The Truth is...

I try to smile my way through the day. I'm not feeling it, I'm never feeling it, but I make myself do it because maybe, eventually it will be true. It has to eventually be true, doesn't it? It can't always feel like this. It has to get better.

But the truth is it won't ever get better. I will always have a gaping tear in my soul where Hannah should be. It will always hurt. It will always be a sore spot. Like a pulled muscle, I'll be walking along just fine and then suddenly I'll turn a certain way and waves of pain will wash over me. That's when it comes rushing back. It hurts. It hurts now and it will hurt always. This isn't something that will ever heal.

It kills me that I still have to function in everyday life. The world wasn't affected the way I was affected. How can my tiny girl leave this world and life still goes on? Everyone can still smile and enjoy the world around them. I have lost that ability. Maybe over time I will regain some of it, but it will never truly be the same. I'll never be able to have a blind faith that good things are coming. That our struggles were enough and now we get the reward. That faith is gone, stripped away in a quiet hospital room, in a quiet delivery room, in the middle of a dark night, holding my sweet girl and crying because that was the only night I'd spending holding her. What wouldn't I give for sleepless nights with my Hannah right now.

When people ask, I always say, "I'm fine" or "Just taking it day by day." But the truth is I'm not. And I won't ever be. How could I when I am missing part of my soul. I wish people would just stop asking how I am. I want to ask back "How the hell do you think I am. How would you be?" And I feel like I am expected not just to say I'm fine, but to actually be fine. Because grief is tedious and ugly and well, it's sad and no one wants to deal with it if they don't have to. And they are tired of looking at the grieving mother, with the missing smile, the fine lines around the eyes that scream "Sadness lives here!"

So I say I'm fine and hold it together until I'm alone, until I'm somewhere where I can cry and remember. Because unless you've been through this you can never understand how it feels, you'll never grasp the truth of it. It's beyond any imagination.