16. Sometimes I felt so fucked.
21 May 2012 Leave a Comment
When August died, I remember feeling wild, crazed, indignant: This kind of shit didn’t happen to anyone else; just to us. Why did it happen to us?? Why did everyone but me get to keep their babies? Why was I the one who turned out to be so fucked?
Of course, that wasn’t true, both fortunately (for self-absorbed, myopic ol’ me) and unfortunately (for everyone else). Babies do die. August is not the only one. I have a new friend whose month-old baby has been in the NICU his whole life and is likely going to die, perhaps sometime soon. This kills me: the inert feeling of wanting to help, to fix it, and being unable to. The feeling of knowing what she, his mother, is about to go through, and how awful-horrible-mind-blowingly-insanely-world-shatteringly-devastating it’s going to be. And not being able to head it off. Ha! I’m not god. Not a saint or a miracle worker. Too bad. If I were, I would save all the babies. Not in a right-to-life kind of way; in a healing-mamas’-broken-hearts kind of way. I would heal all the babies whose bodies weren’t designed to live outside their mamas’ wombs. I would enable clocks to turn backward, just enough to change that one little event in time, that accident, that fumble, that brief interruption in an otherwise watchful gaze — whatever it was that allowed that baby to slip out of this world and forever away.
My advice to my friend this evening was ridiculous: Don’t go to IKEA. Everyone there is pregnant or has a chubby-cheeked little toddler with glossy, curly hair and graham cracker crumbs around a sweet little rosebud mouth — or they have both the toddler and the rounded belly of pregnancy. And they’re so smug about it! They wear the self-satisfied smiles of people whose present and future are assured: evening comedy shows on TV, juice boxes and Cheerios in little plastic bowls, child-sized pajamas printed with ducks in the laundry bin, kisses at bedtime. They get to keep their babies.
If you go to IKEA, or for a walk around the lake, where new mothers push their little ones in jogging strollers as they try to melt away the pregnancy fat, you will develop the incorrect perception that everyone in the world gets to keep their babies but you. I used to sob and rail at E about it — How could this have happened? — my hands open and upturned, empty, beseeching — How could things have gone this wrong for us? E, grim-faced, would shrug. “We won the shitty lottery,” he would say. I knew there was nothing more to say, and I hated that. There was no good answer. We were all alone in the horror of it. No one we knew had ever gone through anything like what we were going through.
Except now we know several people who have gone through it, or something similar. And we’re all fucked.
I have attended a support group for bereaved parents since three weeks after August died. I look at the other women and men in the group and they seem beautiful to me, full of love and grace, and somehow, in a way I absolutely can’t explain, even lucky. I have never looked at them as if they’re fucked. And yet, me? Fucked. Utterly.
Except… It doesn’t seem quite so much that way anymore. I got over my maybe-I’m-not-a-mom complex a while back. I feel very, very lucky that we got to have a second child. Sometimes I lie down on our bed and nurse her into a nap, and shiver at how lucky I am: Here is this big, chunky baby lying next to me. I get to feel and smell her skin. She is ours and she is beautiful. So, so lucky.
I hope my friend feels lucky again someday, too. I hope that with all my heart.
15. Sometimes I feel spiritually bereft.
23 Apr 2012 2 Comments
I have done so much reading since August died about the experience of losing a child, and one of the most interesting topics for me has been the spiritual side of this experience, if there is one.
I am not religious and never have been. Always, my spirituality was something very private and very much my own, wrought from a jumble of things that were both precious to me and difficult to put into words: bits of poetry and philosophy that spoke to me; heart-swelling, meditative moments experienced beneath starry skies; hours-long, late-night talks with my best friends that made me feel as if we were tapping into something enormous and profound…even, yes, things I “figured out” while taking mind-altering substances. I filed these feelings and perceptions away, mixed them together, and sensed in them some kind of beautiful truth. And always, these perceptions were positive. I felt spiritually connected to the universe. I believed that what many other people called God was actually, simply, love. I felt able to tune in to that current of love and be filled with and healed by it. I believed we were all connected — humans, animals, plants, water, the earth. All connected by love, and empowered by each other. I believed in possibility. I was truly agnostic: All I knew was that I didn’t know, and I was open to anything. I believed deeply and gladly in that quote from Shakespeare’s Hamlet, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”
When August died, a harsh and sudden change happened within me: I no longer trusted my instincts. Always, I had operated largely on strong gut feelings that steered me truly. I relied on them. After August died, that sense of inner truth and knowing was just…gone. It got twisted and fucked up when this thing happened that was so against everything I had ever wanted or expected.
My spirituality was gone along with my instincts, all in a second. I felt betrayed by what I had previously understood to be a benevolent universe, and that shut off any sense of belief, or faith, or openness. In essence, I was suddenly unable to perceive anything except my own, direct experience — those things I could see, touch, hear, feel. And I resoundingly, gapingly, did not sense August.
