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<\/a><\/a>I knew I had thoughts and feelings and yet\u2026as I reached inside myself\u2026once again\u2026I shut down.<\/p>\nBy this point, I was mildly frustrated and so I tried again\u2026and there was nothing. Brief lines from popular songs flashed through my mind, filling it with meaningless drivel;but I couldn’\u2019 seem to grasp a hold of one concrete, valid thought.<\/p>\n
I became aware that this is something I do\u2026..often.<\/p>\n
I have so much to think through and so much to deal with and it\u2019s been SO LONG that I\u2019ve been living in a state of heightened stress\u2026at some point I shut down in an effort to not \u201cbreak\u201d and now it feels like this coping mechanism has crippled me.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s possible that my life experiences may also have \u201cbroken me\u201d, were I to have fully embraced them all as they came\u2026\u2026but I didn\u2019t\u2026<\/p>\n
And now\u2026\u2026.<\/p>\n
I walked into the counselors office and sat down; and chatted about trivial things not pertaining to the matter at hand and then I brought it up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI shut down. Often. And I don\u2019t like it.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s kind of like the whole \u201cbuilding walls\u201d analogy\u2026..You get hurt by people, so you start to build walls to protect yourself; and eventually you end up alone inside your great castle, and that loneliness hurts even worse than the possibility of hurt from letting people in\u2026..<\/p>\n
I shut down emotionally because my experiences were too great a pain to bear.
\nI\u2019ve experienced too many intensely hurtful things.
\nShutting down has become instinctive and not a choice.
\nNow, anytime I attempt to work through something that feels the slightest bit \u201cintense\u201d, even if it would be a positive thing\u2026..I shut down and cannot think straight enough to make sense out of any of it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s frustrating. <\/p>\n
It feels shameful because it\u2019s something I \u201cshould\u201d be able to do.<\/p>\n
I laughed when I said that, because I know it\u2019s a fault of mine\u2026..this belief that I should be able to do anything and everything\u2026\u2026that I should be in control at all times\u2026.that I should be capable to handle anything and everything that comes my way, with no signs of weakness\u2026..How\u2019s that for holding myself to impossible standards?<\/p>\n
I feel angry because I don\u2019t like feeling powerless and out of control.<\/p>\n
It takes me back to the days that Nathaniel died and was born.<\/p>\n
How do you process something like that? How do you carry a baby for 25 weeks; and plan and dream about and love the being that you are growing inside your very soul\u2026.how do you cope with having that piece of yourself taken from you? How do you walk away from your heart? How do you deny everything that your gut is saying to you to leave him when you know they will put his body into a cold freezer and yet you must just walk away and leave him there\u2026..where no one loves him\u2026.where no once will or can care for him\u2026..<\/p>\n
You don\u2019t\u2026.you shut down because those thoughts will destroy you\u2026\u2026.<\/p>\n
My baby died. I can\u2019t even fathom it, and yet I lived through it\u2026.I think those are the wrong words, though. I carried on. I kept on going. I shut down and gave birth to a beautiful baby boy. A little boy who was the perfect size for his age. A little boy that they could not find anything wrong with. There was no reason that we know of\u2026.he was not sick or broken. Just dead.<\/p>\n Even writing this I seem to flash in and out of these feelings of grief. Shut it down\u2026.feel\u2026\u2026it\u2019s too much\u2026.It\u2019s TOO MUCH\u2026..so many tears\u2026.so much sorrow held for so many years\u2026.He would have been 11 years old this year.<\/p>\n I held him for such a brief moment. I didn\u2019t know what to do and neither, it seemed, did the hospital. I have so many regrets and so much anger inside. <\/p>\n Why didn\u2019t they ask if our families would like to see him? I can\u2019t have these \u201cwhy\u2019s\u201d answered\u2026..<\/p>\n I\u2019ve existed, laying these \u201cwhy\u2019s\u201d down because I knew there were no answers to my questions\u2026..but what I have not realized was that in being \u201clogical\u201d I was dismissing or down playing the validity of my emotions…I was shutting down…..<\/p>\n It\u2019s ok for me to be upset that my baby died. I walked away from the hospital feeling more alone and broken than I had ever felt before in my life. I remember standing in the elevator wishing that I were dead. Wondering if I was, because it wasn\u2019t possible to simultaneously hurt this bad and yet feel nothing.<\/p>\n I felt dead. But I knew because of how badly it hurt to even breathe, that I was so very alive and that I had kids to take care of and that life had to go on.<\/p>\n We came home to an empty, still house\u2026..mirrored by my own emptiness. We walked upstairs to the main floor and I remember hugging Jon, and crying. I felt so helpless\u2026..so out of control\u2026\u2026and so desperate for another baby\u2026\u2026a living baby.<\/p>\n When I think back to that time\u2026..there are a few things that I remember \u201cdoing\u201d\u2026..I don\u2019t remember \u201cfeeling\u201d anything other than desperation for a baby to love, to hold, to fill the empty places inside of me\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n Siah was born 3.5, very long, very loss-filled, very traumatizing, years later.<\/p>\n Now how do I move forward\u2026.that is my question\u2026\u2026.<\/p>\n I don\u2019t want \u201cshutting down\u201d to be the first thing that I do when faced with\u2026..life\u2026.<\/p>\n Because I want to \u201creally live\u201d with authenticity and transparency and passion; and not just exist\u2026\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I had a counseling appointment this morning. While driving there, I tried to \u201ccheck in\u201d with myself\u2026..to see how I was doing. How I\u2019d been feeling since my last appointment? Less Anxiety, More Anxiety\u2026Whatever\u2026and as I attempted to \u201cconnect\u201d\u2026I found myself shutting down. Whatever I was trying to connect with or process seemed too great … Continue reading “In Process…….”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[33,16,63,23,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deep-thoughts","category-me","category-mental-health","category-nathaniel","category-remembering-the-past"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4640"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4650,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4640\/revisions\/4650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/xangelle.com\/dailygrind\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/p>\n
\nWhy didn\u2019t we call our families in? It would have been so much more real, then\u2026.
\nWhy didn\u2019t I hold him to my chest and sob as if my heart was broken into the million tiny shards that it was?
\nWhy was I so scared that holding him was the wrong thing to do, just because he was dead?
\nWhy didn\u2019t the hospital walk us through more\u2026.better\u2026.with details\u2026.or information\u2026\u2026or something?<\/p>\n
\nIt\u2019s ok for me to be upset that my baby died without a reason.
\nIt\u2019s ok for me to be angry that we were not \u201chelped\u201d along more by the hospital.
\nIt\u2019s ok for me to feel sad that I didn\u2019t hold Nathaniel and cuddle him as much as I would have liked to.
\nIt\u2019s ok that I feel shameful for not knowing what to do\u2026\u2026How could I have known?
\nIt\u2019s ok that I feel so many \u201cregrets\u201d because I can never go back to that moment\u2026..<\/p>\n<\/a>I don\u2019t know how you make it through an experience like that without shutting down. Obviously\u2026.because I didn\u2019t\u2026\u2026..<\/p>\n