Afraid

I’m so tired of being afraid all the time. I wish I could just go to sleep and wake up seven months from now with a live, healthy baby in my arms, and my 2 year old Shiloh running around the house. But no. Instead, I’m always expecting the worst, in everything. If Andreas isn’t home in time from surfing, I picture him unconscious, face down in the ocean. If he is late from work and doesn’t call, I automatically assume he’s at the hospital because of a car accident. If I sleep on my right side, instead of my left, I worry that something will happen to Shiloh’s sibling if caught up in the cord. I’m even afraid because I am verbalizing my fears. What if they come true because I say it out loud? Am I jinxing myself? G-d forbid anything else happens in my life to drag Andreas and me down. I don’t know that we’d survive it. We are barely surviving as is.

I’m so tired of being afraid all the time. Will this ever change? I’m not able to enjoy one of the most enjoyable times in my life- pregnancy. I feel so robbed. Robbed because I don’t have my daughter, robbed because I don’t have my father, robbed because not only have these vital people been ripped away from me, but my happiness and hope have been ripped away as well. I don’t want to talk about “when the baby is born” (I actually get angry when people bring it up!), I don’t want to know the sex, or buy maternity clothes, or give the child a name, or set up a nursery, or put my name on the waiting list for daycare one day. I can’t do it. I did all of this for Shiloh, and look where it got me…. look where it got her.

I’m so tired of being afraid all the time. And it’s only going to abate once I deliver a healthy, live baby, not abort. Then I’ll be sleeping on the floor of the nursery, listening for breathing, worrying about SIDS instead of SADS (like a friend recently informed me). I’m fearful of even talking about this, so I’m going to stop now. 

I will though, be so bold as to say that fear is equally as encompassing as grief. But just like I don’t want to have to grieve anymore, I don't want to be afraid anymore. Unfortunately, neither of those wishes will come true. Like my grief, my fear will be perpetual, my fear will be on the forefront.