In the meantime

The other day I received an email from an old friend whom I haven't seen in a very long time.  Her subject heading was "Love" and in her very sweet email, she quoted Dr.Phil, via Oprah: "Time doesn't heal all wounds; it's what you do with time that helps with the healing."

It has been nearly 6 months since we lost our daughter.  It's still hard, it's still heartbreaking, but I feel it has been getting easier to accept our loss.  Granted, planning our move to T.O. has been a driving force in my recovery, but it has been helpful to plan for the future since our plans for our daughter were ruined.

I still think about her every day.  I still cry and I'm still grieving.  I still smell her little hat but am dismayed that it no longer smells of her.  But I'm trying so hard to make my life better.  I don't want to mourn our baby and feel like shit every day.  Rather, I want to live for her.

I don't think I believe in guardian angels and people watching down on us.  When I've said things like "Isla would want us to be happy", I must admit, the words sounded hollow to my ears and tasted like sawdust on my tongue.  I think what I really feel is the beauty I experienced when Isla was inside me was achingly sublime, so much so that I want to experience again and again in my life.  If I'm lucky enough to bear our progeny sometime in the future, I would be able to feel that specific pleasure again, though it would be different from the first deliciously naive time because it will be coated in fear and anxiety.  No, I want to feel that wonderment and love continually in my life in other ways.  So in wanting to live for her, I would essentially be living for myself and being more responsbile for myself rather than hoping that someone "out there" has my back and that everything will just work out.

I'm feeling that next year, 2011, will be the year that I change the rest of my life.  I've been a passenger for too long, complacent with things and people that were unsatisfying but needed because I simply had no choice.  When I received that email with that quote, I realized that I can't get anywhere by scratching out the days of the calendar, gliding through this grief thing until I would get to the point where I'd say "it has been x amount of months/years; I should be better by now."  I need to add dimensions to my life so that I can start living it again and thus, get to a place where I feel like I've healed and be in the midst of leading an authentic life I can be proud of.  Right now, I'm not proud of myself.  Some days, I truly hate myself.

People have started to ask me if and when I'd like to try for a baby again.  I tell them that I'm not ready and moving back home and starting all over again has thankfully taken the pressure off.  In the meantime, I'm hoping I can gain a satisfaction with myself and what I'm doing during these days between hell and heaven.  If heaven does exist and my little girl is looking down on me, I'd hope that she'd feel happy that her mommy was doing A-OK.