I've received a couple of comments (from people I know) saying that I'm brave and they are proud of me for doing this. Firstly, thank you for the lovely comments. Secondly, I'm really surprised by that response. I honestly only started this because it's the kind of thing I wanted to sit in my lounge room and read but couldn't find (although I'm sure there are others out there) and to offer other people company on the terrible journey that is losing a baby. I was already keeping a personal diary and found that writing was cathartic. So this is for myself as well to keep writing about what I'm thinking and feeling. I expect that it won't always be all about Kat (and Michael!) - that's part of the grief process and I wanted to share that too. (I've been interested in hearing how people are years after losing their baby.) Lastly - this is extremely difficult for me to write about - I know how dangerous it can be to not deal with trauma at the time and I hope this might help me and (dare I be so bold as to hope?) someone else or several someones to deal with this particular trauma in whatever way they find appropriate. (Taking a deep breath)...the reason I know how dangerous it can be to hide from traumatic experiences... when Mum was sick I learned to deal with things by not dealing with them. I was 8 when she was first diagnosed with cancer and I was terrified. There was nothing anyone could do of course except see this thing happen to our beloved mother and wife. Mum was estranged from her family and didn't want them informed about it until after she died (she didn't want any bedside reunions). She also didn't want people in town gossiping about her health problems. All perfectly reasonable - but what I took from it between the ages of 8 and 12 was that I wasn't allowed to talk about it. At all. I got up each day and went to school where I was just a normal kid hanging out with my friends. It eventually turned into a mask. In year 9 I moved and (due to circumstances) lived for 14 months away from my family, just seeing Dad on weekends. I was desperately unhappy and, again, had absolutely no control over my situation. School and being a teenaged girl was again the mask I got up and put on each day. Rather typically I saw having a relationship as something that would make me happy and at 15 started a relationship with someone I had no feelings for (well actually, he left me feeling cold) just for the sake of being with someone. Within a week I knew I'd made a huge mistake but pride wouldn't let me admit to it and the inner workings of a messed up 15 year old girl still wanted a boyfriend. Besides, I'd already slept with him. I thought it was too late to back out. I remember after a few months being so very sad and thinking that love with a man just wasn't something I was meant to experience in my lifetime; that one day I'd have children and they would be my love. In order to continue in the relationship I had to continually ignore all the things he did that I didn't like and all the things that hurt me. Over the course of a few months I became so good at ignoring those things that I believed them to be true. He acted so superior to everyone because everyone else WAS inferior to him. If I was upset about his musings of cheating on me or him turning up hours late to my family function, then I was putting him on a guilt-trip and was cruel to do so. If he got up without a word and left me alone at a table full of people I didn't know I should have just "tagged along" behind him like a puppy dog. And when I was at home sick and in pain and spent four hours pushing him away and pulling back on my clothes that he was pulling off before finally feeling so beaten down and guilty that I said yes (and told him I'd changed my mind) I lay in bed and cried, not because I had just been the victim of emotional and sexual abuse but because I was such a terrible girlfriend for not wanting to have sex with him in the first place. When I was sick and in pain. Eventually, I had the sense to break up with him when, try as I might (and I tried desperately) I couldn't think of anything good about him other than that he was a talented pianist. By that time I'd developed somewhat of a fear of crowds. I couldn't bring myself to walk into crowded places. I'd been diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue and left school. Over the next little while the fear of crowds turned into a fear of anyone looking at me. (Strangely, or perhaps not, this was when I was doing a lot of theatre acting - but to me people weren't looking at ME they were looking at my character) I hated walking down the street and began trying to make myself as unattractive as possible so nobody would want to look at me. In the early days of that relationship, my boyfriend had told me that in the year we had known each other he thought I was so hot as to be out of his league (although over the course of the relationship he frequently agreed with me about how fat I was at 57kg and a small size 10) - I was determined that in addition to people generally not looking at me if I was with anyone it would be because he liked who I was, not what I looked like. By the time I'd been married a year I had put on almost 40kg. I rarely did anything with my hair. Stopped wearing make up. Never did my nails. And dressed very dowdily. (In another story, that behaviour was probably encouraged by my ex-husband) I didn't start to really deal with any of these issues until I was pregnant with my daughter (2nd pregnancy). Suddenly they were on my mind constantly and it was the first time I was able to coldly and clinically just go through what had happened. Before then every time I thought about it I either flew into a rage or sobbed uncontrollably. It took me two years but I eventually felt as though I had put the experiences behind me once and for all. I lost almost 20kg and started taking more care with my appearance again. Mostly I was happy. (It was also when my ex started noticeably turning away from me - if I didn't need him to keep me safe he didn't know what to do with me) I was very surprised and distressed when the panic about people looking at me and the distorted body image started again shortly after I ended my marriage and my ex attempted to force me to have sex with him one night. It was a very brief incident, not at all violent and he stopped quite quickly. Then proceeded to treat me as nothing. He told me later that if a relationship can't be absolutely everything that he wants it to be he walks away from it entirely. So after 12 years and two children I was nothing because I had stopped giving him everything. I went straight back to that hell I had worked so hard to get out of. Luckily for me, I had the presence of mind to realise that I needed help and went to counselling.
Wow, I never thought when I started this that I would end up telling that story. I just want people to know how important it is to deal with things properly and I want to give an understanding of why I know that.