I’ve started feeling a lot of anger lately. My therapist told me that anger is a secondary emotion, that it is our response to another underlying feeling, and she’s right. I am heartbroken and I’m tired of crying so instead I’ve started to get more and more angry. I’m angry at the world for making me sad. I’m angry at pregnant people and new mothers and babies that aren’t mine. I just want to scream at the universe for what happened to me and my family and my daughter. I am angry because being sad is getting tiresome. I’m angry because that might somehow allow me to turn off my emotions and put the blame on somebody else instead of me, because I will never fully forgive myself for what happened to Ava. You can tell me over and over that it had nothing to do with me, that something just went wrong and it wasn’t my fault, and I’ll pretend I believe you, but deep down I will always blame myself. My body was supposed to take all her pieces and put them together in just the right way to create a child that could breathe and cry and one day say mama. But it didn’t. Something went wrong. Something failed. It failed inside me. It failed on my watch. A mother is supposed to protect her child from harm but mine is alone in a cemetery.

I’m trying so hard to keep my anger in check and to feel whatever is buried underneath it but it seems to rear irs ugly head unexpectedly and without warning. A man approached me the other day and asked me for money. I told him no and then actually muttered to Logan, “mommy used to give people money and believe in karma, but the universe fucked us and Ava is dead.” Which of course made me feel like a huge jerk for saying out loud to my 19-month old son, and for lying about not having money, so I went back and gave him $5. He tried to tell me his sob story and I couldn’t listen to it. I wanted to say, “wow that sounds terrible. Wanna hear how messed up my life has been lately?” Instead I wished him luck and went on my way because being angry at him wasn’t going to make me feel better.

I know the anger isn’t worth it, and it doesn’t suit me. I’m not that person. I want to be angry to protect myself from feeling the grief but I have come to realize that it will also keep me from feeling the joy. It will keep me from experiencing all the good in my life and all the good that life has yet to offer. There may come a time when the sorrow is less crippling and I won’t need my anger to protect me from the pain, but until then I will try to be brave. I will try to endure the pain because I cannot allow myself to become an angry person who doesn’t feel joy. I refuse to lose myself to the anger. I’ve lost too much already.