I'm not crazy.  I am not psychotic.  I am not dangerous.

I am just sad.  And lonely.  And miserable.  A lot.

And lonely.  Very, very lonely.  Very.

I'm so tired.

I feel subhuman.  Worthless.  Unattached to anything.

And most of all lonely.

I get weary,
And sick of trying I'm tired of living,
But scared of dying

Tonight, for Rachel Imeinu's yartzheit, (how in the world do we know when the anniversary of a death thousands of years ago was?  It is not as if the parsha even lines up with when we read that she dies in the Torah!)  my daughter's class had a mother/daughter Challah baking night at the school. When the girls took Challah, the teacher asked them if any of them had anyone they wanted to daven for.

My daughter was sensitive enough to NOT raise her hand to ask for a sibling (I would have fled the room), but now that I am home I am wondering why. It is not like it is such a huge secret that we are married 14 years with 1 little girl and 1 stillborn. I know a bunch of women in that room are already davening for us. Something about hearing Channah say it out loud would have shattered my heart. 

I know we are supposed to believe that when all hope is lost we can still daven that Rachel should intercede on our behalf (I still do not really understand how davening to an intermediary is okay.  I know I have been told that it is just like asking someone else who is "closer" so to speak to "ask for a favour" nudge nudge wink wink sort of thing.  Frankly, if Hashem is supposed to be my father and my king and everything else, I am not sure I should be believing that any of us are "closer" or "further" from him but that is totally besides the point).

Be that as it may.  Boy oh boy was I davening to myself that in the merit of Channah participating she could have her tefillah fulfilled.  

I am just so tired and sick of it all.

I am having one of those days where even though nothing Earth-shattering has happened I am at the end of my day and I just want to cry.  I feel like I have let down everyone I owe anything to, not fullfilled my end of repayment plans, and am constantly fighting the medical system here to gain access to rights and privileges that should be automatic.  I don't look right, I don't sound right.  Tonight I had trouble for the first time in ages with a note my daughter brought home from school because the Hebrew was just way above my head.

I know everyone has bad days and re-learning how to cope with them is part of coming back from where I was, and truthfully, I am going to be okay.  I have not had a panic attack, not even considered medicating away the stressful day.  All things considered, I know I am a lot further along than I was.

It still makes for a really sucky day though.

Today is pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day. Always remember what a true blessing every pregnancy and healthy child is. As much as we might like to think that with modern science this sort of thing does not happen any more, it does. It affects more women than you will ever know. I will always remember Gabiella Galit Swirsky even if other's choose not to.  She was a daughter, sister, grand daughter and would have been a friend if she had been given the chance.

I forgot to write in about yom tov. I did not go to shul at night, I just could not deal with it. DH said two of his friends were wonderful about making sure he was included, and when he sat alone coming over to be with him. The Rabbi sat with him for a little bit also. (Not sure if I wrote here about the Rabbi coming all the way up the hill Yom Kippur night to give us a bracha for a good year and that our tefillot should be answered because he did not catch us at shul. It is a steep walk with a lot of steps from his place to ours at the best of times, when I could not even offer him a drink it must have been terrible!)

Anyhow, during the day I was planning to just send my daughter and to go for yizkor. DH came home. The Rabbi had come over to him to see how he was doing. He explained briefly how hard simchat Torah is in particular (As opposed to the rest of the chagim which are just hard). The Rabbi asked gently if he would be mechubad with kol hanearim. DH said yes. This is the 2nd year in a row he has had the "honour" purchased for him. So he came home to get me.

I went in for the aliya. I forgot that at the end they always sing "Hamalach hagoel". It was my dad's favourite song. On top of sobbing through the aliya, this is my first set of chagim since my dad passed. I did make it through the various aliyot after that and said yizkor, but after that I fled and spent 20 minutes sobbing on a step near the shul.

Please, please please let some newlywed have the "kavod" next year. I am not sure I can take any more of it.

I never really noticed before that there are people who come into our lives, and, for whatever reason, leave the most enormous mark, but never know that they left it.  My last post talked about bullying and how long lasting the effects can be.  It got me to thinking about how I managed to survive everything that was thrown at me, and that, leads me to where I am right now.

I am sitting in a chair in my living room where I do most of my writing, thinking about how incredibly lucky I am to have built various communities for myself to shield myself from the worst God can throw at me.  Obviously, or in many cases maybe not so obviously and I am just lucky, my family is my first line of defense.  The problem is, the older you get the more time you spend out of the house the less they know what is really happening.  When I got the courage up to ask my mother why she never stepped in with the bullying at school she answered that she never knew- and if she had she would have pulled me out so fast heads would have spun!  And you know what?  She sounded so furious now, 25+ years later that I completely believe her.  I was a pre-teen.  Too cool to let my parents know anything was wrong, so how could they know?

But over the years I built a secondary community for myself of friends and safe-houses where people did know what was going on.  I had two incredible friends in elementary school, both a year ahead of me, who I knew I could count on no matter what was going on.  If I needed to talk, or to cry, or to get away they and their families were always open and welcoming to me.  Over the years we have drifted apart and drifted back together in various combinations, but I only hope those two people know that I would not be alive today were they not there for me on so many occasions.  They mean the world to me, and the fact that we are all friends again, and slowly becoming better friends again, is one of the high points of my life.

