Just a brief summary of where I am in my journey.

I still cry.  A lot.  I am still furious with God for what he took from me.  I still firmly believe that it was my fault for not following my gut reaction earlier that night.  I am still apart from the rest of my world looking in- there is an unseen barrier between me and my husband, and sometimes even between me and my precious, vibrant ALIVE daughter.  She is my only real comfort though.

I am still seeing both my therapist and my psychiatrist.  Still on both anti-depressants and anti-anxiety pills.  Still have days where I do not get out of bed or even out of my pajamas.  Basically, if I do not have a reason to get up and out, I don't.

I feel empty inside.  Believe myself to be more orthoprax than orthodox as I am not really sure that I believe in a God who could ridicule me so harshly.  I am going into the chagim with no plans to go to shul.  Before you ask, no tehilim or Iyov does not seem to help either.  Yes I tried talking to a Rabbi or mentor, but neither of them really had the time for me.

Like I said, I cry a lot.  Mostly in the middle of the night, but lets be honest, it can be pretty much whenever. A song can do it.  A kids book.  A family walking.  A green stroller.

I had hoped going home to see my family would help.  It didn't.  I had no reason to really think it should.  No matter how much other people may love me they can't fill the emptiness in my heart.  I think they knew that too.

While I was home I had all sorts of people talk to me about looking at my brachot (I do- that still does not ease the pain of the loss or the lighten the burden of guilt I am left with.)

They talked about moving on- not even halacha prescribes a set period of mourning for a child- how can a person who has never been there?  At the time it had only been 5 months since some man, who I will never know, buried my little girl in some place I never know.  5 months- less time than I had known her for and I should already move on?

The inside of my head is hell. I  hate myself.  Nothing ever completely breaks through the darkness that surrounds me.  It is always there like a thin surface keeping me from the rest of reality.  I think that is what the drugs are supposed to take care of.  I guess they are not working quite the way they should be.  I am using less and less of the anti-anxiety, but I suspect I need a higher dose of the anti depressant.  The level of tears is going up weekly.

This "breast cancer awareness" meme going around face book "I'm __ weeks and craving ___ ." Is driving me insane.  As someone who has had both a breast cancer scare and who has dealt with stillbirth and infertility I can promise you that one did not make me more aware of the other.  Who the heck comes up with these things.  I am not sure who came up with this bright idea, but seeing half the woman on my friend's list posting about being pregnant when I would kill for it is just about more than I can handle.

For a long time now I have felt literally subhuan because of the way that I look.  Try as I might to accept the Health at any size position and to love myself for who I am, I just have not been able to believe that anyone ever saw me as anything other than a fat slob who, on occasion, might be able to put together a decent wardrobe.

So I don't know what to make of a recent story.

Not to long ago I was at a party for someone I love.  I took the same level of care with my clothing and makeup as I would for any formal, special event.  I even put in my contacts.

As a part of the party the guests were asked to provide the entertainment.  Not being one for singing or dancing, I went with what I know- I wrote.  I wrote a poem using jewelery as a metaphor for the sparking guest of honour.  Even I will admit that I thought the poem was pretty good, but I figured it would end at that.

I come from a family of beautiful people, and generally prefer to hide in the background as much as possible, so as soon as I was finished I gave the guest of honour a hug and sat back down at my table.

Shortly thereafter another guest, one who I would consider among the most beautiful of the beautiful people and I were chatting.  "You know," she said to me "when you were standing up there reading that poem with the light on you, I realized I must have never really looked at you before.  You have such a beautiful face".

And there is it folks.  I got the exact same comment a few days later from someone else.  Because of who the comments came from I am taking them as genuine complements, but the truth is that the line "you have such a beautiful face" just makes my head scream "if only you would lose the weight."

So now I am trying to figure out what was different that night.

Was it that I have lost a fair bit of weight in the last 6 months?  I would guess so except no one except one aunt seemed to notice that I was "a shadow of my former self".  In fact, there were a number of times I was reminded of exactly what I looked like and what I "should" be doing about it.

Was it just that normally I hide behind my glasses and everyone around me and this is one of the only times I stood there on my own apart from everyone else- I would love to believe it and am really trying- but wasn't that also true on my wedding day?  No one said anything then.  Was it that I was speaking from my heart to someone I truly love?  Also would have been true on my wedding day.

So why now?  Why now when I feel worse about myself than I ever have in my entire life.  I feel ugly and sad and broken.  The compliment was amazing- made me feel like flying for a little while- but the more I go through time as a sadder me, the more people seem to be attracted to me than they ever were to the happy me.  I see it everywhere I turn.  People are more helpful.  More polite.

Are they trying to help me feel better about myself in their own way?  Or just being honest that something really looked different that night.  I wore the exact same outfit to shul that week with nothing remarkable happening.

