A Year and a Half on.
<Trigger warning for medical and birth trauma>
Tears in the first few weeks postpartum that were silent because every time I cried I felt horrifying pain. So I shut it up, kept it in and only let out loud screeches as the only sound would come out.
Tears the day before her first birthday from a dream where I was told I had to be cut open again and there was no anaesthesia on hand. Tears on her first birthday as I realise it’s a year on and no one has checked in on how I’m doing with trauma. No close friends to learn on physically through any of it. Just a husband who is also traumatised seeing his wife almost die in front of him, so you try not to bring it up because he was there and know it’s not an easy job to play comforter. I don’t blame him. Tears when you get the medical report back a year and a half later and if exclaims “secondary trauma”. Not that you needed their approval. You were there. Only they classified one of your trauma’s… the one where you lost conscious and memory and almost bled to death. Not the one where you felt everything. When you felt them clean you out post baby removal. Guttered is what call it. And without the anaesthesia I can tell you that’s exactly what it was. Tears because you still feel like vomiting today remembering how you wanted to scream and run away but your hands were tied down so you couldn’t. Tears because my vomit stained hair was the least of my worries when they put an oxygen mask on me and I needed it off because I felt like I was going to loose consciousness but no was could hear me barely yelling to get it off. Tears because I’m still dealing with the trauma a year and a half on. Only with a bit more help lately and more sleep have I actually had a chance to not suppress all of it. But it’s plagued me most of this last year and a half. Tears because when I went to the GP 6 weeks postpartum with complications her face dropped to the floor and couldn’t be picked up when I told her the anaesthesia didn’t work. Tears because that was the amount of validation and acknowledgment I’ve experienced this whole time. She immediately asked me if I had a mental health professional onboard. I guess she didn’t need telling that PTSD wasn’t just for soldiers. It’s a year and a half on, and the wails are still real, the envy when 5 people you know got up and walked right out of the hospital after their caesarean and didn’t seem to bat an eyelid about it. The grief is mostly found not being able to connect to what was meant to be one of the most precious days. The day when your baby breathed its first breath. It’s like if someone died at your wedding. You’d want to go back and re-tell it, you’d want to go back and relive it, although you wouldn’t. I’m still figuring out how I’m going to hold those things together. But for now it’s pain, it’s all pain. And even though everyone else has moved on, I’m still here, grinding out the grieving. People say “ it was just one day, you have so many birthdays to celebrate”, “be thankful you’re both here”. For those comments I have nothing to say that’s not completely heartless.
But this specific day you only get once. You only get your wedding once no matter how many anniversaries you celebrate. It was meant to be this incredibly special day that I can’t go back to. I can’t mentally go back to, that I can’t see beauty in. Most things in life you don’t keep talking about are because they’re filled with shame. Tears because it still eats me up, pretty much alone. Tears because I’m not done with it, not over it, not through it. Tears because I long for the day it’s healed up enough that I can go back and celebrate the moment that was meant to be something it was utterly not.