Then there was the best friend I made at camp.  Wow were we both miserable, so we ended up spending the summer miserable together and having a pretty good time while we were at it.  Of course, then I sprained my ankle and got to go home early and she was jealous beyond belief.  It tooks years, until an NCSY shabbaton, until we met up again.  She was instantly the same best friend she was that summer (once I recognized her with long hair that is!).  Her family welcomed me with open arms.  I know that if I need someone in the middle of the night, not only CAN I call her, but she will hurt me if I DON'T call her.  I can tell you here and now if I called her and said "I need you" she would be on the next plane to Israel.

In high school there was a big group of us who were friends, and I knew I would pretty much always be welcome anywhere, but there was one girl in that group who was different.  Her family became my extended family and vice versa.  We were together more than we were apart- in fact, I think that is partially what drove me away from my close friends from elementary school.  Our mother's were both "mom" and our brother's were both annoying pests.  After I got married I did something, I am still not even exactly sure what I did, but I drove her away forever.  It is one of my single biggest regrets that she is no longer a part of my life.

And there were others.  A boy <SPACE> friend whose family welcomed me with open arms.  I knew his home was always open to me if I needed somewhere to go.  I am lucky that, while we did go through some hard times, I can once again count him among my closest friends- and his wife is slowly making her way there as well.

Another guy who never seemed to have any rules, real jerk on the outside, but total sweetheart on the inside once you got to know him could always make me smile.  Picked me up one time when I got stuck because a date got drunk and I would not get in the car.  It was 2 am and I was not sure who else to call.  The only person I know who wished us a terrible aliya only so that we would come back and we could be closer to him.

A friend from Bais Yaakov whose house became my "shabbat home".  A friend who I did not think twice about letting move in with me temporarily when she needed to.  A friend who I sometimes think spent more shabbat meals at my place than I did.

And of course my husband and his family.  Jason could not be more stable and reliable and rock steady if he was a boulder stuck in quick sand.

And now here.  When I have needed people the most, I have been able to rely on some of the best people God ever made.  To she who just makes sure I get out for coffee once in a while even though neither one of us drink coffee, to she who has us over for shabbat on weeks where I am just ready to give up, to she who came over and helped me up when I was sobbing in a ball under the kitchen table.  From the woman who left a family and studying to spend nights with me at the hospital, to another friend who changed her shabbat plans last minute to come out here to help me make the place feel "shabbosdic".  To all of you, and you know who you are, thank you.

In these weeks leading up to Yom Hadin I need to beg your forgiveness for being a bad friend.  For leaning on you and not always being able to give you a shoulder when you need one.  For borrowing things and forgetting.  For being a space case on more medication than one human should be able to handle at your shabbat meals.  For cancelling last minute, and for anything else I have done over the last 18 months, I am so sorry.  I am finally, slowly starting to come back to myself and I owe all of you, and Jason, for every single piece of me I recover.  Thank you for being there, for loving me, for putting up with me, for helping me, and Jason and Channah to make it through.  Thank you for everything you are going to continue to do even if I beg you to stop.

God gave me a truly incredible family.  Then he helped me build a second one I would never have made it this far without.

I am truly sorry.  This blog will no longer accept anonymous comments because one woman who I have chosen to cut like a cancer out of my life is using anonymous commenting to try to get under my skin and I am not going to let her.  Please feel free to make up a name if you are not comfortable using your own.  I am sorry it has had to come to this but I have now labelled at least 5 of her comments as spam including a recent revolting one.

As a child I was bullied.  I don't mean just made fun of like average 6 year old's make fun of each other, I mean tortured every single day of my life so that I was scared to do anymore than leave my room.  I was scared to stand up to anyone for anything, defensive even if told in the nicest, calmest way that perhaps there was a better way to do something, and terrified of everyone around me.  I was terrified of my own parents when I got in trouble for normal teenage things that they were going to hurt me or throw me out!  How can a child feel safe in an environment where their peer shave made them afraid to breathe?

Even now when I see some of the girls they give me the "how dare you draw air from the same air that we breathe" sort of look.

I had two good friends I could hide behind when I felt truly alone in the world.  They were my guiding light in a world filled with dark.  There homes and their families were my shelter against the scary world that existed outside those safe houses.

I was made fun of for being fat.  For wearing glasses.  For not having the right close.  I was made fun of because my parents were divorced, because my names did not "match" the rest of my family.  I was made fun of because I saw nothing wrong with being friendly with boys so long as they were nice and generally also bullied.  I was bullied for being smart in some areas, and stupid in others.  I read too much, but how could someone who read so much suck so badly at spelling?

I remember I started to develop before some of the other girls in my class.  I had my training bra snapped.  I remember one boy in particular who would come up, grab me by the chest really painfully hard and scream "squishy boobs" at least once a recess.  Granted he has grown up into a nice guy, but I will never forget the pain and the humiliation.  I can carry on a civil conversation with him now- people grow up and mature, but I wonder if those memories still embarrass him as much as they embarrassed me.