Every time I say something along any of these lines I get told how beautiful I am on the inside.  Another line that starts my brain screaming "but that outside- YIKES!"

On the other hand, if I am so beautiful on the inside, than why do I always feel so ugly and shamed.  Clearly God decided I was not worthy of any sort of beauty, for me or for the life that was inside of me.

Maybe I should just learn to make everything match and turn my insides ugly as well.  At least then you can tell at a glance what I am.

A comment a friend made on my last post made me realize something.  I am living my life as an orthodox Jew, believing in God and abiding by his rules, but I in no way trust him to look out for my best interests.  Seriously, in no way.

It was God who decided it was in my best interest to take my Gabbi from me.  After all the love and all the work I put into that pregnancy, it twas God who decided to send me hell on Earth and a nervous breakown.  Sure it was also God who sent me a fabulous community after the fact, but I would rather live in a neighbourhood filled with thugs and drug dealers with my baby in my arms than in this fabulous area with my baby in my heart.

I now go out of my way to plan everything down to the tiniest detail- checkig and double checking everything two, three, even  four times.  I have started making packing lists months in advance- sure God can still destroy my plans, and in many ways I expect him to, but I can no longer trust him to look after things for me so that they will all work out in the end.

It is funny, living in Toronto we always assumed nothing would work out, but since we made aliya we have to accept with ease the idea that God is in charge and it will all work out in the end.  It is amazing how easily and quickly I through that idea out of the window.  Almost 3 years of learning to trust God's hands out the window in a single missed heartbeat.

I will never, never NEVER forgive God for what he took from me.  We learn in various places that for stealing the punishment is to pay double, quadruple or even quintuple times the amount stolen in payback and so far as I can tell GOD OWES ME for what he stole.  God should be found guilty in beit din shel malah and forced to repay what he stole from me.  Until such time he should be considered a rasha who does not follow his own rules.

About a rasha one can speak lashon harah, he ccan be banned from the kehillah, and one need not associate with him.

But I like my life.  Other than the constant pain in my heart and in my soul it is comfortable.  So I continue to abide by his rules and pretend that I believe in a God of kindness and love and fairness.  A God who listens and loves his children like a father.  Who hands out reward and punishment with equal fairness- but in my heart, the same heart that pains for eyes I never saw open, for hands I never got to hold, for diapers I never got to change, while I continue to believe he created the universe and controls every minute aspect of it, I do not believe he has, for even a single moment, my best interest in mind.

I live by his codes and I follow his rules, but like an abused child who listens out of fear and not love, I hate the God I have come to believe in.  And no one who ha snot been in my position, no one who has B"H never had to sign chevra kadisha papers for a child, who has had to go through life not knowing where their child would spend their days until mashiach arrives, who ever got to hug each of their children and watch them grow into beautiful, beautiful people, can even think to  tell me otherwise.

God is a big boy.  He does not need anyone to protect him or speak for him.  As for me, I am much smaller and yet still stand on my own two feet and speak for myself.  And I am saying, Until God pays up what he owes, he can put tme in whatever book he likes, he is on my !@#$

Well, I am back from my summer vacation.  My daughter is back in school full time.  I have a few weeks until the chagim.  All of my friends are pregnant.  And with nothing set to do most of the time I just find my mind wandering to how busy my hands "should" be if I had a happy, healthy 6 month old.  She would be smiling by now.  Rolling.  Maybe laughing or making other noises.  I should have something taking all my extra time and mental strength.

Not that summer was not great or that I do not recognize Channah and Jason for the wonderful brachot that they are.  That is another issue entirely.  I just can't help but think about how excited I was to be a full time eema again come this September even once Channah was back in school.  I remember last simchat torah thinking how happy Jason would be dancing with a baby this year, and the whole thing just makes me so sad that all my dreams from a year ago have turned to garbage- not worth the mental energy I spent on them; or worse yet making me sadder for having had them.

I try not to think about it it, but everything reminds me.  Pregnant women.  Small Children.  Siblings playing.  I was okay and holding it together relatively well while I was forced to be dealing with a million other little details of being sick, than going away, and keeping a 7 year old busy over the summer.  But now I am at loose ends.  Piano lessons do not start again really until after the chagim.  I also will not have a lot of work in the studio until then and with the current price of precious metals I am not really going to play for fun.

I am working on slowly cleaning up and out our apartment, but most of those are jobs that leave me lots of time to think.  How much brain power does polishing silver or folding linens really need?

Truth is, I just want to get in to bed and stay there.  No real reason to get up it seems.

Not planning on getting a ticket for shul this yom tov.  Seems silly to go to talk to someone you hate- or worse yet might not believe in at all.  Right now I am working under the title "Orthoprax"- I do everything I have to, but don't really believe God, if he exists, cares one way or the other.

