This is heavy. Really heavy. And I’m so lost.
I lost a child 2 years ago, I lost my 2nd child some months ago. It’s obviously been really hard on me, it would be on anyone. I’ve genuinely lost myself entirely and I’ve spent the last 2 years just trying to survive. Just trying to figure out why I’m still here. I go to work. I have hobbies. I write and draw and craft a lot. I also have pets I care for. I know grief hits men differently but how different can it truly be? Anyways, with my child’s birthday/Memorial Day coming up I’ve been going through the motions just dealing with how I’m feeling. I’ve been pouring it all into writing. I haven’t had any moments of just breaking down sobbing until today. My partner brought the mail in and in it was a bill from a genetic testing company. I opened it and just staring at the bill brought up some traumatic thoughts that I haven’t had in a while.
Thoughts of self blame and natural curiosity of is there a reason this happened? I haven’t recieved the test results so I just have a bill and no answers. I started crying. Just crying. Shedding some tears against my will. And for some reason this bothered him? He started off by telling me we need to be stronger and stop letting the emotions get us down. Mind you, I was just having a singular moment that I couldn’t control in the moment. I don’t just enjoy crying… I literally hate it.
I’m usually pretty good about keeping it private because I don’t want to ruin other peoples day with my feelings. It’s how I’ve always been idk. He kept going on about how a stupid bill shouldn’t have me crying like this and that I need to toughen up. I kept trying to explain to him that it isn’t about the bill at all and he just couldn’t care less.
He said he’s been dealing with enough crap and that he doesn’t need me crying and making shit worse. I wasn’t trying to make anything worse. I was just having a moment. It turned into this huge argument and him yelling about how he does so much for me and how I’m so ungrateful and disrespectful. How I’m just trying to add bullshit to the stuff he was already dealing with. I have a job. He doesn’t. He’s not the only one stressed out about bills and everything else. He’s not the only one dealing with stuff. But it seems like he’s the only one who’s allowed to express his frustration or visibly have a bad day.
Him screaming about how he was having a decent day until I started my “shit” just has me spiraling. I’m fighting the urge to just put myself in the hospital for emotional help. I wasn’t having this hard of a time with their passing until this happened. Now I feel like I just can’t have a hard day or express my sadness if it’s around him. I feel like I have to be fully aware and when and where I let myself show sadness or be open about it. I didn’t think that me crying would just piss him off to that extent but it did and him telling me I’m the issue has me just numb. Am I seriously the asshole here? Seriously? I feel like I’m going crazy and I don’t know what tf I’m supposed to do anymore. I’m so fucking tired. Of everything. The will to live is already so hard to find every single day.
Edit to add: To clarify, since this is somehow an issue, both of my children died in utero. The first at 38 weeks. A fully developed child waiting to be born, born sleeping instead. The second was born sleeping at 40 weeks, again, a fully developed child waiting to be born. They had toes, fingers, lips, eyelashes, lungs and everything else. They also had names. They had parents. They had clothes. They had family. They had bedrooms. Most of all, they had FUTURES. Their caskets were smaller, sure, but I can promise that I, and every other loss mom, has cried just as hard as one another regardless of timing of death. If there is one thing that we all understand, it is the pain of having to bury or cremate a child, the pain of outliving a child. We understand the gap
that’s left behind when you have to say goodbye. I’ve never talked to a grieving mother and asked how old her children were… because it didn’t matter to me. Whether it was miscarriage or after birth/later in life loss, we could cry together over the fact that we would no longer have the life and futures we planned. You don’t get to insinuate that I’ve somehow “misled” people by not including the times of their deaths. My children died. Is that not enough? I gave birth to both of them. I went through pregnancy. I gave birth while grieving one of the worst possible things a human can grieve. Their lives aren’t less valuable because we didn’t get to take them home. The grief we’re feeling isn’t any less soul crushing because they were robbed of the opportunity to take their first breath. The personal jabs, bold. I won’t even entertain that because I know who I am. I’m a good person. An amazing person actually. Screenshot in the comments for reference.
