I miss my babies

I miss them so much right now. My head pounds, my heart aches, and my whole body feels numb. I've spent the last few minutes in a ball in my office, alone, not knowing how to breathe, let alone how to survive. I think the last 2 weeks has really caught up with me. The lack of guarantees... The feeling that I'm letting my life go on when I don't want it to. I want it to be 13 months ago, when my twins were still inside of me, only I want it to be triplets so that I can have my little Alex, too. I don't want the world to move on. I'd take January 31, 2008 forever. Please? Can't I have it back? Even for a second?

And yet, every day does go on. The sun still comes up and then sets so that the moon can make her appearance. I get a day closer to my June birthday and Peter gets a day closer to his August one. Our children are a day older, a day farther from when they were born, farther from when we were able to hold them inside- safe, warm, loved... alive.

I miss them everyday, but especially today. And I know why. The anniversary of their Memorial Service is a little over a month away. And I'll be attending a baby shower on that day. Normally, I would have declined, but she is a dear friend who lost two babies to early miscarriage. We were pregnant together. She was excited when I found out Alexander was on the way and I joked that he and her Lucy would play together. She's over the halfway point of her pregnancy and is due in early June, a little bit over a month after Alexander's EDD. We were supposed to walk through the parks together, pushing our baby carriages. And now... Now, that won't happen.

I am happy for her. Truly, deep down, I am. I've bought Lucy gifts already (I just can't help it! I've been with her for this pregnancy every step of the way and feel like this little girl is my neice.) But that doesn't stop the fact that I know a baby shower full of happy people who think that nothing could ever go wrong isn't going to hurt. She knows the truth; she knows that things do go wrong and she, unfortunately, deals with these folks on a regular basis. But still... It's going to hurt and I'm not sure how to protect myself from that yet. All I know is that I will be going. Nothing could keep me away.

I've declined invitations for the showers of others, but it wasn't because I wasn't happy for them. I was. I just couldn't deal with the unbridled happiness and the thought that all would be well because, hey, things like "that" happen to other people, not to me. I just couldn't do it. Is it wrong to feel like that doesn't apply because she knows better so I can get through the shower???

If the shower were on another day, I think things would be different and I would be more okay with it. It's because it falls on 3/29, a day that will always remind me of their Memorial Mass and all that followed, a day that is reserved, in my head, for Nicholas and Sophia, that I feel like I'm so unsettled about it.

But maybe that isn't it. Maybe it's just because I can only hold in how much I miss them for so long before I shut down and it all comes out. I have to pretend to have it together at work and everywhere else that, when I can no longer play the role of the "strong woman", I just crack and crumble into a hundred pieces.

I had a bad meeting with my boss earlier in the week. She basically told me that my "peers" at the main library think that, over the last year, I've become a bitch and that I have no patience with their mistakes anymore, that my personality is no longer bubbly and happy all the time, and that, and this is a direct quote, "the last year is no excuse for your bad behavior." While my work is impeccable and my branch runs without a hitch (she stressed that my staff love me and wrote glowing reviews for me in their self performance reviews (which have a question about their supervisor) and my patrons are happy and well treated), she wants me to "take a breath and step back, and realize that other employees have issues. You just have to deal with those and not bring it up to them." Are you freaking kidding me? Really?

I don't even know why I am still here. I didn't walk out because I'd promised one of my staff that I'd do a meeting for her the next day and didn't want to cancel that. But overall, I dont know why I am still here. It's obvious: the paycheck. But even that. It's not worth it anymore. I used to love the library and now... Now, it's a job that stresses me out and keeps me awake at night, has me cry myself to sleep, and keeps me on edge all the time. I try to talk to Peter about it and that doesn't work because we are never on the same page. Part of me holds things against him that I shouldn't. After Nicholas and Sophia were born, I told him how I didn't want to go back to work. He said okay at first, but then as the weeks went on, told me that we wouldn't be able to see Dr. Lee (due to the cost) and how he wasn't sure how things would work out, financially, due to some other outside financial stresses that are on us that I dont want to go into and that are another source of argument between us. Obviously, I got the feeling that he "wanted" me to go back to work. We've talked about it; he swears that was never his intent, but, inside, I still harbor those conversations and can't convince myself, in spite of his pleadings now, to quit. If he said he didn't mean it that way, then that's the truth, I have no doubt of that, but I still can't let it go. I was all square to leave in April with Alexander's pregnancy, but now... Now, who knows...

I don't know... Like I said, the last 2 weeks, with the ovulation/IUI, the shower invite, and the continued bad work situation have all caught up to me. I just need a break. I need to feel like I can just be me and stop being someone else at work and then trying to get back to me at home. And that feels like it isn't an option right now. Add onto that the thought that I **might** be pregnant again and the fears surrounding that, and I feel like a mess of emotions that I can't express because, God forbid, someone else might see.

But, then again, I guess that's what this blog is for.