Fucking January

I've been sick. Not like super sick, but sick enough to stay home because I can't function at work. But there has been something more. I've had a tightness in my chest. I am anxious and overly sensitive. I've been craving starchy foods. I've felt a lead-like heaviness in my joints. I want to sleep all the time. I was considering going to the doctor. A flu maybe? A nasty virus? My lupus acting up?

And then it all clicked.

It is January.

January always sucks. Always.

Even when my brain denies it, my body always knows. She grew inside my body so maybe part of her is still here to remind me. Just like clockwork. Like I could ever forget.

Seven years. Seven long years. She would be in first grade. She looked like Trey. She'd have his goofy smile  and full lips. She'd read bedtime stories under the covers at bedtime and probably like princesses. There would be sleepovers with her cousins and oh the things I could sew for her.

But that fucking egg just couldn't split right. And it messed up everything. Now I'll spend most of my life missing her instead of just getting to love her.

But we wouldn't have Daniel. We wouldn't have had them so close together. Imagining my life without him hurts too much to ponder for very long. I've learned so  much as the mom of this little boy. He is absolutely fantastic. An awesome little person.

Pictorial evidence of aforementioned awesomeness. 

And what about me? Without all that pain of losing her who would I even be now? Her short life and death shaped me in ways that I am still discovering. Losing her turned me off of religion, onto vegetarianism, gave me this horrid anxiety, and made me love everyone around me better. I've done things I never thought I'd do like attend group therapy where I cried with strangers, contemplate the easiest and fastest way to die, and then come back from what felt like the brink to experience pure elation at holding my healthy robust, perfectly formed child in my arms.

It is all so surreal I don't know if my tears are joy, sadness or, as I suspect, some strange mixture of both.

Just like every January I have to let myself mourn, cry, feel sad, and then find something to feel happy about. And there is so so much to feel happy about. But for now I am giving myself a break. I am going to let myself cry, not be very productive, spend too much time on the internet, and let the dog hair attempt to weave itself into carpet over the tile flooring. Time will go on, I will snap out of it, and eventually I'll feel better.

But honestly: fuck January.