I remember one boy in my class who was bullies as much as I was.  He eventually left the school.  I remember another one who was so nice, but scared to associate with me in case they would start making fun of him to.  One girl who would only be friends with me "in secret outside of school" so no one would pick on her.  I was diseased.  I was contagious.  I remember going to one bar mitzvah and sitting at a table made up of only 4 girls- the losers in the class.  I spent the whole afternoon crying in the bathroom.  I remember the day of a bat mitavah being hit by a car and breaking my leg only to later that night have one boy ask me how badly I damaged the car.  I never went to another bar or bat mitzvah after that.

Teachers and staff knew.  Older kids knew.  Kids in my class knew.  But no one ever did a thing to help me.  I would hide in my room and cry.  There was one year when one girls drive with her parents all the way down to deliver a mishloach manot to my house- it did not matter that she was giving everyone in the class, the fact that she had not left me out meant so much to me I never for got it.  I told her about it a few years ago and she did not even remember- but it is one of the warmest memories of my childhood.

And so I hid.  I would take a book at recess and sit on my own until a teacher would yell at me for not playing with the other kids.  I would say I was not going to go on shabbatonim but the hanhalah would call my parents and tell them I had to go.  When it came time to choose a high school I did not want to spend any more time with anyone in that class, but the hanhalah of the school actually tried to pressure my parents into sending me to a school I did not want to go to!

I went to the school I wanted, and there made some wonderful friends who have lasted me the rest of my life.  Friends who have been with me through thick and thin, happy and sad.  Sure there was bullying- to one extent or another kids will be kids, but it was nothing on the level of what I had put up with until the end of the eighth grade.  I was always still scared that one day everyone would turn on me.  That I would end up being the one with no friends sitting in the corner crying while everyone else was having fun.  And there were times where it did happen- but often because I let it.  I did not have the skills to know how to stop it.

I just tonight wrote to two people who could have helped save me from the hell in which I lived for all of those years.  I asked them what they knew that made letting an 8 year old be scared to go to school be okay.  I asked them if they knew what was happening, and I was sure they did, why they never put any sort of stop to it.  We will see if I get an answer.  They are both men whom I greatly admire so I really hope I do.

So why does this post belong on by blog about my sweet little Gabi?  Because once you fall in to the roll of being bullied, it is almost impossible to get out.  If I had not let people bully me into things I knew in my gut were not right, I strongly suspect my gabi would be here.  Maybe a preemie like her older sister, but not dead in an unmarked grave somewhere.  If I had the guts to stand up to my husband when I wanted to go to the hospital, to the doctor who said lets wait a few hours and see, and then finally had I had the courage to stand up to the chevra kadisha liason, she might not be with me, but at least I might know where she was.

I know that I will never, ever , ever forgive those girls in my class who made my life a living nightmare for some nay years.  Times has worn down the scars and new friends have hidden the scar tissue, but the marks those girls left on my soul will be with me for ever.

E-lli, E-lli lama azavtani.

Can someone out there please explain to me how people who have experienced a pregnancy loss can complain about a healthy and thriving pregnancy. Most people don't complain to me thank goodness, but for those who do not think every minute of a healthy pregnancy is a miracle to be treasured despite every ache and pain, please remember how you felt when it was not as healthy and thriving.

Another failure.  FET this time.  And I can not even meet with my doctor until after the chagim in October so there is nothing to keep me hoping over the yom tovim.  I aam not going to make it.  2 years ago erev yom kippur I found out I was pregnant with my beutiful miracle angel who was too good for this world.  Last year I was still so far into my depression I barely noticed the chagim.  This year it is just a hot searing pain.

I am going to go insane.  My facebook wall is full of people halfway through their pregnancies, if that, saying "I'm done".  Really?  Really?  You want to be done?  I can assure you that you do not want to be done at this point.  I am pretty damn sure you do not want to deliver a 20 or 21 or even 32 week baby just to get things over with.  If anyone really feels that way then for the love of God give that child to someone less selfish who wants what is best for that child and not what is easiest for themselves.

Great.  All the miracles of assistance of modern medical marvels and I still don't have a newborn and my gerbils are popping em out paw over tail!

I took on a chumra to keep the year of aveilut for my stepfather.  From the time I was 5 years old he was the man in my life- as such I am choosing to keep the year the same as his other two children.  Tonight I missed a wedding I really wanted to go to.  We had spoken to our Rabbi and he had said that since I had taken it on as a chumra, I could just as easily "let myself off the hook for the night" so to speak.

I felt like I could not let myself do it.  I accepted this on myself, now I am going to see it through.  What sort of honour is it to him if I let it go because there is something I would rather do more?  Our Rabbi was, apparently, surprised not to see me there.  Either he does not know me as well as I thought he did, or he has never come across anyone quite as stubborn.

Please Abba be davening on my behalf in shamayim.  I know I am doing my very best to show you the kavod you deserve, and I  *may* not have always showed when you were alive, down here.

Tomorrow a friend of ours is doing probably one of the most selfless and amazing things any human being can do.  He is donating a kidney.  If there is ever a case where a person is doing the closest thing he can to emulate God, to live his life b'tzelem Elokim, this has got to be it.  He is doing what God did and using a piece of himself to breathe life into and to revitalize another human being.  How can I complain about what I lost when he is giving up a piece of himself, a piece that he might someday need, to help someone else.  I guess the only thing that I can say on the topic is kol hakavod.  You never know where life is going to take you, and obviously for this young man life is taking him to be as close to God as possible.

