The Outsider

More than anything else, I feel like an outsider when it comes to life. It seems like I'm standing outside, looking in at everyone enjoying life and wondering why I can't have that too. People on the inside look at me and say "This is God's will for you", or "Everything happens for a reason", or "It happened and it sucks, but now you need to move on" while they are enjoying their lives and I'm dying inside. I feel angry and hurt and eternally sad. I'm angry because I did nothing to cause this, and can't do anything to change it. I feel angry because I have to explain to people why it's sad that my son died. (This blows my mind! How on earth can you not get it??) I feel angry because everyone around me has what I should have.

I did the exact thing they did. I got pregnant, carried him and birthed him. I planned for him, loved him and prepared for him in every way. But I didn't get to keep him. They get to keep their babies, but, for some unknown reason, I didn't get to keep him.

I'm pushed outside because they don't want to think about how horrible it is when your baby dies. They want to pretend I must have done something wrong, or God is punishing me for something, or that God has some reason why they deserved to be parents but I don't. Man, I wish I could be that person on the inside. Holding my baby close, looking at the poor miserable woman with the dead baby and judging her for not moving on, or for not having faith, or for not being happy. Man, that would be awesome to think that God's plan for me is a healthy baby, but God's plan for her is a dead one. It must feel really good to be so loved and blessed by God.

I found the following on the blog, Once A Mother. It's exactly right:

For me, this piece really highlights the way that we babylost parents are made to feel like outsiders. When your child first dies, you are surrounded by crowds of family and friends who want to do everything they can to help. Masses of people call and send flowers. Folks come to be with you at the funeral, and hold your hand as your child is lowered into the ground. Then, just as quickly as the crowds appeared, they begin to drift away and resume life as usual, and you are stuck on pause, alone, staring at a mound of dirt and a plaque that used to be your child.

Grief makes it feel like the sun shines with ease on everyone but you. The world goes on but you can't. When you have been left behind in the world of babyloss, a black cloud seems to follow you wherever you go with reminders of what you no longer, and will never, have. Then, more than ever, you just wish that you could be normal.

For those who are  normal, a visit to your side of the universe is a temporary, heartbreaking event. For those who are normal, it's possible to walk away from having witnessed something as tragic as a baby funeral, and to not look back. Their compassion is genuine, but the loss is not theirs. They have the choice to go on holding their children. They can distance themselves from babyloss. They can do all of the things that those of us who have been left behind, cannot.

Man, I wish I was an insider. Then, I could hold him close and snuggle him tight. I could breathe in his smell and feel his soft skin and kiss his sweet face. I could be happy in a way that, from where I sit now, I will never feel again.

Man, I wish I was an insider...