How it Happened...

The other night we decided to take the kids to the local YMCA, just down the road. The pool was open until 8:30pm and we’d thought it’d be fun. It was fun. For the kids. On the way home my husband and I got into a conversation that made me laugh and cry at the same time, which is something I had never done before. I’m not sure how it all started but it was something along the lines of comparing our lives with the lives of our friends from when we were dating. I know this is something you’re never supposed to do but I suppose sometimes it just can’t be helped. Thanks to Facebook I watch them all go on extravagant vacations, buy new cars, visit family and honestly, complain about the stupidest things known to man. I’m not saying this in a derogatory way. I’m actually quite jealous. I wish my complaints were their complaints. Driving home that night, all of us reeking of chlorine, we began making fun of our life.

We’re broke and we’re making decent money. We’re packed full of autoimmune reactions to food. My kids wear thrift store clothes. We own a condo in a state that no one lives in anymore and no matter how many times there are wild fires, it just can’t seem to burn down. Our idiot dog, who we love dearly, has cost us more money in broken bones than we paid for him. About 8 times more to be precise. Tyler’s car has been running on three cylinders for two years. We were told to buy a new engine or it wouldn’t last 6 weeks. The tint in the windows is so old it’s become bubbly and you can hardly see outside. Every time he gets gas he pours another bottle of oil in it. In the rear, by the exhaust, the car is completely black from all the smoke.

            “Now I’m gonna go home to my $4,000 dog and wash the chlorine and urine off my body. Why go to beach when you can go to the ‘Y’ and swim in everyone else’s body fluids? Tomorrow I’m gonna hope like always that my car doesn’t explode…” Tyler was ranting on as we drove home. He was laughing hysterically. I was laughing and crying.

This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. It isn’t how it started. When we were dating we took lots of vacations. I had lots of energy and I genuinely had fun with the kids. We swore we’d take vacations alone every few years. We’re beach people. That’s who we are. Were. Are? I don’t even know anymore. Who are we?

Most days I don’t even think about it. But the pain and the effects are still very real. Before we lost our first baby. Before we lost Wyatt. Things just went terribly wrong. Those closest to me knew it and saw it, and I think they might see it still. It might be worth telling, especially if telling it can give me closure.

We were a young couple who moved at 34 weeks pregnant with no support system in place at the next destination. The rain didn’t stop for four months (and I have seasonal depression). My daughter who excelled in school was falling into a deep depression when faced with a less than adequate school system. My son who had almost tested completely out of the Autism Spectrum regressed so badly he was unable to shower himself anymore. As if all of that hadn’t been a shock enough to my system, then you add the birth of Lexi. Lexi; the straw that broke the camel’s back. When I tell people that she screamed they like to jump in with their two cents. It usually sounds something like this: “Oh my son was the same way. If you put him down he would just cry…” Or it goes like this: “Yes, my daughter had colic. For three hours every night she screamed.” Three hours a night would have been a blessing. This girl screamed from her second week of life until her second birthday. She screamed on the floor. She screamed in the swing. She screamed in the bouncer. She screamed in the carrier. She screamed in your arms. She screamed in the crib. She screamed on the changer. She screamed in the bumpo. She screamed in your lap. She screamed from morning until night when she finally passed out. She also vomited constantly. She slept in her swing because I was so afraid she would choke and die in her sleep. Tyler was gone all day and all night without a trace. The kids would just look at me and I would try not to cry. I tried to bake like I always did. I tried to take walks with them like I used to. They didn’t have any friends. We didn’t know anyone. There weren’t any parks like there are out west. It was such a despairing time. I really tried. And then it happened. I just snapped. I know that’s a cliché term but that’s what it felt like. Tyler was gone, as always and I was changing Lexi. She was screaming and screaming as usual. And something let go. Something in my mind, whatever it was that was holding me together, it let go. I fell to floor, crying and shaking. I can’t fully explain the feeling. Utter despair? I emailed one lady that I had met in the squadron. I told her something along the lines of, “I don’t know why I’m emailing you but I think that somebody should know…” Thankfully within ten minutes she and her husband were at my door. They fed the kids, cleaned I think, I really don’t know. He talked to me a little bit; something about one person holding onto a weight and you can’t hold it alone. She told me about a wife committing suicide in their last squadron. “Found out she had to move again and used the rifle in the garage…” It was supposed to make me feel better I think. They put the kids to bed and she stayed with me all night. I’ve never been more scared of myself, and that night was just the beginning. Sometime the next day Tyler came home. She slipped out and I cried. I just remember crying until I hyperventilated. I started having panic attacks. I started becoming terrified of Tyler leaving the house. I’m not sure why because he was furious. Something about his duties as a pilot. I also stopped trying to bond with Lexi. I loved my children so much. I actually enjoyed those quiet moments at night while nursing them. Those moments are some of my best memories. But when you try and try to comfort and soothe and love a baby that just screams at you for months on end…something breaks there, too. A connection is lost when relief only comes by shutting the door and turning the monitor off.

