Wishing won't make it so

On Tuesday I was out with my sister and my best friend almost all day. We had a great time - we went to a sticker warehouse (one's a teacher, the other has kids and I just like stickers, dork that I am), then we went for lunch, and finally we ended up at a great discount bookstore that has some really nice imported and Canadian books at fabulous prices.

I had a great time. Honest, I did. It's just that for some reason mid-way through the day it occurred to me that I didn't have Thomas to go home to. Maybe it was the discussion about who was looking after my friend's kids so she could come out on our adventure with us, or maybe it was the fact that there was a baby store right beside the bookstore we went to and for a split second I forgot that I didn't have a baby to buy for anymore. I don't know. But whatever the reason, I missed him like crazy.

As we drove back to my sister's house I imagined that I'd dropped him off at my Mom's and that she'd had a wonderful morning with him doing all the Grandma things she's wanted to do for so long. I imagined that I would soon get to see him again - to feel him all cuddly in his little sleepers, scoop him up in my arms, hold him tight and take him home. It felt so real. Almost frighteningly so. And so I stopped imagining it.

But oh, it also felt so good.

I miss every single little bit of that sweet little thing, and sometimes I think I'll explode from the longing. And those are the precise moments I rapidly switch gears and stop allowing myself to indulge in thoughts of him. I do another load of laundry or e-mail a friend or pick up the phone instead, forcing thoughts of my son out of my head.

Is this what life is going to be like forever? Does this seem at all fair??

Fuck.

Sorry, tonight this needs a fuck.

I'm tired. I'm so tired of pretending to be happy when I'm not and being strong when I feel weak and having to force myself to stop thinking of my child. It's not right and it's so far from fair it's sickening.

I don't pretend I'm happy all the time, of course. There are lots of times I'm genuinely happy and those times are becoming more and more frequent, but somehow, in some strange way, I still feel like a fraud. It's so hard to explain. I guess it's like I'm a new person walking around in the shell of the old person I used to be and I can't quite figure out who the new person is just yet.

I never really knew what a life altering event was until now. And I certainly didn't know the thing it altered was you, from the inside out.

But I've made it this far so I guess I'm doing something right. I don't know what it is, but I guess it's working. And since I have no other choice, I'll carry on missing my son but still surviving. Somehow.