Selfishishly drowning in Selfishness

I feel so selfish and self-centered lately. Only thinking about me and my trials and tragedy. Only concerned with the way I am feeling. Emails and messages, text messages and letters piling up. And I can't seem to find the energy to respond to them. I feel I'm on the brink of breakdown. I haven't had one in quite some time.. maybe it's due time? I feel like the denial is happening all over again. Maybe if I don't respond, I don't acknowledge, maybe then I'll wake up and this new life I'm living will all disappear. Maybe if I run fast enough away I can walk into what it used to be. There are days I feel like a broken record. I try to find any excuse to insert Savanna's name into a conversation, I look for every opening to talk about when I was pregnant with her. I want so badly to still be a part of those mommy conversations and trips to the baby stores. I want to be excited that my baby is walking. I still talk about her as if she's here. Others on the outside.. well they don't get it. They are cordial, they smile as I recall my most precious memories--but I know they're uncomfortable. I know they are trying to find the first 'out' of the conversation.

I just hate it. Hate that this has to be my reality. Hate that this is what I ponder over. Should I mention her or should I not? I hate feeling crazy half the time. I hate hate hate this all. It's all so confusing. So draining. So mind numbingly... reality. It's my reality.. it's my life. And just trying to figure out how I fit in all of it takes so much out of me. I'm going through the motions, faking it through each day. At night's end, I ponder my grief. I don't know where I stand. I want to move forward, I want to help others.. and yet---I can't even help myself. I have gone back and forth on whether or not I should talk to someone. Maybe a counselor? Maybe group session? Maybe a chaplain? I don't know.. I don't want to be treated as a 'patient.' I am a mommy living after loss.. I can't be fixed. And so I don't want someone to try to fix me.. and certainly not someone who has not experienced this path.

Ultimately I think it comes down to the fact that I am just trying to figure out this new me. I think I have been trying so hard to be who I once was that it's confusing and conflicting. Instead of trying to be something I no longer am, I have to figure out who I am now. Now I have I new identity I am coming to find. That is what I think I am most in denial about. I don't want to have to be someone different, I liked who I was. I was confidant with the old me. But now, too much has changed. I try so hard not to put myself into a seperate category. I try not to ostrasize myself from the world, but it's hard. Because most of the world doesn't understand the new me either. So I have inverted and flipped around. I have tried to concentrate on me. Tried to pinpoint what I want out of life. The things that used to bring me down before no longer hold a significance to me anymore. My values have been adjusted and priorities have been re-arranged.

So I may seem fickle, self-involved, self-pitying.. it's not because I don't care. It's exactly the opposite. I care immensely. My heart explodes at all the wonderfulness and compassion that surrounds me. But it takes so much energy to individually recognize it. I'm in a merry-go-round of self-preservation mixed with self-realization. I am trying to accept that this is who I am now. Things change, people change. I just never expected me to change in this way. I never expected things to turn out the way they did. But.. they did. And now I'm just going in circles always finding myself in this same place. So forgive me for being slightly selfish and in my own head. I hope to be out of this soon. And I hope to feel comfortable in my own skin again one day. Because right now, my skin just doesn't seem to fit right.. and I'm beginning to wonder if it ever really and truly will.