Just weeks after that we miscarried. We didn’t even know we were pregnant. I had gone in to get an antidepressant and they did a blood test. Tyler was extremely angry we were pregnant. Right on par with the husband he had been thus far. I remember saying something close to, “Well don’t worry! We might miscarry!” Of course it was traumatic, with our house full of movers packing boxes. I was crying in the bathroom and they were shouting at me about what things I wanted in certain boxes. I went the hospital alone. There’s nothing quite like being alone when the doctor looks at an ultrasound screen and says, “Yup! Your womb is empty!”

It was a 12 day drive to Idaho. We left North Carolina the week before Christmas. We needed to stop at rest areas so I could continue to take care of the remnants of the miscarriage. There’s nothing more comforting than the bathrooms at a Flying J truck stop. I remember looking out the window on the drive and wondering how fast we needed to go for me to die if I jumped out of the car. I certainly didn’t want to just get severely injured. Since we happened to be homeless over Christmas Tyler thought it would be a great idea to stop in Colorado to stay with relatives. I was a wreck. I wasn’t eating. I was planning out a quick death. I begged him not to. I still remember standing in his father’s driveway while he threw the keys and screamed some things at me. Later his family would complain to him that I “wasn’t very warm and friendly.”  Later down the road they would lecture that at Wyatt’s funeral I wasn’t very welcoming. Enough said.

Idaho was a nightmare. I thought when I saw the big open skies again that we were back in the west. But this was a frigid west. It was -12 degrees when we got there and the TLF’s on base wouldn’t turn the heat up past 67. Even with the oven on and door open we couldn’t get warm. After just two days we were kicked out to make room for people from Singapore (usually families stay until they can find a house), so we moved into the Hampton Inn. Not only is that expensive but there’ isn’t much to do with three kids in one hotel room. Then we all got rotavirus. All of us. In one hotel room, taking turns in the bathroom. Lexi was hospitalized for several days. We tried for two months to buy a house and couldn’t. After speaking with the principle of the only school in Mt. Home (and learning he had no idea what an IEP was) we moved to a hotel in Boise. After three months in a hotel room we found one rental. Just one. So we took it. Lexi was almost ready to turn one but from living in a hotel room she couldn’t walk or pull herself up on anything. She hardly crawled. The emotional effects on all of us were devastating.

Somewhere deep under the depression I still had dreams of getting back to this family that I had loved. The vision of lots of kids and happiness that had been a reality only a year before. I still wasn’t aware of how much my “snapping” had affected me. I continued to think it was just something that I’d recover from with enough sleep and time. When I found out we were pregnant again I waited and waited for the one night that Tyler was actually going to be home when I was awake. I wrote out a poem on the bathroom mirror and lit a candle next to the pregnancy test. This is before I knew that fighter pilots shouldn’t tell their wives what time they’ll be home. I stayed up as long as I could, blew out the candle, and went to bed. At some point early that morning he came home, got the message, and was seemingly happy. But I was so done being a single mom. A few weeks later I would hemorrhage and call 911. Lexi was put beside me in the ambulance and alone we went to the emergency room. It was such a nice way to learn where the local hospital is. For some reason I’ll never understand, we didn’t miscarry.

