birthday, but it is.  She shouldn't be dead, but she is.   I hate February 25th and every day in this cursed, wretched month.  

I love Kenley with everything I have.   I love that I am her mother.  I love that she is my daughter.   I love that I am able to give her life and death a purpose - and that I am able to find joy in the life I have created without her.  But I hate that I've had to do any of that.  And I HATE February.