Nights.

You know the moment when you bang your knee into something really hard... in a public place and you want to say a bad word or scream or just punch something because it hurts so bad?  But you don't because that'd be inappropriate so you walk it off and pretend like nothing happened.  And after awhile you believe it too.  And then you wake up the next day and it's sore as all get out.  It hurts to walk or move or bend it.  And then heaven forbid you touch it or as in most cases, hit it again, in the very same spot because you know that is what happens everytime. As if there is a magnet you don't know about that draws you to pain.  And you repeat the cycle of denial.  After time your knee will heal.  You will walk again.  The bruise will fade.  There might be a piece of bone floating around in there, you don't know.  You hit it pretty hard.  And when it rains, and you're old, your knee might start to hurt.

That's how loss works.  I don't think it matters what kind of loss, for me it's a miscarriage, but losing anything that won't return is painful.  Unbelievably so.  I don't have any desires to say bad words or punch something... but can I tell you something?  It hurts.  It hurts so bad.  It hurts to the point it takes your breath away.  And then I walk it off like I'm okay. And I start to believe it.  Last night I swore I was going crazy because I had convinced myself she was still there.  I felt the non-empty feeling you feel when your pregnant, like something is there, inside, growing.  And I had convinced myself so well that I couldn't cry because the very thought seemed silly.  How could she not be there.  I saw her little heartbeat on the screen.  She was alive.  She was my baby.  And even though I knew it was crazy.  I had surgery.  They removed it all.  I still had hope.  I still thought I was pregnant.  I wanted her so badly.  I wanted so badly to just cry and be sad bbut I couldn't, the tears would 't come.  And now they won't stop.

Nights are so hard.  I try to completely throw myself into editing pictures.  Or helping someone else online.  Or finishing the project from last Christmas for Bella.  Or looking at old pictures of Bella and Ronan as a baby.  Or trying to think of every funny, happy thought I can think of.  But in the end, no matter how much I try to distract myself or finish the unfinished.  I have to stop.  I run out of things or energy and I am staring at the Huge elephant in the room that I'm not pregnant.  That my baby is gone and that's not going to change.  And I am left with this huge wound that aches just as much as it did before.  Like tonight, where it's just so overwhelming.  Now there is no denying it because the pain feels very real.  I don't want to be that person that just can't get over it.  I don't want to be the person who is known as the woman who is just dragging it out, it was an early pregnancy loss.  I just don't know how to get over it.  It feels like it hurts worse now than a week ago.  I don't know if it's just a bad night or my hormones are out of whack.  But I feel so weak.  I know I'm not alone.  I know my Heavenly Father is sending angels to surround me, but at some point I'm going to have to learn how to cope with this by myself.  I can't be babied forever.  I've got to get back in there.  It's part of growing up and moving on.

I'm fine during the day, but the nights... the nights haunt me and I hate it when they come because then I have to start all over the next day and then another night comes.  And if I could just stay awake the progress I made, I can keep.  I'm not sleeping.  I'm trying not to take anything to make sleep because Mitch works late and gets up early to work.  But then I don't sleep.

I know time heals all wounds,  I remember broken hearts as a teenager,  those hurt pretty bad too.  But this pain,  it's almost like burning your hand on a stove.  Even after you've removed your hand from the hot eye, it has been burned into your skin and there is no relief, just the constant pain that won't go away.  I know I will see my little girl again.  I know she is watching over our family.  I'd like to think she misses me too.  I'd like to think she is happy.  I hope she understands why I am sad.  I miss her, but I don't want to leave the family I have here on earth,  I just wish she could be here with us too.

We went to a memorial walk for pregnancy and infant loss today but I was late so we came in on the tail end.  We walked as a family and took our time. I, of course, took pictures to remember the moment.  I brought a balloon to release in her honor that I attached to the stroller.  So when I took pictures, I felt like I was photographing all of my kids.  I wrote "Baby Girl Howe" on the ballon, and like my other children, the ballon would turn away from the camera when I would get Bella or Ronan to smile. I know it sounds crazy to treat a balloon like a child, but it's my only chance to have pictures of all of my children, and maybe I am just in crazy place in this grieving process.  When I saw Ronan play with balloon I like to think of him playing with his little sister.  And when Bella got so excited to release the balloon, to send it to her little sister, my heart soared a little and broke at the same time.  I didn't cry in public.  I was too focused on keeping the kids together and safe on the bridge.  The balloon floated away so quickly because of the wind I didn't get any good pictures but I would just like to think she was anxious for her present sent with all the love we had to offer.  But its the quite moments that you let yourself think or feel, that it feels so raw.

I have read your words of encouragement, how I've inspired you, how I am so strong.  And I am grateful for those moments.  I go back and reread those words, and find strength in them too.  But I want to write down these moments too.  Because no matter how strong your faith, sometimes you have moments of weakness and moments where you grieve and you cry.  And that's okay.  I know this is part of the process, part of the healing.  Christ was not immune to suffering in the Garden of Gethsemane when he endured all of the pains in the world, every sense of suffering any being would experience, He was not exempt from any part of it, and He was the Son of God.  And not that I am in any way comparing myself having this trial to that of what Christ suffered, because there really is no comparison.  I'm just making the point if Christ, being the literal Son of God suffered so, then I am not exempt either.  It is part of the Atonement.  I know I will be healed, but it will take time.  And right now it hurts.  I know I will overcome this, but I'm human.  And it's only natural to wish that the pain would go away.  I don't want this define me.  I want to be a better person because of this.  I want to make the world a better place.  I want to treasure every moment.  And help anyone else who is going through this horrible trial.  That's why I keep writing, because if I can help just one person, then the tears, the hurt, the sleepless nights, it makes the pain ease and it gives meaning and reason to why it happened to me.