Today I pushed myself. I decided that I was the one who needed to do the grocery shopping. I also had to cash my pay check so bills could be paid.
As I'm getting ready in my apartment, I could feel that panic setting in. I made the decision to not succumb to those strangling feelings. Ava was too excited to get out of the house for me to tell her nevermind. Once we got on the highway to my work, the tears started completely involuntarily. I did some breathing exercises but once the tears start, I have to let them go.
I lose it as soon as someone apologized for what happened. It was almost instant when my coworkers surrounded me. My "backup" for work gave me the longest hug. She was the first person I told at work about the pregnancy and the first person I told when Elsa passed. She let me sob and be a mess in front of everyone, including customers. I finish up at the customer service desk and turn around. There is the HR specialist and she says that we needed to go to the manager's office.
Once there we do the usual civil conversation. She then says something along the lines of "I don't want to have to add on more to what you're living with..." and delivers the news of my store closing down. Again, the floor is swept up from underneath me. Did I mention that today marked a week since Elsa's birth? It feels like I'm punched in the chest. Some of my coworkers started to feel like a second family. And now, when I need them most, they're all being torn away from me. Sure, there's the comfort knowing that I will still have a job. But it will be another change that I have to adapt to.
I deal with the emotions as they wash over me. Disappointment. Sadness. And the odd sense of loss again. When will the world stop kicking me in my fresh wounds?
I finish with some of the more important errands. I didn't do half the other ones but I was emotionally done with being in public. As I settle in at home, I decide that while I have this momentum to make the appropriate phone calls to the funeral homes. The first funeral home was very aggressive and brisk with me when they learned I didn't want to bury Elsa in a cemetery. After consulting with my wonderful midwife and Gage, we decide to ditch that funeral home and call another one. This one presented the same arguments as the first one but said they would do everything they can to meet our wishes (to bury Elsa on private property owned by my midwife).
It fails to register in my brain why it should be so difficult to have my daughter released to me. She is but a tiny little thing. 10 ounces and 9 inches long. What would be the point of buying a casket and cemetery plot if she is so tiny? This is only prolonging my healing process and it just makes me want to scream how unfair this is.
I want to retreat to my bubble of sorrow. To surround myself in familiar sensations of grief and death. Every time I push myself past my barriers of anxiety, I'm met with more adversity and more heart ache. I want nothing more than to erase everything and feel emptiness. Instead I'm met with every sharp pain every corner I take. How much more of this must I endure? How much more pain and suffering do I have to experience before I'm allowed a moment of peace? The sleepless nights continue. The nightmares that have started only grow with more horror each night.
For now I am waving my pitiful white flag. I'm giving up for the day and probably tomorrow. I don't know how much more fight I have left in me. I don't know how much I can push myself. Back to being a useless blob on the couch.
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