aproclivity

I'm not sleeping very well. Like at all. I was up until six this morning like not able to focus on anything or get any work done or do anything but half-watch episodes of Merlin. I couldn't even watch something new; it needed to be something I was familiar with because I kept getting lost. I knew I should sleep, and I tried to sleep, but I keep having horrible nightmares. EJ's home now, and they told her stuff from the autopsy. Thankfully, she didn't let them cut it open, because she didn't want to do that to it on top of everything else, so instead they did a virtual one with like a catscan and shit. But every time she calls me, which was pretty often yesterday, she tells me something new about him.

Him. She's named it Jonathan Aiden after her best friend who was murdered, and she loves it, which makes everything so much more hard. But the thing never had a chance, it only had the frontal part of it's brain developed and like had webbed fingers and it's skin was transparent in places and there's no way it would have lived. Even if she had known about it, and had the best prenatal care, because of all of her illness, this would have happened anyway and they would have recommended that she have aborted it anyway, just for that if not even for her health.

Further, the baby was dead a week. I can't remember if I explained this in my last post, but they gave her this envelope thing. Well, they gave it to me. It's like a twelve by twelve felt square, blue with eyelet lace around the edge. It doesn't seal, but it does tie. And what's inside is soft and squishy. I didn't open it, I couldn't, but Brien peeked inside to see if EJ should ever get it. (She gave it to me with the caveat of wanting it someday but not now, and I'm the only one who wouldn't give it to her just because she asks.) Anyway, what's inside it is HORRIBLE. Literally horrible. There's like a baby blanket and a baby bonnet and baby booties and the tape measure they used to measure a dead baby, and foot prints and hand prints (of it's webbed hand!) and hair from it. And a picture. So sitting in the top of my closet here at school there is a picture of a week old fucking dead baby.

They also gave her this thing called "a mother's handkerchief." It's blue and shit with the same sort of lace, and it's folded around a placard with an angel on it. On the back it says "THE MORE TEARS YOU CRY THE MORE YOUR BABY KNOWS YOU LOVE HIM." They gave this to my broken little sister who gave birth to a dead baby in a toilet with no inclination that she was pregnant. I'm so rageful over this. Like, I don't even know. And EJ keeps having flashblacks to it every time she goes to the bathroom. Like she can't use it alone just incase something happens again. And now she needs to wait for her milk to dry up.

I'm still worried she's going to try and kill herself. I don't think it's quite set in yet for her. But in a few weeks she's going to realize that this was all she wanted, and now it's gone. At least she let the hospital take care of all the funeral arrangements. He'll be buried with other babies sometime in the Spring, and they'll be a service said. It's better then her having to like...deal with all of the shit that comes with planning a funeral, and really what it would come down to is me doing it, which I so can't deal with.

I know there's a reason they do this stuff for some mothers, people who have known and planned and loved their baby for however long they knew about it. Like people who rubbed their bellies and called it by it's name and planned for it. EJ didn't do any of that. Granted, if she had any idea that she could have been pregnant she would have done everything in the world to try and hold onto it, but she didn't. This was a parasite that had been making her seriously ill for seven months. All of her symptoms are gone now, the constant coughing, the absurdly high sugars, everything, the inability to breathe. Apparently the baby was like putting something into her blood or something. I don't know. I don't understand it.

I just don't understand any of this. My heart is breaking for EJ, and I'm so angry with the universe on her behalf. I'm starting to think maybe Brien is right and somewhere in my familial line someone put a curse on us or something. And now I need to try and read a book called "The Joys of Motherhood" for my African Lit class where the main character loses two kids in 72 pages. I was supposed to present on it, but I just can't. Like, I'm not a sobbing mass (you know me, I only cry at TV and shit) but still, it would be hard to come in and approach this analytically right now when my sister keeps calling me sobbing about it.

There should be much doing of the homework, but there's not. I just can't seem to focus. And now this is so long that I've written through five songs, so I'm just gonna stop. If you see me, hug me. I need it. Also, thanks for all the well wishing and distractions. I wouldn't have been able to do this without you guys, especially Bri, Steph, Brien, Annie and Maggie. <3.

( Cut for the picture of the placard. )