1 year 5 months since we said goodbye*

That is what the ticker at the bottom of my blog reads.

I just checked it because the tickers on several of the blogs I read are blank today. But William's ticker isn't blank and reading it caused me to think that maybe my overwhelmingly emotional state is not just because of the conversation Mr. C and I had Thursday night. I talked on the phone with Mothership (this is what we call Mr. C's mom) a little while ago and somethng she said perhaps moved my thinking in this direction as well.

She asked how I was doing and she could hear in my voice that I am not well. I told her that I am tired and crampy and whatnot and her response was something to the effect that it must be hard to have a physical reminder that I don't have the baby that I want so badly. Huh. She said other things as well...somehow hearing someone else speak of William and use his name is always at once comforting as well as painful.

I am hurting with every part of me and tears are flowing so frequently and heavily. Yesterday I tried to hide them from Mr. C but it ended up being impossible. I just wish there was some way to flip a switch or something and feel differently. I am so tired of feeling sad and helpless.

I miss my baby boy. I also miss the feeling I once had that I was never alone, that the Lord was always there for me and I could find comfort in difficult times through prayer. I know I've covered this ground before and that I really should actively work towards sorting things out for myself.

When I was in labor there was a time when I was certain that William had passed. I remember it in a foggy sort of way (I was under the influence of a mixture of shock and morphine) and I know that I told Mr. C and Mothership that he was in the arms of the Lord. I felt that so strongly. And that is the sort of thing that was common throughout my life--from the time I was a child. I'm not saying that I would have visions or anything...but very strong feelings of a divine presence. It seems to me that that is the last that I have felt either the presence of the divine/the Lord or the presence of William/his spirit. And now it is just me. Alone.

*William was born on February 1st, 2006

anxiety

Here I go again. I told myself that I shouldn’t write about all of this, but I feel like I really need to. I need to get it out and I need to perhaps get some perspective on things.

After seven weeks of medication experiments that almost went terribly wrong, the despondency and distance are virtually gone (although my memory of them and the sense of despair they instilled in me are still very much with me). There has been a return to kisses hello or good-bye, or even just because I passed him in the hall. There has been a return to laughter and silliness and even to the ruthless tickle-attacks that I missed so much. But over the last several days I have been aware that there is something else. In the evenings he is restless. And last night he finally opened up with me about it. He said he feels like an old man, just coming home each night and doing nothing…that he needs some excitement and danger in his life. To a small degree I feel like I can understand how he is feeling. But I can’t help but be frightened by it as well…like I’m not enough to make him feel satisfied. My logical brain is thinking that while the depression is improving, there is still clearly an issue with anxiety. Since I have experienced anxiety myself I do understand the feeling of discontent and restlessness and the sense that there must be something missing or something *outside* that will make things feel better. I’ve encouraged him to talk to the doctor about it when he sees him next. It may be that there is yet another medication that is warranted, or perhaps some tinkering around with the one he is on.

I wish that I could just wake up and that we would be on the other side of all of this. I told him last night after we had talked that I was feeling upset and helpless about it all. He told me that it is a good thing that we can talk about it, that if we couldn’t then that would be something to worry about. Ugh. Tell that to my stomach, which is an acid mess right now.

no more teachers' dirty looks

Mr. C came home from work singing that song to me yesterday.

Technically, school was out last Friday. But I had to teach a professional development class to secondary teachers in my district yesterday. And there was only one teacher who gave me a dirty look, so that's not too bad. Teachers tend to be either your best or your worst students. This woman was just bent out of shape because she didn't/doesn't want to do the work that she needs to do. The class was on how to create course syllabi that meet the new district standards that will go into effect in the fall. I was on the committee that figured out what these should be, so when you add that to my experience facilitating professional development, apparently it is a forgone conclusion that I should teach the class. I was grumbling about "having" to do it, but it really wasn't that bad. And the woman who tried to give me a hard time ended up apologizing profusely by the end of the class and thanking me for giving her so many resources.

So anyway, now I am essentially done. I am driving in to work to tie up some loose ends and hopefully by the time I leave there today I will feel like I can walk out of my classroom and the school and not return until August. There is a slight chance that I will feel like I need to go back in tomorrow, but I SWEAR that I am taking ALL of July off. No work!

annoying

I realize that I tend to get way too focused on things*, so I am asking for forgiveness in advance.

It's about the rating system again. Last night Mr. C and I went to see the new John Cusack film "1408," which is rated PG 13. In the film Sam L. Jackson gets the honor of having the one line with the F-word in it. Apparently a film can maintain the PG 13 rating if they only use the F-word once.

*I'm not sure if this is proof of where I really fall on Niobe's boring vs. annoying theory. After a brief conversation earlier with Mr. C about dwarfs/little people, he seems to think that because I take some things so far (too many trivial facts and details) that I start out being uninteresting, then move into boring territory, and finally become annoying. Yikes. He said it with love, though:)

aw, what the hell!

I decided to figure out what I need, so I did the google thing. This was done with my real name, because Basilbean came up with nothing and just Basil was super boring.

Basilbean Needs Your Help
Basilbean needs a family that will be patient, consistent, kind, loving...
Basilbean needs every advantage possible to attain this goal.
it's Basilbean who clearly needs to shut the fuck up. ... Basilbean needs to exercise her right to shut the fuck up. ...
Basilbean needs to move on with someone else since Tony’s no longer around.
Basilbean needs to find out that it is her baby and take her home.
Basilbean needs to just shut up.
Basilbean needs help translating, so let’s all pull together here.
maybe Basilbean needs the viking hat protection?
Seriously, Basilbean needs to get her mouth washed out with soap :-O ...

testing

OK, so the blog rating system has really peaked my curiosity. This blog is rated by the system as PG due to my use of the word "shit" once and the word "hell" twice. On other blogs the words: murder, pain, torture, blood, suicide, death, dead, and profanity like the word "fuck" have led to ratings of R or even worse. I'm really not sure how the rating system is working, but these words all were apparently ignored on my blog (not this one). What did lead to a rating of NC 17 (wow!) was my use of the words: shoot (which I used eight times), sex, and ass. I really do think it is the sex-related words that led to the higher rating. I wonder if there is a XXX rating? I'm too embarrassed to test out a bunch of sexually-explicit words (but it may just be that using the word "sex" regardless of the context will do it.)

Let's see...

This rating is due to the use of the following words:
Hell (3X)
Sex (2X)
XXX (1X)

So I suppose if I were to check the rating it would indicate an increased use of those words (yet it continues to ignore the other words...maybe since these words are so "bad" it makes them null?). Ok, this has been enough of a distraction for now; I will try to move on to do more productive things with my day.

lack of substance

I just glanced over at the titles of my posts for June and while I was already aware that I haven't been good for much of anything lately it occurs to me how pathetic this blog is.