I was thinking about where life takes you.  You never know what bad luck will turn to good, or, as I know all too well, good will turn sour.  We never know where luck is going to come from.  The man donating the kidney was brought into my life by a friend who had a friend who was going to be in Israel and needed a place for shabbat.  Eventually, she chose to stay, met and married a lovely young man, and now here they are- they may not yet have children of their own, but they are certainly busy with helping to keep the world's Jewish population going in the right direction.

I wish them every single bracha in the world and then some.

Help. I feel like I am going backwards fast.  I am doing all the right things to try to stay above water, but I am feeling like I am drowning fast.  My rabbi said my life lately is not a roller coaster- it is such a steep up and down it is more like a yo-yo.  I am not doing a very good job at holding on.  My headache is becoming unbearable, all I want to do is sleep.  I am forcing myself out of bed to do *something* each day (normally work on getting Channah's room in order for school) but other than that I just can't seem to bring myself to do anything.

I am not doing anything stupid like overdosing or mixing medications with alcohol or anything else stupid like that so there is no need to worry, just feel like it would be just as useful to the world if I were to just hide in bed and cry as it is to do anything else.  I have spoken with my therapist, I am taking my medication.  I promise I am not putting myself into any sort of danger.

I just feel like I am standing on the very edge of a cliff that is crumbling all around me and there is no safety net.  Truthfully I have no idea what is bringing it on this particular time, but it just seems to be the way it is.

My apartment is an epic disaster which never helps.  I feel like I am living in Oscar's can, but try as I might (and right now the mighty effort is going into Channah's room which means I am years behind in laundry and my kitchen looks like a Hell's Kitchen exploded.  My room is beyond all hope of redemption.  I fell on a pile of laundry trying to get to the shower last night.  My toes are so bruised now I can hardly walk on them).  I can barely keep it together to go for things I absolutely positively MUST do that anything more than that falls by the wayside and makes me feel worse.

I need cleaning help, but as it is not in the budget it is not going to happen.  I need to get out more to do things I enjoy but with the whole aveilut thing that is not happening either.  Also the fact that I live in freaking RBSA and there is nothing to do and no one who really wants to do it (especially in this heat) does not help. Everyone has their own lives filled with jobs and kids and responsibilities.  Me?  I work when I want, my kid takes care of herself, and my brain has put itself in charge.  Heck the only reason I love running the books swap so much is that it gives me something to work on.  Most of the time now I am too out of it (no, not drugged out, just miserable) to read half of what I find anyway.

This is going to sound like a stupid and self centred question, but does anyone out there know if there is a chessed programs with girls to just help me get my life back in order to a clean slate?  Not a forever thing, just a few days to help me get my brain around the blockage of there being more to do that I can possible surmount   Right now it feels like trying to climb mount Everest with no shoes and a polar bear on my back.  And a broken toe.

Sorry for the depressing post.  Just how it is today in the life of the depressed nut job.

With all the pain that came with the last 18 months, sometimes I forget to remember the good.  Someone told me once that "you never get this minute, this moment in time, back again".  Tonight we took my 8 year old out to get a real "big girl" desk and desk chair so she has a real spot in her room to do her homework.  We rearranged her furniture to take it from the room we designed for a 4 year old in kindergarten, to a room meant for an 8 year old going into the third grade.

She is getting so big!  There are times I look at her and can't believe how many wonderful moments I will never have again.  Her first smile.  Her first day of school.  I really try to remember that no matter how sad I feel for other things, she is my light and my joy.  Every cuddle and snuggle is worth all the diamonds in the world.  Every smile is more precious to me than my own life.

She has been my rock and my light in getting through the last 18 months.  There are times she is the only reason I get up in the mornings, and often the only reason I can find to keep breathing.  She is growing up so quickly I feel like I need to find a way to slow the clock to squeeze just a little bit more from every minute.

With the early loss of a potential pregnancy coming as it did so closely to Tisha B'Av, I found myself once again feeling real grief on our historical day of mourning this year.  On doctor's and Rabbi's orders I was not fasting- well, at least I was not supposed to be.  I didn't eat or drink because the thought of doing anything normal was to painful to contemplate.  So I fasted.  And I thought.

It has been a long while since I lost my precious little girl, and in that time, somewhere between losing my mind, and starting to find it again, I had a lot of time to think.  To think, and to wonder about all of the "truths" I had been taught in my life.

When I was a child truth was telling my mother I broke her mirror.  When I was older sometimes truth was telling my mother I broke the mirror even when I didn't.  When I was a child truth was that sooner or later everything worked out to be "fair".  As an adult, I learned that is rarely the case.  As a child I learned that God sees and knows and keeps accounts of everything.  As an adult, I find myself wondering just how true that is.


Where is God?

I remember when I came to Israel for the first time (that I remember.  Being here when I was 10 months old does not count for this case) the first thing I wanted to do after we dropped our overstuffed bags was go to the kotel.  I had spent so many years learning about God, studying God, trying to decipher what he wanted from me.  We got on a bus, bought a cartisia, and headed in totally the wrong direction.  Eventually we made it to the old city and I was enamored by the history all around me.  The walls echoed with generations of my ancestors calling to me.  The streets were worn smooth with a millennium's worth of footprints from every corner of the Earth.  Surely this was the place where I would find the answers for which I had been searching for so long.

