An awful day

My mother made me cry twice this morning, hurt me terribly, very unintentionally. She started talking about things I've already said to my husband. That I should work on getting back to the gym and eating more nutritiously and lose some more weight, that it might help me get pregnant more easily and make another pregnancy more healthy. Coming from her it felt like criticism from a quarter I didn't expect. It cut me badly. And from there, I started crying again, going over the same territory I've gone over and over and over.

Later, after I'd pulled myself back together, she gave me a website to check out. Recommended by people as a place to go after a loss like mine. I've already been directed there and elsewhere. I know, I know that she was trying to be useful and helpful and make up for our earlier conversation. She had no way of knowing that last night after she went to bed, I cried to my husband about how much I hated being directed to websites like that or being asked if I am looking for or have found a support group for preterm labor or infant loss or if I've yet looked for a grief counselor or a therapist who can help me out. Because while I logically know that people are trying to help me and trying be useful and really aren't equipped in themselves to deal with this kind of loss and devastation, what it feels like is something else entirely. It feels and sounds much more like 'Please, do you mind just picking up and going over there? You are crying all over the carpet. You are making a mess with all this grief and sadness. Perhaps if you just go over there and deal with it - preferably behind closed doors - it would be better.'

I already feel so alone and cut off and to get this sort of feeling from my mother too was just too much. I started sobbing again, and it was obvious how upset she was that she had somehow upset me. I felt awful, because I know she doesn't understand what hurt me or why, just that I had been wounded by her.

Later on, Dh and I went out and ended up at the little place we were married nearly 4 years ago. We sat down and started talking and in our conversation, somehow I led Dh to believe I was asking for a divorce. The pain and resignation on his face nearly killed me. It's the farthest thing from what I want - but I don't know quite how to get on from here. We're both in pain and he wants me to be ok and I want to be ok for him and cause him less pain and I've tried but I can't just will myself to be ok. It hurts me to cause so much of his pain on top of what he feels. He said he cannot live with losing me. I can't promise that that hasn't happened already, because what will I become? What if the new person I become is unlovable? I don't want him to be tied to a miserable, bitter hag for a wife. I want him to be happy and contributing to his unhappiness eats away at me.

My life is so unrecognizable right now. It feels like some horrible dream, except I look around and know I won't wake up from this. Somehow, I've got to find a way to pull it all together and make it resemble something like a life. How can I do that when there are so many pitfalls and landmines all around me? When even the two people I love most in the world cut me to the quick (to be fair, it's a far shorter journey than it used to be) and I can see how much I wound them?

I saw someone say somewhere - and it's probably an adaptation on some pearl of wisdom passed down through the ages - that this sort of thing can't be gotten over or around or under - that the only way past it is through it. But it's like an underwater tunnel and just a brief way in I already feel like I'm drowning and can't find which way is up to get light and air.