9 months

36 weeks to the day that they were here and gone

the time it should have taken for them to grow big and healthy

that's how long it has been since my girls were in my arms, in T's

time just keeps moving along, or is it slowing down? i can't tell. i don't care.

now that Ayla and Juliet are gone i find that i worry much less (and more, but right now let's focus on the less). im just not as concerned with other people's issues as i used to be. the complaint box is full folks, and i stuffed it myself.

late for work? eh no problem

you don't like me? cool, im not real fond of you anyway

think im a bitch? awesome, one less person i have to smile at and pretend to

truly, unless you are in the friends and family category, i really don't want to hear your shit. im kinda over it.

this new attitude, bristly as it may sound, isn't entirely so. to completely understand you would have to have known me before this tragedy, before my world crumbled before my eyes and i sorted through and saw that only pieces of it were worth gluing back together.

you would have to have known what an open, understanding person i was, maybe the most empathetic you could imagine. as it would happen those traits happen to go hand in hand with a lovely naivete, a level of comfort with knowing everyone else's feelings. i was sweet and i was happy. some might say i was too nice, too willing to go out of my way for others. that poor girl had no idea what was coming her way.

im not saying that im all bad and mean now, i just have cut the corners. i certainly haven't changed all of my personality, but i am a little harder, a little less accommodating. im not a doormat. i don't have room in my heart for everyone's troubles. i can't bear to think of the issues of all who cross my path. i would seriously lose my mind, or what's left of it.

i am trying to come back to a place of peace, to love what memories are left of my girls and my pregnancy with them. my brain (smart thing) has only let me keep a precious few. i went through months of mind-numbing grief and there were nights days when i couldn't spell, couldn't get through a sentence without errors in every word. there were moments when i couldn't speak, for the lack of words in my recall. when someone would remind me of a shared story and i had no clue what they were talking about. the way i don't remember the winter, save that one snowy day we took lukey out in the snow.

there must be some bioemotional reason that i went through those stages, that so many of us have. i know that many of you have too. my brain has blotted some of those terrible moments and months of grief after away like a tissue on a tear.

unfortunately, it has smudged some of the other times away, the happy times. all that i'd like to remember. maybe my brain knows something that my heart doesn't. maybe one day it will all come back to me, when i am able to process more of what this body has been through, and what that has done to my soul.

maybe

but i will never be the same