Making sense out of the insane

Yesterday morning I woke up and was laying in bed afraid to start the day. I laid there for the longest time thinking about the approaching day and all that needed to be done, and everywhere I needed to be and I felt exhausted just thinking about it all. So, I laid there. I didn't go to the gym and when it became absolutely necessary for me to climb out of bed to get ready for work, I did it with an apprehension that was tangible.

Have you ever had the feeling that you shouldn't get out of bed? A feeling that, if you get out of bed, all sorts of bad will befall you that day? That's how I felt yesterday morning. And, maybe that thought alone is what set the tone for the day, because yesterday was not a day I would like to relive ever. By the time I got home from work, I felt like I had got home from war. I sat in my car and cried silent, angry tears and went inside to freshen up before I had to leave the safety of home to go out into the world again to show a bunch of people my apartment, in hopes that one of them would take over my contract because I'm moving. Did I tell you that? I decided to move last week... to the other side of town. By the time I got home last night, I felt like a refugee being taken in by a safe and protective host country... my sister and her family. When I got home last night, I did something I haven't done since I was five years old, I climbed in bed, threw the covers over my head and hid... and cried. It felt safe there in the dark. I felt untouchable and hidden.

My alarm went off this morning and I slept through it. My brother called me from Finland and I slept through it. I was exhausted. When I reluctantly pulled myself out of bed I felt like I was walking to the gallows. At work today I made myself sick with stress. Literally. I have an anxiety disorder that is intense. I literally became so stressed that I couldn't stand up straight, my stomach hurt so bad- then my head started to pound- and I started to feel dizzy. The worst, though, is when my spine feels like it is trying to trade places with my sternum and I breathe in gasps of air. I started to shake and nearly vomitted. That's when my co-worker told me to go home. She thought I had caught the stomach flu from another co-worker, I call her Wednesday virus girl, because she is always sick on Wednesday... and then Wednesday turned in to every day- she's never at work. I left work early and I came home to my sister's house and I wasted time. And then I went and worked out at the gym. And, now, I can breathe. I'm not going in to work tomorrow.

I never expected that I would feel this out of control. I knew that I would grieve after placing my baby boy for adoption, but I never expected this. I feel like I am going insane. That's not a comfortable feeling. My jaw and my teeth hurt because I've been gritting them at night. I don't sleep solid anymore, unless it's from exhaustion. I don't know how to be me. I feel like I need to come with a disclaimer, "Warning: may start to cry uncontrollably and then blame you for her emotions." I feel like people know I'm broken, but they don't know why. I want to scream at them, "I let my baby go!" As if they could even comprehend the soul-shattering consequence of that choice. I feel like I am aimlessly wandering, looking for a safe place to be because I don't feel safe, I feel... like I've died, and I have, but now I'm this body without a soul looking for a place that feels safe and I can't find it. And, this is all so horribly depressing and I'm sorry for that. Sometimes, I feel like it would be easier to just give in to the insanity that is raging inside of me, insanity that is so close to breaking through the surface that it scares me. I can still hear my baby's cry and I panic when I hear other babies cry because they aren't my baby and I don't know how to hold them or comfort them and I'm disgusted with myself that I can't do that. For a while there I was doing real well. I was coping very well.

Everything has come and gone so fast that I feel like I was frozen, still, in a whirlwind... one day I was pregnant and now I'm not. One day I could feel my child move and now he's gone. For a second I heard him cry and now it's just a memory. I used to be ashamed to be pregnant and now I don't know how to be myself not pregnant. For Halloween I was a cat that ate a mouse and I was afraid that I would be in the hospital delivering on Thanksgiving day... I really wanted to eat turkey, what a selfish thought. And then it was Christmas and it's the coldest winter I've ever felt, yet it hasn't snowed near as much as it did in 2008, so that doesn't make any sense. I still write October on everything, because that's when I was alive. I'm just trying to make sense of it all.