I wonder if people can see through my facade? If they hear me speak or look at my face do they see a woman who has moved on with her life or do they see what I want so desperately to hide… a woman who is empty and broken. A woman whose heart has shattered. A woman whose thoughts are no longer sharp but rather dulled by the ever present memory of delivering a child and having to say goodbye. Do I look different? Do I carry myself differently? Do I speak differently? Do I show the sadness behind my eyes and does it make others uncomfortable? When I laugh, do they hear that I no longer feel the warmth of joy? Do they hear that my laugh is now hollow? Do they know that nothing in my life is the same any longer? That nothing holds the same appeal that it once did? Do they understand what it’s like to open a storage box to look at ultrasound pictures and tiny footprints on paper as a way of feeling close to my daughter? Can they understand that everything I have left of her fits in a small box and that’s all I’ll ever have? Do they understand that I will never know her smell, her voice, her walk, her laughter, her eye color? Would they understand why I look at a picture from a magazine of a girl who's around the age of 2 and yearn and ache for her because that’s what I imagine Avery to look like at that age? Do they know what it feels like to lay a kiss on a cold urn every night before bed to wish my daughter goodnight? Unimaginable pain fills my entire existence. How could they know what that’s like? Who would dare put themselves there in their mind to try to understand?
If they see the real me, it makes me feel so vulnerable to them. I don’t want them to see. But if they don’t see me for what I am now, that feels even worse because it’s so isolating. It makes me feel like they don’t understand or know that Avery existed. That she was a person whom I loved. That she deserved a life and a chance… and that I've lost her forever.
Does anyone see me for what I truly am now?
