Advisory: This post may be a bit long and if you appreciate hearing about the bad things that have occurred to others or you may need to find some support for read on my friends.
Some days are generally just harder than others. You can control yourself and show no outward signs of distress but internally there is a war. You do not always know why this war has erupted or why a certain thing has been triggered.
A lot of the time my trigger is the pregnancies I have lost. Something happens to you when you have gotten pregnant, been happy, so very happy, about it and then lost them. Forever are the memories of the physical pain that you felt when they were dying inside of you and when you almost died with them. The loss of energy, the sharp stabbing throbs from inside the womb letting you know you were literally feeling death inside you. Every time this happens in your brain, and it will over and over and over again, it brings tears to your eyes.
I can remember my whaling when I knew. I just knew because I could feel it. I could feel my baby die. It is one of the worst things you could go through. I have been through a lot and I think it is why I have the serious triggers I do. I can tell you, but I will not describe it to you, I am still not ready, that I have been raped. I thought that was the worst thing to happen to me. I thought it had destroyed me for the longest time. I still to this day do not go out that much, or at least not alone because I do not trust many people. That affected me so deeply that I do not have many friends due to the circumstances of my abuse. I just simply do not trust many people. You should feel some honor if I have let you into my little circle of life I hold dear to me. I would only plead you don't destroy it. At any rate, losing those pregnancies was worse.
It may sound dumb to some people because they know women lose pregnancies all the time. Yet when you say women lose their babies all the time rather than they lose pregnancies it doesn't seem so cut and dry. It does not seem like oh she is simply 1 in 4 women. I LOST MY BABIES is what we want to cry out. It wasn't just a pregnancy it was our flesh and blood. It was our children we lost. Most of us never got to meet the children we lost. Regardless of your stand of whether life is sacred, if abortion is okay or not, if a fetus should have rights, when it happens to you, when you lose your pregnancy, no matter how far along you are you lost your child. I do not think I have ever written this thorough on the subject but I guess today is the day and I am not even sure why. Maybe because around this time two years in a row I had become pregnant. Maybe because I am sick of seeing women who lost their children, unborn or born babies, infants, toddlers, adult children whatever, as a statistic that stings every time. Or maybe it's a trigger from seeing so many murder and sexual abuse cases about children lately that it has triggered this. Or maybe, and this is definitely possible I see my two sisters with their children and sometimes it pulls those memories back to me.
Either way the triggers are there. Reminding you what you lost. I know there are many of us who lost our marriages or relationships along with those babies/children. Something was lost when that happened. At one point a bond was made for some of us. A tight bond with our lovers we never thought could be untied and then one day it fell to pieces. Losing the relationship is hard. It will never be easy especially if you were married and it takes time to repair yourself and for some of us longer because of circumstances in which it all ended. But you had already lost a part of yourself with those pregnancies and gained something new as well. Something changed internally, at least for me. Things I had thought were so important, so in my face, and so always there became nothing to me. I realized I had a dark tint on my eyes not letting me see the most vital things in life. So while to most I may seem like a very introverted loner, which I am totally, and I may even seem callous sometimes or shy, really things that are outside, like binge drinking or partying all the time or whatever thing I made more important than those things around me are now so futile and silly that I just let myself relax and take time to live. I gained an insight when I lost part of myself that not many people get or they do not accept. There is a way to be comfortable in the world without following everything everyone else does, or doing what you think you should be doing based on what has been spoon fed to you based on your society and culture. I even became more welcoming and satisfied with the way my appearance was. And I can tell you that was never true before.
I can also tell you before losing those babies I was sometimes a wreck. Being raped can leave you feeling worthless about yourself. You may feel guilty for numerous reasons, disgusting, alone in a world filled with billions, suffering, and so so very blue. This can take over. It will destroy you if you do not get control of it. I would binge my way through life not giving any care for myself besides who I was around. I would drink until I couldn't remember. For the longest time I didn't, well I wouldn't talk about what happened to me or my response to it. I simply did not want anyone to know how vulnerable I was, or how vulnerable I made myself is really how I saw, and sometimes still do. Something clicked in my head though when I lost those pregnancies. Something told me that no matter what you are vulnerable and it is not a perfect thing but there is not much you can do. Your body will deceive you. It will hurt you and it will fail sometimes. Life will always do this to you. Because of this you need to realize what is truly important to you. Is it drinking all the time to rid yourself of your issues, or for some drugs? Is having a million and one friends truly important when you know that only a few are really going to be there always? Is it worth it to not love yourself? NO. It simply isn't. There are so many people who could read this and would be the ones to brush it off and not think twice about what they truly want in life. But I am not going to worry about them. They will either figure it out or simply will not.
I can say this though- having people who show you love, care, kindness, affection, happiness, hilariousness, sincerity, and true friendship (which is definitely also in romantic relationships) is where it is at. We can have great jobs, enough money to eat the greatest foods and wear the best clothes and drive the nicest cares but if you don't have sincerely loving people to enjoy it with it is worth nothing. If you do not simply have sincere and honest people around you who would be there always then your life is missing the crucial piece. We all need to love ourselves thoroughly and it can be so hard, and even harder to realize making BIG mistakes can just be a part of life that makes you better if you are good, but having those around you who are willing to help you realize that, or help pick up those broken pieces, or be the loving humorous friend who is just the person that accepts you for who you are you will feel alone and lost.
I do not know if life ever gets easier for anyone. I doubt it. Even if you are rich and can pay for your problems to be solved more will arise. Remembering what is truly good for you what is wonderful in life is a gift. The pain I have endured throughout my life has not been easy. It in fact has been extremely challenging and it has negatively affected me in many ways. I still have these days were life seems helpless and I am down from what I have lost, or imagining what my life would be like with the babies I lost, even without my ex husband, and what kind of person I would be without those loses and without the rape. Death has occurred a lot in my life as well and I always wonder what if when it comes to them and it drags me into weird places that can be so depressing it is like having your mind locked in a dark damp disgusting cellar. But then, when all those tragedies build up and make life feel terrible, or like I am terrible, I remember they all made me who I am today.
I am humble to those who have donated to me to get me through rough patches, who have been by my side even when I seemed off my rocker, and simply just accepted me as a flawed, bipolar maniac at times and still loved me. While I would wish those things on no one and I would choose never to have to feel death inside me, or my own death looming, or being sexually abused in such a nasty way, it has made me stronger. It has made me courageous, honest, loving, caring, empathetic, affectionate, intelligent, introverted in just the right way for me, a non-alcoholic, a person wiling to give attention when you call upon me. It has also made me weird. It has made me find it necessary to find humor in small things and be a goof whenever I feel. It has caused some negative things- I sometimes am a hermit and do not want to associate with too many people in one day because for me it can be devastatingly exhausting, it has made me prone to social anxiety and even working anxiety, and has made me scared to ever want to get pregnant again or fall in love so deeply I make myself supremely vulnerable. Those things though are workable. Those things people who know me can understand why I do them. But the good things all people don't have or aren't willing to be. I am someone who experiences manic and mania and can accept the crazy in people and I usually gravitate towards it but others cannot do that or refuse to try and understand how to be there for you when you get that way but I have it because of all those tragedies in my life. So even when you feel lost in this world, alone, depressed, even suicidal think about how those negative awful things have made you somehow better or wiser because they have. Tragedies give us something we didn't have before while taking away a small part of us with them and that's OKAY.
If you really read this whole post I thank you for being so generous with your time and hope I educated you, helped you, or at least somehow entertained you for the few minutes you had to read.
Lea
