The Emotional Side Of It

So back when I posted the "A day in the life" post I said I would do a second post about the emotional aspects of all that has happened and I am finally getting around to it. There are so many things I want to say that they will probably get all jumbled but oh well, here goes. Grief is a lonely thing. I am surrounded by so many wonderful people in my life who truly care about me and my family and how we are doing but I have never felt so alone in all of my life. I have never felt so distant from people before yet had so many people who want to get close to me. There are people in a lot of similar situations who are going through similar things but none of them are in my exact situation and so I feel so alone. That is true with any situation and any grief and I am realizing that more and more. I try to express what I feel but the words just don't do it justice. I grieve so many things. I have this deep ache in my heart that longs for my child to be "normal." I want to look at her and just see Anna and not see Anna with CP or Anna with a brain injury. And that is what it is, it is a brain injury. You can call it all sorts of things but what it boils down to is a brain injury. It is classified as "mild" but it might as well be hellacious because in my heart there is no distinction. Don't get me wrong, I am thankful it is not worse, but if you think for one minute that just because my child is walking and not in a wheelchair that my pain is somehow less you are wrong. That is the problem with being "mild." You don't fit with the normal people but you don't fit with the really abnormal either. There is this grey area and that is where we are. I am trying so hard to conduct myself in a manner that I can look back on years from now and have no regrets about the way I have acted, but I am angry and I struggle daily with how to handle things in a manner pleasing to God. I feel there is someone who is mostly responsible for the way things are and after confronting him I was not told that he was sorry. I don't even mean sorry as in accepting ANY sort of responsibility, I just mean sorry that things turned out the way they did and sorry that your child is injured and sorry that life has changed for you so much. Instead I was told, "Shit happens." You know, to me, that might be something you say if you spill your beer but not in response to the loss of something like the normalcy of a child's life and a mother's dreams. It added insult to injury and it is not something I will easily forget. It makes we want to scream and yell but I know that will get me nowhere. So I have to find some way to be OK even though I am almost certain I will never get an apology. And even if I did it might not really make that much difference, Anna's situation would not change. Who knows, it might make a difference but one thing I am pretty confident of is that I will never know. Then there is the jealousy- of so many things. I am jealous of others with "normal" kids who are going and doing and taking the simple things for granted never having to stop and consider that for us those things are such a struggle. It is a battle for Anna to walk and to talk and to eat and to sleep. We have to fight hard just for the little things with her and it is exhausting. We fight for the things that most people just take for granted. We fight to get her to the right doctors, we fight to get those appointments paid for, we fight to get her the therapy she needs and the battle shows no signs of slowing. I am jealous of Kenneth because he is able to just kind of take it in stride and I can't. I want to desperately but I just can't. I hope the reason is because while I was busy the first year getting her to doctors and making sure she had what she needed he was already starting the grieving process which I did not really allow myself to start until now. So he is ahead and I hope that is the answer to why we are in such different places. It is good to be in different places though because if we were both where I am now we would fall apart. Thank God I started counseling because it is really helping me sort some of this stuff out. I am not sure if the grief will lessen or if I will just become stronger and more able to deal with it but either way I will make it through but in the mean time please be patient with me. I am trying...