February, 7 months after the end of June

 So guys i went to a slam poetry show with one of my besties last night initially because it sounded like a cool new thing to try (even though poetry often gives me the icks) but her husband didnt want to go, she had two tickets, and I'm always thirsting for an adventure. 

So we went, and I am shocked to tell you all that I was completely blown away. Multiple times I had tears falling down my face feeling his words so deeply (some very very funny, and some very very moving) and they brought out feelings in me that I'd even forgotten about, or hadn't organized how to feel about, and he put them not only into words, but into beautiful words.

My friend is an artist who surrounds herself with artistic experiences like these and artistic people who inspire her and it's true that being around art really does inspire you to make art! Maybe it's why she's so talented. She never lets it go stale.

Guys my February *royally* sucked. I mean like doesn't February always suck for everyone? But seriously February was super bad. And looking back I'm realizing now that February is kinda always super bad for me. Like BAD. It wasn't completely situational (although 2 week-long stomach flus in our house in our house certainly didn't help) but just emotionally i was an all-over-the-place wreck.

I look at an app everyday that sends me through all of my social media posts all the way back to when i first got my facebook as a too-young freshman in college (so like 17 years ago?) so i can see what I was up to on this day, every year, for the past 17 years.

Every February since Oliver was born I look at it and Oliver is perhaps the cutest he ever is as a baby. 7 Months of chuckling, bubbling, butter-ball-iness. But for some reason I don't get happy when I see the pictures I'm filled with overwhelming despair and I couldn't put my finger on it until finally this year I realized that *FEBRUARY* is when ollie turned 7 months. I always say that I came out of my scarily dark PPD when oliver turned 7 months and all of a sudden it's like i had a baby that i loved and i was almost myself again, and oh how sweet he was, and the pictures just started flooding. They don't really exist a ton before 7 months.

I have a friend who told me your body responds to "trauma anniversaries". Realizing the robbery of a newborn and infant phase of your only son qualifies as trauma to me. And February is the anniversary.

It's wild, but the calendar clicked to March this week and all of a sudden I felt a lot better but made the realization *yesterday* about my "Body Keeping the Score" of the toll my PPD charged my on my time with Oliver.

The culmination of February aligning with a night full of cathartic poetry got me thinking in terms of words that could emotionally cleanse my own soul of all the things i was feeling about this and my friend told me to just go for it. And against all of my normal tendencies i decided sure why not.

So here is the poem that i wrote. (The first poem i have written since i had to write a poem in high school lol) do not laugh at me, i am painfully self conscious.

Seven months

I grew you for 9 (10) months

Held you for 6

But met you at 7 months

You, long awaited little stranger, arrived in June

I met you in February

I saw you

Watched you

Fed you

Changed you

But saw nothing

Felt nothing

Remember nothing

Until I met you at 7 months

I saw you arrive

Watched you come home

And then missed it all

It’s all gone

My mind went dark

It went to places so dark my mind doesn’t remember

Doesn’t want to remember, thereby cannot remember

So it’s gone

Other mothers meet their new little lives and are never strangers

They see it all, feel it all, relish it all, cherish it all, keep it all

I keep nothing

There was nothing to keep

Until I met you at seven months

In February I saw you.

I looked at you and I SAW you

And you were beautiful

And you weren’t a stranger

You were a wonder

A fixture

A monument

I held you and I held you close

I breathed in your intoxicating smell

I rubbed my face in your soft bouncy skin

Smushed my lips on your water balloon cheeks

How have you been here this whole time?

Why do I only get to meet you now?

I search mind and memory for any record of this miracle of a creature

And there is nothing. 

I see nothing

Remember nothing

There is only darkness

Other mothers get those moments

The newborn smells

The nighttime snorts

The muscle memory of the constant swaddles

The tiniest hands, holding their finger in a death grip for dear life.

The dead weight of a smush-worm against their shoulders

The mindless sway of a mom so tired from rocking her newborn she has forgotten she isn’t even holding a baby.

I have nothing.

I’ll always have nothing.

To me, your life began at 7 months.

I will never know you as a newborn.

I will never know the sound of your tiniest cry before you found your voice.

I will never know what your first smile looked like.

I will never know how you learned to roll over.

I will never know the feeling of your dead weight worm-smush against my shoulder.

I don’t sway.

You were a stranger

And I wasn’t there

My human shell cared for you for 7 months and my soul was absent

Consciousness gone

Self, gone.

The shell remembers nothing.

My Soul returned

When I met you 

At seven months.

My mind’s absence has robbed me

I am gutted and robbed completely

Time the other mothers get

Time I got with your sister

Precious, still, quiet, sacred time 

Has been stolen and has no means of restitution

Your sister has 7 months that you will never have

I watch you sleep at night

Tuck you in extra tight

Hang back a little longer

Thinking each second might

Re-fill that empty jar of time

Have the extra moments I’ve stolen with you totaled to 7 months of moments?

Is there any way to repay you for those moments lost?

Those moments I was able to so freely give your sister

The moments the others get from the other mothers

The moments I couldn’t give you

Will these new moments in this new moment jar ever hit the 7 month mark?

Will that make up the difference?

Will that fill the void?

Will we break even?

Its been 7 years.

7 years and 7 months.

I’ve filled that jar every day for 7 years and 7 months and I will never break even.

You don’t remember being robbed of the time.

But I carry the loss with me always.

I mourn it perpetually.

It’s extra heavy in February, 7 months after June.

I watch you sleep and think

“I owe him more moments”

I weep as I stroke your sleeping, impossibly long eyelashes

I should have been there. I’m sorry I was gone.

I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what the other mothers could have given you.

I’m sorry I couldn’t give you what I gave your sister.

I failed.

I was gone.

I fought so hard to come back

To claw my way out of the darkness

To find this stranger I so desperately wanted to meet.

This stranger I’d begged for and carefully curated.

I grew you for 9 (10) months

Searched for you for 6,

when you found me

and saved me

at 7 months.