I walked the long narrow alleys of the shuk, and turned right into the remains of the Roman Cardo.  Incredible!  I was actually standing where people who had been coming to the Beit HaMikdash itself would have stood with their fruits or their animals.  I could feel excitement rising within me like a crescendo in a grand score.  The Jewish quarter with it's restaurants and shops narrowing in as we approached the massive main steps to the kotel.  I went down the steps, through security, and all of a sudden it was there in front of me.  I looked at it.  I looked it up, and I looked it down.  It was a wall.  A very old wall, but all the same, just a wall.

Where was my God?

We spent that shabbat with one of my husband's rabeim from his yeshiva years.  He asked me what I thought of my first trip to the kotel.  He smiled when I didn't answer, and he said to me "God was not there when you looked for him was he?"  He continued "he hides a lot, but don't worry, if you look for him he is easier to find then Waldo".

I held that comment with me for a very long time.  God hides.  Why would he create a world full of such intense good, and hide so that such evil can take control?  Where is the the God of mercy, of rachamim?  The God who remembers the good for thousands of generations?  How many of his creations have cried out over thousands of years "God, where are you?  Why have you deserted me now?  Why have you left us to die?  To grieve?  Why have you taken from me the one thing I want most in the world?"

It is only recently that I have started to consider the second part of the Rabbi's comment.  That "if you look for him he is easier to find than Waldo."  Believe me, I have seen lots of places where god isn't.  In an operating room with a dead baby.  At a funeral of a father taken far to fast and too soon.  In an old forest burned black, or in pieces of a bus mixed with the remains of those who were riding it.

But I am starting to wonder if I am looking in the wrong places.  Or rather, looking in the right places but not seeing.  In the operating room there was my husband looking at me with such sorrow in his eyes, yet such love for the little girl he held even though she never knew it.  There was so much love for someone who never opened her eyes.  That had to come from somewhere.  The kindness that came out of the woodwork when I thought my life would end had to come from somewhere.  The gaurdian angel who showed up when I really really needed someone had to be sent by someone.

When I looked around at the funeral and shiva for my father and saw just about everyone I knew who came out to pay their respects to a man who had a kind word for strangers, food for beggars, and truly greeted every one with a friendly face.  A man gone to soon but who forever changed the lives of even casual acquaintances with a love of life that was contagious.  A man who knew how to use a temper very effectively to make sure his children grew up to be people I like to hope he would be proud of.  And you knew God was there, in the heart of every man and woman in that room, remembering a man who believed in his traditions and his faith.

The old forest that burned made way for new trees.  There are angels in yellow vests who care so much about every person on that bus they crawl on their hands and knees to make sure they are returned to their families.  In every evil, someone good is doing their thing.  Quietly.  Discretely.  Making room for God.

On that same trip to Israel we spent a different shabbat with a different rebbe- a musician.  We were sitting at the shabbat table late at night, there was literally no sound.  "Do you hear that?"  he asked?  My husband and I looked at each other like he was insane.  "Do you hear that" he said again, this time more emphatically, "It is the sound of Hashem.  You hear him in the stillness of the night.  You need to listen very carefully, but if you listen you can hear him singing".

I have never been particularly good at the "Where's Waldo?" books.  But music is in my blood.  I could have sworn that night, at that table, that I heard the music.  Maybe it is not that God is hiding.  Maybe it is that we are so caught up in our trials and tribulations that we have not left room for God to show himself.  Maybe he is right in front of us and we just need to take a step back and make room for him to fill the space.

Maybe this is all just the random passing garbage from a woman trying to deal with grief as best as she can.  A woman who needs to believe that God has not abandoned this world and left it to fend for itself against all evils.

But maybe if I am up really late one night, and the apartment is really quiet, maybe I will try listening for a few minutes just to see if I hear anything.

Early pregnancy loss.  I am devastated.  I don't have the strength for this.  How do I explain to Channah why I am falling apart.  She is terrified of what happened last year because she sees me crying.

I am sitting on my bed sobbing.  I can't do this again.

I am standing at the edge of a cliff I know all to well and watching while the outcropping that has supported me crumbles under my feet.  I am frozen to the spot and am going to fall.

Smirnoff lemon ice for the ache.  Percocet for the pain.  Clonex for the tears and tonight an ambian to sleep. Trying to remember to wait between each one or I will end up in Emergency for mixing meds, blood loss and dehydration by morning.

I just had a horrible minute.  I realized I could not remember her birthday.  What kind of mother am I that I had to double check her birthday and even then it sounded wrong and foreign.  I would never forget my 8 year old's birthday.  I could not even remember what month it was in.

I feel horrible right now.

It has been a long time since I have written.  Wasn't sure what to write really.  I thought I was finally really starting to get back to my old self.  The medication is working the way it is supposed to.  I can smile.  I can laugh again.  I can have fun with my family.  


Everything seemed to be picking up.  At least during the day.


A few weeks ago the nightmares started.  Every time I close my eyes.  About everything under the sun.  My family, my friends.  No one is immune to being part of the horrors that I see and hear every time I try to sleep.   


