Lost and lonely

This week I feel so lost and lonely. I did not realise how much Max's due date had been in my mind for the last four months, nor how its passing would leave me feeling adrift, without an anchor, and with no dry, safe land in sight. I don't know what to do with the time that now stretches endlessly in front of me. This last week has felt like the symbolic end of Max's life, but only the beginning of mine - the beginning of the life I have to try to live without him. Today I wish that I would be struck down on the spot so that no longer have to contemplate this. On other days I feel shadows of my old self in my determination to keep going and to somehow find peace. It's a confusing and exhausting time. I don't know where to find the energy.

After a lovely chat with Anika last night I miss her more than ever. She is making tentative plans to come back to Melbourne and they seem so promising - child care enquiries, job applications - but I'm afraid to go along with them. I want a sign, somehow, that their return is a sure thing before I get my hopes up. I worry that having to let them go, again, will spin me back to the bottom of the ladder I'm every day trying so desperately to climb. I almost can't imagine how wonderful it would be for her and Sasha to be only a few streets away from me and part of my everyday life once more.

Anika and I in happier times

I also miss Kate, though it sounds silly to say. I feel lately that I am constantly throwing myself at her and that she is just as often withdrawing away. She has a whole new set of responsibilities - a law degree - and less time than she had before. She has discovered that her uncle has terminal cancer, which I know to be a strain on her mind. I know it is unfair of me to expect her to have me in her every thought, but I think I just feel so desperate to have someone by my side that I must be a constant source of stress and annoyance for her.

I have not contacted Sharon since her baby was born. I don't want her to feel any of the sadness and sorrow and envy I feel towards her and her son. I feel that anything I do or say is infected by it and impossible to hide so I say nothing at all. I know this is not the best way to deal with this situation, but it's all I feel capable of. I have not seen Isaac's photo and I am afraid to. I am so afraid to see what Max should look like right now; to see a baby breathing and screaming and robust when the last one I saw was dead in my arms.

I want these thoughts and images to stop. Some days I have respite from them, but it is as if when they come back that they are twice as distressing as before for me having forgotten them. It's like when you miss a week at the gym and when you return you can't believe how much it hurts all over again; how quickly you lost your fitness.

Kate gave me these flowers on Saturday: beautiful yellow roses that have softened and bloomed in the days since then. I look at their colour and wish I felt like that inside. Sunny and bright, rich and warm.