I'm so exhausted lately. For good reason I suppose. Things in the office are moving quickly and in a positive direction. My phone is still gone. The boys still make me laugh, And Scream when the Truvia winds up all over the floor. Trash cans dumped. Screaming fits. Whining. Life just goes on. It just... keeps going. No slowing down. No rest. Downtime comes in three forms: doctor's appointments and sleeplessness and Gigi's house.
Nightmares have riddled my nights. Chase dreams. Attack dreams. Kidnapping dreams. Attacking chase dreams. Death dreams. Pregnancy dreams, too, are incredibly vivid. You can almost smell them. (Or maybe that's Keith, I don't know.) I wake up terrified. Shaking. And, as always, I have to pee. I try to go back to bed. After a while I drift back to sleep- usually for the next 30 minutes because it's time to get up. And the days just keep rolling along. After a few days, completely drained, I just... crash. Like in some of my dreams. I just want to rest. I want the anxiety to go away. I want the sleeplessness to go away. I want the uncertainty to go away. The nightmares are always worse when I start to have hope. When I think things might just change.
I sat Thursday in the doctor's office, waiting. Staring, sometimes blankly, at the beautiful mosaic of perfect newborns adorning the wall. Smiling parents or doctors... or both. I caught myself going back to this perfect little face in the upper right corner. Third from the end. Top row. I would leave it and keep scanning the pictures, going to the second board on the wall behind the table. But I just kept going back to that one little face. And suddenly, I was crying. I stopped myself before sobbing. The OB office is typically a very happy, and strangely enough, loud place. The doctors, the females at least, are happy and boisterous. I wasn't exactly in that frame of mind. So I pulled out my make up and put it on. For the first time that day. So much for down time. The appointment itself went well. I love my OB group. It makes me sad that I they won't be delivering me. Well, they might, but I can't have hope for Everett and hopes of a delivery by my beloved group.
Gigi's house is almost rest. The boys love the farm so much. They love the tractors. The yard. The golf cart. Gigi. Papa. Slowing down isn't on the list of things to do. Thankfully I can take a little break throughout the day. I have been beyond exhausted throughout this entire pregnancy. Is it a result of a 2 vessel cord to Everett? Am I stressed overall and that's what's causing the continued exhaustion? I don't know. All I know is I can't PLAY with the boys because I can't breathe. I can't chase them the way I want to because I have sharp pains when I move for more than a few minutes at a time. And when I just 'push through', I pay for it later. It's hard on Keith because at the end of the day, especially Friday through Monday, I have no energy. I have no strength. I'm not myself... even though I'm not totally sure who 'myself' is half the time. So besides me being at work three days a week, not getting home to make dinner, when I AM home to make dinner, I'm too pooped to clean up or be much help otherwise. So I'm hoping there will be more rest at Gigi's before Monday so that I'll have more energy to make it through next week.
I won't even tackle the emotional exhaustion at present. I have to put it away occasionally. Just to make it through. I want to go to my childhood church-- more or less for my parents-- but I don't think I can handle the multitude of hugs and prayers and encouragement. I need more down time. I need SOME down time. So many hugs and prayers in one day will keep me awake for days. I'm too exhausted to go through it.
It seems harder if I give myself a chance to hope. If I give myself a chance to pray for a miracle. I find myself once a week or so driving aimlessly around bickering with.... me. Telling myself to pray for a miracle. Begging myself to believe it could happen. Then quickly shutting the thought down. It's easier not to be hopeful. It's easier to ...ignore it and hope it will go away. Like bad behavior in children... if you ignore it, they're supposed to stop doing it right? Hmph... seems my life has an astonishing resemblance to a three year old. Disobedient. Defiant. Some sweet moments. But always a new fight looming on the horizon.
And I just want to rest.
I want to stop wrestling with myself. But it's impossible. I can't not hope for a miracle. I can't quite bring myself to pray for one. I want to pour my energy into my boys. I can barely pour water by the end of the day. I want to be emotionally available. I can't even really have an (unwritten) conversation with my husband. I want to somehow feel more spiritual about the whole thing. I can't, for the life of me, make this process about lessons to be learned. About seeing deeper layers of God. About feeling his arms surrounding us and bringing us closer as a family. And I war with myself about this. I war with myself about not being able to be 'spiritual' about the whole thing. And I just want to rest. Will praying for a miracle soothe me? Will just believing that all will be okay make it all okay? Will ignoring it all make it go away?
Will rest even help? Will clearer answers? Will hope? Will solidified funeral plans? Will holding him? Will crying and screaming? Will a few days away from everything? Will just NOT looking in the mirror help? Will maternity photos help? Will anything help? When will it all just get better?
When will it all just get.... better?
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