Meantime we are moving forward with trying again.  But my confidence in that is about as high as my confidence in myself.  I hate the inside of my head.

Latetely I am once again finding myself answering the question as to why I have made something so private so open.  I am also finding more and more people asking me how it helps to rehash what is going round in my head and recieve what could be negative feedback that might keep feeding the cycle of pain and derailment.  To them the first thing that I ask is that they read the tab about why I blog.  The second thing I beg them to remember is that we each heal in our own way.  If I find this helps, why in the world would someone find it necessary to stop me.

The truth is that for the last few weeks I have been a fish out of water.  Very much away from my natural habitat and trying to make do under unusual circumstances.  I was terrified going in but thankfully things have worked out much, much, better than expected.

Except when they don't.  Thursday night I had a major, major breakdown.  As bad as any I had just after Gabbi died- worse even that some.  For only the 2nd time in this 6 month long depression I seriously considered looking for ways to harm myself.  I didn't- but only because I let Jason hold me together.  But I thought about it.  The worst thing is that the sparking point came from something I trusted 10000% and never thought would hurt me.  I guess I should have learned by now that I need to protect my heart even from things that are as safe as can be.

How can I live in a world where "safe" no longer exists?  Thankfully I had Jason to hold me together this time, but what if it happens when he is not around?   Once I get home my support network will not be the same as before either.  Babies, school, moving- these things all impact everyone but me.  Me?  I am stuck in a rut.  My Baby is dead and lately it hurts more and more each day rather than slowly dulling to an ache I can manage.  I spend my life with a giant hole in my heart.  Kids I used to babysit for have 2-3 even 5 kids and I am still alone with my golden haired princess.  And she is growing up so incredibly fast.

I am having fun being a bit of a fish out of water, but I can't wait to get home.  To the safety of my room and my bed.  I spent most of this weekend in my bed here in tears and no one really noticed.  There no one will really notice either but at least it will be familiar.

Now to go put on my rest of the world face because no one here aknowledges my living nightmare.  I need to move on.  More forward.  If I just keep going and get off the medication it will not be able to catch me.  I don't know if they are right or not, but I am pretty sure their not.  In any case, I am not ready to find out.

But for those emailing, yes I am fine.  I am alive and well and pretty much the same as I was last time I wrote.  Sad and tormented by what I should do about my relationship with God and no one to talk to about it.  Broken inside.  Not trusting anyone at all. And mostly just feeling alone no matter how many friends I have around me.

I just want what I had worked for and expected to get.  Even Yaakov Got Rochel eventually, and Rochel Yoseph and for Binyamin she gave everything she had.  When do things start to work out for me?  When do I get to stop crying myself to sleep?

This year I am not "doing" tisha b'av,  For various reasons I am not fasting, and the truth is, I m doing enough mourning this year I don't feel like I need to add anything else to it.  I am generally miserable enough.  I did not go to shul to hear "Eicha" because I have spent the last 5 months asking myself that very question.  Eicha?  God how could you do this to me?  How could you take the holy spark you sent me to care for and leave me broken and alone?

This year I do not need the wailing of kinot to remind me of what has been lost- I know first hand and I have felt true wailing from deep in my heart and not the sort that some wrote for me hundreds of years ago.  I have been a mother wailing for her child and I have seen sisters torn apart.  I have felt that which I loved wrenched from my arms.  What do I need today for?  To remind me of the pain of this last year?

Thanks, but no thanks.  I'll pass.

Today I am in pain- but not for a holy temple that was destroyed 2000 years ago.  I am aching for a soul that was destroyed 5 months ago and totally and completely as any that were lost fighting the Romans- the difference is that the lost soul took mine with it.

Look how she sits alone and forlorn.  No children playing in her streets.  No sounds of simcha in her alleys.  Does it speak of the old city left silent and alone one day to be rebuilt or the barren mother crying herself to sleep months later once the world has forgotten and gone back to its routine?  It does not sound like the hustling Jerusalem I know now with people going every which way.  It sounds like my home as my daughter grows up and shouts less and reads more.

So God, today, like most days, I mourn- but not for what you lost by taking the temple- you could give it back whenever the hell you want.  The only reason you have not is because you are behaving like a selfish child- "play by my rules or I am taking my ball and going home!"  You don't care how nice people are to each other.  How much we invite others over or try to help anyone in need.  You don't care if we learn and cry and pray- you can withold whatever it is that we want for reasons as simple as a school yard bully.

You want my attention?  Give something back for a change.  You want me to believe?  Show me that you are there and can do more than just take.  Show me that you can do more than behave like a toddler and for once in 2 millennia  show us you are listening to those who try to live good, moral, decent lives.

Lets play tit for tat.  Give and take.  You want me to care about what you have taken from others, lets see you care about what you have taken from me.