I have woken up to to the sound of hundreds of screams coming from inside my own head.  I have been chased through my childhood home by people I love trying to hurt me.  I have been trapped in windstorms so real I awake surprised to to find my head still on my pillow.  


I am scared to close my eyes anymore. 

I don't sleep.  I crash when I am too exhausted to stay awake anymore.  I fall into a fitful and terrified sleep that never lasts more than an hour.  I wake up each time shaking and sweating and terrified to lie back down again.


The worst part about being an adult is that when you have nightmares there is no grown up to chase away the monsters.

Depressions seems to be coming back hard.  Seems everyone else, no matter what their way of life, marital status, goodness of heart, etc they can pop em out and no matter how good I try to be, how hard I work on my marriage, nothing makes a difference.  It is more medication, more shots, more heartbreak.

I am not sure how much longer I can go on like this,

I survived Purim.  There were some really, really, REALLY hard moments, but I did it.  2 sets of megillah reading (my first time in the shul in a year or more I think), the purim shpiel (well, until we left).  We hosted Seuda today and even with two babies there, both younger than Gabbi would have been I had a good time.  Not a great time, but a good time.

I did it.  Not well.  Not without a couple anti anxiety pills, but I did it.

Starting a new medication for the depression.  Feel like a drug addict because I asked for something.  Was just not working well with no outside help.  I did not realize knowing I need help was such a bad thing.

Great news coming at me from literally every corner while we are busy failing another cycle.  Yeah.  Stinks.  Especially since the next one will likely run in to pessach so be cancelled.  At least it will be hopefully at Shaarei Tzedek instead of at trigger-ridden Hadassah.

Purim is ready.  Not sure I am going to get through it.   I want to cry and am taking medication in anticipation of a major panic attack for the first time in a long time.  Last year we pretty much skipped it all together.  A tiny seuda with close friends, megillah reading at home.  This year we are going to the shul, to the shpiel after, to megillah reading at my uncles's tomorrow, made a ton of mishloach manot, are hosting seuda for 14, and all in all going all out.

Seuda is mostly ready.  The games for the seuda are done.  The cooking is as done as it should be for now.  A little more tonight, and the meat tomorrow.  I just need to set the tables and get it all ready to go.  Little touches like XXX across the water pitcher and maybe a couple wanted posters for the walls.

We are going to megillah at my uncle's in the hospital so we have done out best to make that happy too.  Funny hats.  Pictures for his walls.  Mishloach Manot for everyone.  Hope it brings some purim cheer to someone as I know it is the only way I am going to manage to keep a smile on.

At least I know I am spending most of chag with good company.

I can do this right?

Depression is coming back with a vengeance.  Not sure I can do this much longer.

I am not doing as well as I think I am.  I spent most of shabbat crying.  I should be over this by now.  My psychiatrist never calls back, my medication is not doing it's job.  I think he hates me for taking so long to get over this.  The last 4 sessions with my therapist have left me, well, pissed and and sad and angry all in one.  While I am not planning on doing anything to hurt myself (way to much of a chicken to go through with anything) the "if only I wouldn't wake up tomorrow" thoughts are coming back with a vengeance.

More and more I wonder what would have happened if I had told the shrink in the hospital the truth that I did want to die.  Would I have been locked up?  More medicated?  Held for my own safety and that of other's?

It just seems that in the last month the depression has gone from getting better to bottom of the barrel.  If I am busy I am mostly okay- unless I stop to think for even a fraction of a second.  So I try to stay busy- but how busy can one stay in the middle of the night when sleep won't come?

It has been over a year since I have had a full night's sleep.  Over a year since I could comfortably rest a hand on my stomach or my chest without crying.  How much longer can I go on without ever find any sort of full comfort?  How much longer can I last before I lose what is left of my mind?

When I was pregnant all of a sudden I was a person in my neighbourhood.  People were not scared to talk to me.  People did not avoid me.  For a few short months I was not the pariah I am the rest of my life when people find it too painful to tell me news.  Now I am back to be as much an outsider as ever.  Friends are slowly disappearing even as I try to come back out in to the world.

People move on.  My friends have.  My family sure as hell have.  I should also.

I just can't seem to do it.

I made it.  1 year and 1 day later I got up.  Got dressed.  Am working.  Am miserable- but am here.

Today is one year since I entered Hell.  I am still here.  I am not whole.  I am not okay.  I am not the same me I was 365 days ago, but I am here.

Last year on Feruary 28th I woke up ready to talk to my doctor about a timetable for my c section.  Turned out I had it later that day to bring a dead little girl into the world.  For a few minutes.  Before she was taken from me and buried in a mass grave somewhere I will never know.

"Don't worry", everyone said, "You will be pregnant again in 6 months and this will all be a bad dream".  Well, here we are a year later.  No pregnancy.  No baby.  Lots of thoughts of just wanting to stop the world and get off.

I hate my life.

The one bright spot in it is Channah and more and more I see that this year has devastated her also.

My marriage has been to hell and back and then to hell again.  Not blaming anyone.  That is just the way it is.

My health has suffered from a nervous breakdown.  I spend most of my life at home scared to go out and be seen as the local neighbourhood neb.  I rarely participate in community events.

