I'm tired, I'm worn...

I don't know that I've ever been so exhausted.  Sit and cry exhausted.  Stomach hurting exhausted.  

"I'm tired, I'm worn, my heart is heavy.  From the work it takes, to keep on breathing..."  

I had my first counselor appt yesterday.  I had put off making the appt I knew I needed because I didn't want to go tell someone the whole story.  No one but those of us who were there know the whole story, because it's too painful to talk about.  I told her.  And I didn't breathe the entire time.  She told me to breathe.  To just keep breathing.  

"I've made mistakes, I've let me hope fail.  My soul feels crushed, by the weight of this world..."  

I got out of my emotionally charged session with a therapist who understood. I didn't know this when I made the appointment with her, I didn't know until mid session, she did understand.  She is a mother who has lost 2 children.  I came out feeling better.  Until Jason told me that my Dad was in the ER with chest pains.  

"I know I need, to lift my eyes up, but I'm too weak, life just won't let up."  

I was sitting in the hospital room with my mom, waiting on my Dad to get through with his nuclear stress test when I got the text from Jason that he had picked up the ashes of our babies.  

"Let me see redemption win, let me know the struggle ends, that you can mend a heart that's frail and torn." 

We left the hospital Christmas Day with 2 memory boxes.  With our son's footprints and handprints on ceramic.  A keepsake.  We have these 2 very tiny, knitted hats that they put on our babies.  There are 2 handmade blankets that our boys laid on.  There are pictures of both of them.  This is what we were left with.  We had to fill out birth certificates.  In order to fill out their death certificates.  

"I want to know a song can rise, from the ashes of a broken life.  And all that's dead inside can be reborn, cause I"m torn."

Jason and I went to dinner last week.  I was feeling good that I was dressed and getting out of the house.  He told me to look in the rearview window at all the pollen.  I turned around in my seat to look and it hit me out of nowhere that I would never see them in their carseats in the back of my car.  I would never be driving down the street with 2 baby boys giggling and crying because they were going somewhere with me, their mom.  It crushed me.

We took the kids to St Augustine last weekend.  That was a huge step for me and I did ok.  The next day I went to the store by myself.  I drove for the first time.  I was alone for the first time in public.  It was terrifying.  I was scared to death that someone was going to ask if I was pregnant.  Or that I would run into someone who didn't know I had delivered the babies and would ask me how I was doing.  I was terrified but I was there.  Doing good because I was moving on.  I'm out.  I'm in the store.  Until I got in the car and wondered why my face was cold.  I reached up and my face was soaking wet.  I didn't even feel the tears rolling down my face that had soaked my shirt.  I'm still not sure how long they were falling.  

It's been almost a month since I had Fletcher.  Seems like a lifetime ago that my heart was broken.  I'm trying to handle this new normal that I want no part of and my Dad winds up in the hospital.  When we walked into the ER there was a lady standing by herself crying and shaking and trying to call someone on her cell phone.  We walked to my Dad's room and the room we passed to get there had someone they were working on.  Frantically. CPR, Chest compressions, chaos.  I convinced myself that the elderly lady was losing her husband in that room and I was heartbroken for her.  I asked Jason to go hug her, hold her, comfort her.  He didn't.  Luckily, because that wasn't her husband.  We walked out to get something to eat and passed another room and she was in there sitting with her son who had a broken leg.  There was an old man in a room across from dad today that was crying out for different people to come help him.  I think he had dementia and it took all I had to not just absolutely fall apart in that room, to not run in there to hug him and help him.  He was alone and needed comfort and was hurting.  Then I left and saw he had 2 nurses and his wife with him.  

My point?  Not sure there is one.  Except I'm not ok. Yet.  I'm tired.  I'm worn.  My emotions are in overdrive.  My heart is heavy.  For me, for Jason, for our parents, our family.  For people I don't know and for stories my mind makes up of pain and sorrow.  I forget to breathe sometimes and don't realize it until I let out the breathe I've been holding.  

But I know that I will be ok.  I'm grieving.  I'm not just grieving what we went through.  I'm grieving what we will never have with Tucker and with Fletcher.  We lost our babies but we also lost our 2 year olds.  Our 10 year olds.  Our teenagers...

I have hope.  And I have faith.  Both have wavered and both have angered me.  But they are still there.   I'm still angry and I'm still questioning God.  But even when I tell myself I'm too angry to pray, I catch myself praying.  When I'm too bitter to believe, I catch myself believing.  And when I feel like I have lost my will to fight, I catch myself fighting.  

Beauty will rise from my boys ashes.  I am so proud to be their mom and I know that if for no other reason, I will continue to push forward so they can know their mom wasn't a quitter.  She loved completely, she hurt deeply but she never gave up.  

I'm blessed because when I am feeling like I don't know how to feel, I hear the Tenth Avenue North song, "I'm Worn," and I know that if someone can write a song speaking to the heart of my pain and they got through it, that I will too.  And I will one day know that my ashes of hurt and heartache helped ease the pain of someone else.  Beauty will come...