Love you...Mean It

I haven't written here for a while. I have a feeling most of the posts I write here will begin like this. Because I'm not one who blogs regularly or often and so when I drop in it will be to say hello, to raise my candle in the air and whisper the words I repeat every day in my head, "I miss you, baby."
It's been 4 months. On the 10th it was 4 months.
I started working out to lose the weight i gained during pregnancy and i started eating right again and i'm doing all these things and i feel good and sometimes i'm so worried about fixing dinner and getting work done that i forget. sometimes it's a full day before I even nod a hello to this baby of mine.
but tonight is sad and i'm missing her. and i don't know what to say because i'm glad i'm not drowning in sorrow every day anymore but moving on and not consciously thinking of her every moment of every day feels like a betrayal.

4 months. is that all? has it only been that long? has it really been that long?

Sweet baby girl, I miss you. I love you. As I write those words and listen to them roll off my tongue as i speak them aloud i want to keep saying them, over and over. I love you, i love you, i love you. I mean it, so much. I hope you know that... i hope you knew how much i loved you.

2013

I made it through that first year without her.
Part of me wanted to cling to 2012, to stop the calender from changing. 2012 was all I had of her.
But I can't stop time, as much as I may want to, and it's 2013 now.
2013, a time, I hope, to get back up on my feet.
2013, I hope, will be the year I learn how to live again.
2013, I hope, will be the year i change out of these grief clothes and pick myself up off the floor.
2013, I hope, will be the year I make myself into a person worth loving, a person worth being.

I'm sitting here in yoga pants and a tee shirt that is much too big on me. There's a drink on the corner of my desk, because I need one.
I haven't slept in weeks, and on the 30th of December I was filled with such grief and longing for my baby girl I cried out, saying I just want to die.
I don't know how to live in a world where my daughter doesn't.
And so I keep running, running over all these pieces of glass that symbolize my past and they cut into my feet and make them bleed but if I stop running I'll have to face everything I'm so skillfully avoiding and I'll have to come face to face with my grief and turn it over in my hands and examine it and maybe even invite it in for some tea and let it stay a while so I can get to know it a little better. Maybe grief will even spend the night so I can examine it in it's sleep, if grief ever sleeps.
For that reason alone - because facing my demons scares me almost as much as delivering a dead baby did - I will keep running.
I'll sit here and take another sip of my drink and wrap my sweater around me a little tighter to ward off the chill. I'll turn on loud music so I can no longer hear death knocking at my door. And in avoiding I will be running.
I hope in 2013 I can learn to stop running.