I don't go to shul.  Hell, I don't even pray.  Not even sure what I would pray to.  The foundation of my belief has been shaken so hard it has toppled like a skyscraper in an earthquake.

I have lost friends and found friends.  I have seen demons and found angels.

I am alone in a world surrounded by people who love me.

I live in a world of oxymorons and disconnects.

When do I get to find normal?

Channah's wants to "celebrate her sister's birthday" next week.  I am not sure I can do that.  What do I do?

l really, really wish people would stop worrying so much about what I am going to think and just give me the chance to think it.  As much as some things sting, nothing hurts me more than people not being straight with me :(  It has happened a number of times in the last week and I am just not capable of dealing with it anymore.

A few people have asked if we plan to do anything commemorative to mark the one year anniversary, so I figured it was okay to post it here.  This is not meant as any sort of a request, just information for anyone who wants it.  With my inlaws and a few other close friend's help we are going to be helping to start a children's library at our shul in remembrance of Gabi.  If anyone is interested in participating in any way, please let me know and we can figure out how to make it work.  Kosher books are obviously welcome donations, as is anything else you might have access to.

Thank you.

I had a dream last night that turned into a nightmare.

We were shopping to go away.  Channah was with us and so was Gabi.  She was 4 weeks old in my head, but she looked like a 1 year old if not older.  We kept trying to get her what she needed to go away, but we could never find her when we found things, or we could not find things for her.  It ended with a relative of mine telling me that I should not worry about it because she was not important anyway.

I woke up in a cold sweat.  I guess telling it back it does not sound so bad, but waking up from it I felt like she had been torn from me again.

This is not going to be an easy week.

Coming up to the one year mark I am a mess.  I have no idea what will happen in my head come next week.  God help me.  I am not sure I can make it through this.

Been a bad few weeks.  Lots of panic attacks and uncontrollable crying.  I feel like hurting my back has caused a major backslide (pun only slightly intended since I made it unintentionally to someone a few minutes ago but it is still the best word choice).  I feel like going back to spending my life in my bed.

One thing I never really talked about here with the strain this year has put on my marriage.  Well, the therapist took this week to be away.  A few weeks ago not even she was convinced there was anything here worth saving.  I am starting to wonder if losing Gabbi was the beginning of the end of my marriage- and that now we are well into the middle.

I was doing great there for a bit but now feel like I have gone back into a very dark place.  Maybe I will start to feel better again after the anniversary at the end of the month.  Meantime, thoughts of suicide are back and running through my head, but nowhere near the point where I would consider acting on them.  More like daydreaming about being a famous movie star or something- a pipe dream that runs through my head at random moments.  Don't worry.  I'm safe, just sad.

I finally figured out why no one back home gets it.  No one saw me pregnant.  No one saw me during my breakdown.  To them, it never really happened.  She was never real so losing her was never real.  Something that isn't real can't really be all that bad so I should just consider it part of life "most women have miscarriages sooner or later" and move forward.

I think I am even more upset now that I understand it.

Today I was back at the centre of my own personal little piece of hell.  Back at the hospital where it all happened.  Same places.  I though I was going to end up in emergency- not because of what I was actually there for, no that  was not a big deal at all.  The place itself brought on a panic attack worse than I have had in a long, long time (and that was with having taken a full dose of anti-anxiety pills for the first time in a long time). I got off the elevator and the world started to spin.  I thought I was going to pass out then and there.

I made it.  I am totally emotionally drained. I mean totally and completely wiped.

But I survived.  I did it and if I need to I will manage to do it again.  I just hope I don't need to.

To those who pray, wish, think happy thoughts, or in general have their own way of sending good wishes, I would really appreciate it over the next little bit.  To those who know or understand, Lord do I hate this roller coaster ride.

It seems to be a month for steps forward and steps back.  Last week we had shabbat guests for the first time.  This time we went to a friend's house who was pregnant at the same time I was and had a healthy baby after we lost our little girl.

I was so scared to go.  I was not sure how I would handle the baby.  This baby who was suposed to be younger than my little girl.

I actually took it a lot better than I thought I would.  I was pretty high strung the whole shabbat, but when she was crying I even managed to hold her for a few minutes when no one else could get to her.  I went to my room after and cried, but not for long.

We are coming up on the one year mark of losing my Gabi.  Am I ever going to be able to look at a baby without crying again?

Will I ever go back to being able to seeing friends without constantly bracing for "good news"? I know 100% this is a flaw in my own head. For my whole life I have hung out and spoken with friends and only an handful (by comparison) of those interactions have had anything I would now consider myself needing to brace for. Now how do I get my brain to remember that people actually just enjoy spending time with me or no particular reason once in a while?

Since going off the medication I have generally been going and doing and a lot happier.  Last night was my first breakdown in a long time.

I had a nightmare about being back in the hospital in the detailed ultrasound room and getting the news.  Over and over and over.  I woke up crying and fell off the wagon and took one of the anti-anxieties.  All I could think of was her birthday is coming up soon and not a person in the world outside of this apartment will care.

So much for "you'll be pregnant in 6 months and this will all be a bad dream.  Stupid, know nothing doctors who decided my body was suddenly just going to go into normal mode after 13 years of infertility.