For the next six months we screamed at each other every night that we got a chance. I found out what the sex of the baby was…alone. I could hardly handle Lexi, who was still a monster. I would just shake when I had to deal with her. We didn’t do anything like I did with the other kids. There was no coloring or building blocks. I got her a trampoline and that seemed to work for a few moments. Anything to shut her up. Then one day at another ultrasound the doctor starts telling me about placental lakes and IUGR and blood flow. “Babies like this don’t usually make it,” she said. I had the three kids with me. Tyler was in Florida. I could hardly breathe. I dialed his number and had the doctor talk to him. I was admitted. Some lady from the squadron I didn’t know came and got the kids. I laid there, alone in a hospital room, listening to my son’s heart rate drop and recover, over and over. A NICU doctor showed me a cute little chart of the chances of survival if born right now and then the chances of physical complications if he survived. I kicked him out. 11 hours later Tyler walked in and we cried and cried. Everyone knows how this ends. We waited three more weeks, had a cesarean, he died. And I have never been the same.

Even throughout my ordeal with a rough recovery I would try and get back to the kids. Or get back to the way it was. Or even just do the normal things I used to do. But something was wrong that had been wrong from that day in North Carolina when something snapped. I truly thought that I had to suck it up. Or it would just get better. But at this point in life I could barely clean the house. I couldn’t get groceries alone with the kids. One day I tried to take Lexi out to lunch with a friend and I was shaking so bad I couldn’t hold the fork. Then someone mentioned adrenal fatigue. Is that it? I don’t know and I certainly don’t know what to do about it. I’m exhausted all day and I can’t sleep all night. I shake and tremble. The littlest things are just too hard. All of this is coming from a woman who was a single mom and worked three jobs. I took the kids on trips alone all over the country. I baked everyone meals, gave everyone rides, and was getting my private pilot’s license. I was not the kind of person who couldn’t handle things. I loved being busy and juggling things around. I loved being involved in the kids. Now it’s all different and I’m not sure all the rest in the world can heal it. I shake just completing simple tasks. I am filled with panic when Tyler leaves for work, still to this day. It’s illogical but the feelings are real. I don’t bake anymore. I don’t have the energy to let the kids bake or do fun projects. And then there’s Lexi. Lexi never should have been an only child. Lexi who I am still in the habit of dodging because she’s simply too difficult. No one wants to play with her because even her personality will wear you thin in moments.

And now we are looking into adoption. Brought on by our old desire to have a large, happy family. Our desire long before anything went wrong. I have been on board with that up until tonight. Tonight I was able to go for my second run this year. Tyler is at work and the house is quiet and I’m on my treadmill. And then I flashback to Texas. I would take my ipod and go running at night. Back when I was happy. Back when I was somebody. Back before I was broken. As I remember this I find myself wanting that back. I want those feelings back. I’m tired of always being in fight or flight mode. I’m mad at the fates and the cards we’ve been dealt. I know that our relationship with God is better now than it ever would have been but I’m upset that that was our journey. There are plenty of godly people who didn’t have to suffer half as much. To feel the way that I used to would be utter euphoria. Nothing that has happened to us was in our plans for life.

So we sit in the car and joke about how I haven’t gotten my hair cut in a year because we don’t have the money and we laugh. Maybe I’m fighting the flesh here but I want to be ok again. I had almost forgotten that I started my pilot’s license. I had forgotten there were things that I enjoyed doing. Then I’m mad because if I were myself again, if I were ‘normal’ again, I would be able to adopt and manage my interests. I know this certainly can’t last the rest of my life but for tonight I am upset at the unfairness of it all.