Haunted

  Tonight I feel haunted. Haunted by things I said back when I was dumb and didn't think about how it would sound to myself if I got my request answered. Five years ago today I wrote a PSA to the baby living inside me that my bladder wasn't a trampoline and to learn this before she gained more weight. The problem with the statement? Before another month had passed she quit using my bladder as a trampoline and moved on to heavenly trampolines and I got left here yelling, "I didn't mean it like THAT!!!!"

  That Facebook post has haunted me randomly for almost five years now. I remember writing it and feeling doom like I shouldn't even go there. I remember wondering if I should delete it. I remember deciding that it was worded in such a way that if something DID happen to her my statement wouldn't haunt me. Ha! Boy did I have a lot to learn about me!

  That haunting changed the "normal pregnancy complaining" into trying to never complain. I'm sure I still did to a certain extent, like when my hip would grab if I didn't stay in constant motion or when I couldn't bend to pick up a dish rag off the floor. But I can guarantee you I never again griped to a kid to stop doing something. I gleefully felt like puking for the next three consecutive pregnancies, happily met my goal (and exceeded it) of weighing over 200lbs before delivery, and stubbornly refused to complain about any of it.

  But you wanna know what that didn't accomplish in the end? It didn't keep my baby here. I suffered through everything without a word of complaint and he's still gone. He's just as gone as his sister who so gleefully leaped about on my bladder. It proved to me once and for all that what you think when you're pregnant doesn't kill your kid. I still wish I hadn't said it, but I know that she didn't go off and hang herself in her cord because I did. That's something five years will give you that you don't have at day eleventeen. Perspective.

  Time doesn't heal you, it gives you perspective. It softens the rocks you throw at your own head. It changes the size of the waves... most of the time. Time gives you time to get used to wearing the ugly shoes you're wearing. Time helps you learn to live with the things you woulda, shoulda, coulda. It doesn't take them away, not all of them, but it helps you learn how to live with them in the heel of your ugly shoe. You learn how to walk with ugly shoes that have sharp rocks inside them.

  I do have to say though that Time is also a jerk. You figure out that you're still here after a few years and then you're going along your daily life crying and missing a different kid altogether and suddenly, WHAMMO!!! Time yanks something up from five or nine years ago and off you go in a puddle about THAT kid and you're like, "HUH??! Umm, hi?" And really, if you don't already know this, Time has really stupid planning on when it beats you over the head with something. It's nothing like God's planning which sends you stuff whenever you need it just because.

  God is like, "Okay, kid's birthday. Here's a gargantuan Monarch butterfly to visit you." or "Hey! You're worked up about your very public blog post? Here's the Dreams of You package you ordered June 1st! Have a nice day, Love!" Time on the other hand says, "Oh?! You're shopping at Walmart picking up pictures? Here's pictures of your daughter that you have never seen before, open the floodgates y'all! Now walk to the front and check out while blowing snot on the cashier!" and then goes off cackling to itself.

  I think the next time Time sneaks up on me at Walmart I'm gonna hit it with a Kleenex box, walk of giggling, and haunt a bag of chocolates.