I like to wish I will get good news for her birthday, but I know better than to ask god for favours and hope he grants them.  I am not getting my hopes up.  Even if I ever do get a yes, something I doubt more and more with each passing day, I doubt I will get my hopes up until I have a living breathing baby in my arms- then I will take it home as quickly as possible- hospital policies be damned.

I place a lot of blame on Hadassah.  IF my ob was not lying and there was still a heartbeat, albeit low (and I am not sure I believe her), when we left RBS, and it was not there when we got to the hospital, there was none, it could have only been a matter of minutes.  They dafka made us wait 4 hours to have the c-section.  I think it was time they were waiting to make sure there was no chance of resurrection.  I have, since then, seen quite a number of papers and studies about Israel's (and Haddasah in particular's) numbers of "full term/very late stage "spontaneous abortions" and it is ridiculously high for a developed country.  Seems that if there is a chance of anything being un-perfect about the baby doctors will occasionally "help" nature to get rid of mistakes.

I would also like to thank a certain doctor in Toronto who tried to make me feel like because I was less likely to have healthy pregnancies/children and thus this was partially, at least, my fault.  It has been floating around in the back of my head since I got home.  Makes me really hopeful and upbeat about trying again.  I don't care how much you "know how intelligent I am and just want what is best for me".  I hate you.

Tonight I managed to put into words something that has been rattling around in my head since I lost my Abba 6 weeks ago.  I could not figure out why I came home so much more at peace than when I left.  In the last 6 weeks I have gone off all the anti depressants I was taking.  All the anti anxieties- and even while I was at the funeral and shiva I never took any extra doses for anxiety attacks and I would have assumed that I would have needed more than normal not less.  I took my bare minimum dose to avoid withdrawal while I was gone.

I think I said before that there was something about finally being able to grieve, for both people I lost (even though only one was "official") had a cathartic effect.  But as I get a little further away from that week, and my brain starts to clear from the drug fog of the last 10 months, I realize it was not being allowed to grieve.  It was the prescribed process for grieving that did it.

When you first hear of a close death it is like a sharp punch to the gut.  You can't breath.  The world starts to reel and, even if you knew it was imminent, it feels like the most unexpected news in the world.  I felt like I had just had the floor pulled out from under my feet.

I cried the entire plane ride.  Then I saw my family and I cried some more.  Sobbed my way to through the funeral and was so numb during the burial I barely remember it.  I remember going back into the house and feeling like I would never be happy again.

But through shiva we were kept busy.  I look back at it now and I realize slowly we went from crying to laughing.  At first it was the delirious laughter of emotional relief when have just been too sad for too long, but eventually it became real laughter..  Remembering the good things.  Relaxing.  Numbing.  Not forgetting, but letting all the other people help you find a way to put the sad into a box in your head you could hide for a bit.  Not for very long, but long enough to know that you were not going to keep over from it.

And that is the thing.  I looked up at the end of shiva and could not believe it had been a week since that first horrible pain.  I had made it through a week.  Now I needed to concentrate on getting through the next stage.  If I could make it a week could I make it a month?

We got to the one month point and again it was marked by family and friends.  I still burst into tears at random.  But it is not that kick you in the stomach and pull your heart out of your chest pain all the time.  when I first start to cry yes, but it quickly moves back to the dull ache with happier memories.

Leads to believe that those who set out the rituals of mourning might have known a thing or two after all.  But then how was I so let down in February?

I am no rabbi.  No talmid chacham or even lay leader.  But I am a woman in the 21st century who buried a child at birth.  And, while it was once common, it is thankfully not anymore.  Seems to me that halacha dealt with life as it was understood at the time.  Losing a parent was tragic.  There was a need to prescribe a set ritual to deal with that loss.  Losing a child at birth was common.  Getting over it quickly and getting pregnant again was the only ritual needed.

The more I think about it, the more it seems true of most halacha.  what was common at the time is dealt with- mostly fairly well.  But somewhere along the line Judaism got stuck.  For whatever the reason somewhere after the great rationalists and men of science like Rambam, the Abarbanel, and their ilk, halacha stopped keeping up with modern science, medicine and technology and just froze.  Whether it had to do with a (often very justified) fear of the outside, or more of a needing to stay the same or risk being lost among the nations, or both for that matter does not really make much of a difference.  For whatever the reason halacha just seemed to stop progressing.

It seems to me that it was this that created the eventual backlash that started with really started Shimshon Refael Hirch and led to splitting Judaism into it's more modern streams in an attempt to forge ritual that included modern knowledge.

We all know I follow the rules.  All of them.  Most of them even in private.  I am not sure if it is out of habit or comfort or what, but I do.  On the other hand I have seriously questioned my belief in God over the past year.  I think I am starting to lean towards a comment I heard once, "It is not God I hate, it is some of his interpreters."  What I don't think I believe in anymore is a community that is so insular, so scared of secular society that it stops progressing and because of that leaves people effected by modern advances stuck in the dark.

Does this way of thinking automatically take me out of "Orthodox" realms?  I have no idea.  It might.  Frankly I live in a city where various groups claiming to be "Orthodox" are the lunatics running the asylum.  But just because they claim to be as orthodox as it comes does not mean they are.  If orthodoxy is about lighting candles and keeping kosher than I am in and so are they.  If it is about thought, ideology, progression, etc. than I am not sure any of us really fit he bill.