The Melancholy of My Loss

Scalding water pelts my folded up body sitting crouched on the grimy floor of our walk-in shower that suddenly feels too big despite it being intended for one. For the last five years, the shower was for two, now I sit here alone feeling the slimy mildew slide against my bare ass as the lines of tile press their patterns into my stretched skin. While the engorged hemorrhoid no one warned me about claims most of my focus over my physical state these days, I do manage to notice that I am crying. Again. Always crying. Crying crying crying. Mostly to others, but sometimes in the shower. Sometimes now, I suppose. 

The in-laws are downstairs. That’s why I’m crying. I cry every time someone comes over. I need them to see it. See me. Instead of her. I bet he’s holding her right now. Or maybe he tried to put her down. Or maybe Grandma is cradling her, attempting to sneak in a kiss every time my husband takes his gaze away despite “totally getting it” and agreeing that our boundaries “are smart with the holidays coming up.” But of course that doesn’t apply to her and “her” baby. As if she was the one curled up on the shower floor nursing a stitched vagina while clots the size of ping-pong balls oozed over lacerations and disappeared down the drain as if they never existed in the first place. As if I never existed in the first place. 

These thoughts are unfair. They villainize the ones who are showing up, helping and loving us but I can’t help but think the thoughts as they cloud in a tight gag around my brain and swell my chest until it heaves in guttural gasps spitting shower water from my trembling lips. 

As soon as I saw my husband’s mother holding the baby and looking at me with all the unasked questions in her eyes, the faucet spouted. I cried, pursing my lips together in a pathetic attempt to pretend I was trying to stop the tears even though I wasn’t. I didn’t want to because if I did the tears would just build up in my face and chest until it ached and leaked, in a mocking resemblance to what my boobs now did if Baby didn’t eat enough, or correctly, or frequently. Already my husband is giving her formula. I should cry about that too, add it to the list. 

In response to the tears, she asked if I wanted my baby back. If I wanted to hold her, but I didn’t. I just didn’t want anyone else to hold her. How could I tell her that what I wanted was for her to not exist at all so I didn’t have to untangle the confusing knots churning in my stomach that didn’t want to care for her but felt responsible enough to not want anyone else to care for her either. Because that only left my husband whom I trusted, but how could he choose her over me? How could I tell my mother-in-law that what I wanted was my husband back when he was standing ten feet from me in the kitchen figuring out how the bottle warmer worked because I couldn’t get my boobs to do it for us. 

So, I sobbed. I needed the globs of tears to get out of my body like all the other fluids making their slow exit. I sobbed because he wasn’t here asking me to scrub his back after years of blue-collar labor made him unable to reach all the way around and why have a long loofa when you had me to do it for you all those years? Long loofa. I guess we should add that to the extensive shopping list that lives permanently on our phones as a collaborative note, which used to feature things like ‘deodorant,’ ‘spaghetti sauce,’ ‘peanut M&Ms,’ ‘pokemon packs,’ or ‘legos,’ but now only features things like ‘baby nose sucker,’ ‘baby swaddles (she only likes the ones with the zipper),’ ‘baby gripe water,’ ‘baby aquaphor (butt),’ ‘baby aquaphor (face),’ ‘baby aquaphor (diaper bag),’ and now, ‘long loofa.’ 

When the wracking becomes hiccups then abates into deep breaths, I finally shut off the water to roll my broken and used body out of the shower and onto the bath mat in front of the toilet before dragging my towel from the rack--the black one so I won’t have to worry about scrubbing blood stains from it in some distant future where I’m sure I’ll care about that again. 

There are bits of her everywhere. She’s invaded our room from the changing table in front of the TV we can’t use anymore to the bassinet that blocks my side of the bed. The alien-looking avatars on Reddit who claim to have been exactly where I am say that the hormones begin to level after six to eight weeks and that I’ll eventually come to love my baby. But those promises are so foreign and disconnected to the rawness of my emotions that I can never fathom a time when I won’t mourn the love and attention she’s taken from my husband. 

After I gingerly pat my whole body dry as through one wrong move and the whole thing will shatter, I stack the popsicle pad with all its wet and soothing accouterments in my disposable diaper-like underwear and tug on the (also black) sweatpants and XXL T-shirt I bought in a three pack from Amazon towards the end of my pregnancy. The only three shirts I still wear though the pregnancy weight is sluicing off my sagging body as my nausea refuses to allow me to eat anything other than dry Cheerios and water. People are telling me I look great. I’m reminded it’s uncouth to respond by telling them that it's just the depression. That what they mean to say is that I look thinner than they expected for just having a baby. 

I’ve stalled. My heart was torn out and left with my husband downstairs who busies himself with the baby, but my anxiety has me trapped in the empty upstairs hallway. I can hear his footfalls as he carries her around the house cooing to her and singing I love you, a bushel and a peck. A bushel and a peck and a hug around the neck. But the words fall short of finding their way up the stairs. The loneliness of my post-partem depression is wrapped around me like a straightjacket. The air in the hallway is thick and layered in a surreal feeling, as though I’m swimming through the melancholy of my loss. 

“Honey?” 

His voice punctures the macabre bubble I hadn’t realized sucked all the air from the second story. 

“Yeah?” I hear my shaking voice reply, but don’t have any recollection of my brain forcing it from my lips seconds ago. 

“Come on downstairs.” 

It’s a command he knows I need. Not options that trigger my body into fight or flight, but simple and easy directives. 

He tells me everyone is gone. Baby is swaddled, sleeping in her Pack-and-Play after being fed and changed by not me. He pulls me to the couch after letting me stare at her precious, tiny body for seconds or minutes, and tucks a blanket around me before handing me my water. 

“Do you want to watch me play some and then we can get ready for bed?” 

I nod and swallow thickly around the lump in my throat. I asked him to distract me when we got home from the hospital and watching him play video games has become my safe space. A kernel of peace lodges into my chest as he continues to guide our little family into the future. He promises everything will be just as we imagined, better even. I trust his promises. He sits besides me, waits for me to claim my part of him with my head on his stomach, and picks up the remote controller for us to get lost in the world of BioShock.