I read about people who sensed their dead, beloved children just “beyond the veil.” About people who contacted their dead children in dreams or through psychic mediums. People who saw the same bird on their morning walks every day and believed that bird embodied the soul of their departed child. People who were comforted by these perceptions, since they meant their children were, in some way or form, still around.
Since August died, I’ve never sensed his presence in any way. I’ve never had a message from him in a dream or a psychic reading. Even my atheist friend once said she felt he was nearby somewhere, and that he was glad I had friends around to help me through this. I felt jealous that my friend could sense this. All I could sense was that he was Gone, with a capital G. No trace of him left behind; no aura, no spiritual residue, no message from beyond the veil. Everything that August ever was was simply gone.
Over two years later, I’m still wishing and searching for contact with him. (Will I ever stop wishing for that? Probably not.) I feel angry that he hasn’t visited me in a dream or a psychic vision. I feel jealous of other people who seem to have psychic or spiritual experiences that I just don’t have. I want those experiences, too! I want to know that August is still around, somehow.
I used to think our souls couldn’t disappear when our bodies broke down — they must transmute, like energy, into a different form, maybe into the collective unconscious, maybe into another body-as-vessel. But where did August’s soul go when his body died? It didn’t go anyplace where I’ve been able to find it. And that pisses me the fuck off. I wish he would send me a message. It could be really short and simple: “Hey, Mom. I know you loved me and wanted me. Sorry I couldn’t stay.” That would be plenty; that would be, oh, so much.
But instead I get nothing. No contact from the Other Side; no shivery, meaningful moments of sensing that my departed son is somehow still with us. I’m like the guy in my favorite Buzzcocks song:
What do I get? No love.
What do I get? No sleep at night.
What do I get? Nothing that’s nice.
What do I get? Nothing at all, at all, at all, at all…
Because I don’t get you.
14. Sometimes my brain didn’t work right.
17 Apr 2012 Leave a Comment
Two days after August was born, we had to drive to the funeral home to make arrangements for his cremation. It was a chilly, rainy morning. E drove, slowly and carefully, while I lay back in the passenger seat with the back of the seat reclined. I wasn’t supposed to be up and walking around yet.
At the funeral home we sat on small upholstered chairs across a large, dark desk from a man who looked at us sympathetically as he asked us questions in a gentle voice. We answered as well as we could.
At one point, the man said something, I don’t remember what, but something that made me think August’s body was there, in the building somewhere. I sat up straighter.
“You mean, he’s here?” I asked. My heart had started to pound. I felt more alert than I’d felt in days. “Can I…” My words trailed off. I wanted it so badly I couldn’t ask.
The man paused and looked at me; his eyes widened slightly. He seemed to be searching for words. Looking back, I realize he must have understood that I was a crazy woman — the mother of a dead baby — and I craved seeing that baby again. Whatever he had said that made me think August was somewhere nearby had set off that craving.
Which meant the man had to backpedal, make up an excuse, put me off. You see, in the moment, I wasn’t thinking about anything beyond wanting to see my baby boy one more time. Hold him again. Touch his soft, chubby cheeks again, hold his little hand and feel his tiny fingers in mine again. Just once more.
I wasn’t thinking about what state his body would be in, two days after he had died. I wasn’t considering the fact that we had donated his body to the Blood and Tissue Center, and they had long since removed his heart valves and his corneas and I don’t know what else.
Later, realizing my mistake, I felt ashamed. What a huge oversight! Even if August were there, even if the man had brought him to me, of course I wouldn’t have wanted to see him like that. What had I been thinking?
But I was only thinking of how much I wanted him back. That’s all. For months and months and months, that was all I could think of.
The man at the funeral home stammered some excuse about, “Oh, I don’t mean he’s here — he’s actually at our other facility, awaiting cremation.”
I slumped a bit and sat back in my chair, dejected. “Oh. Okay.” I wouldn’t be seeing him once more after all.
Later that moment of wild hope — he’s here? Can I see him once more, just for a minute, I’ll make it quick, please please please?? — seemed so ridiculous. And yet, what mother wouldn’t have felt that way? To have a child who dies is to want something every minute of every day that you can never, ever have again. No matter who you ask, how hard you beg, how craftily you bargain, the answer is always, and will always be, No.
13. Sometimes I figure out a way to honor August that feels good.
12 Mar 2012 7 Comments
So, I wrote an essay about August and Pearl; actually, it’s pieced together from posts on this blog. And I submitted it to this show called Listen to Your Mother that is performed annually in 10 cities across the country, including Austin. And I ended up being cast as one of fifteen writers who will read our pieces in this year’s show! Wow — I’m so proud!!
I’ve been feeling like a writer again, and it feels great. Articles, essays, site content for my former (and once again current) employer…it feels so good to focus once again in the way that writing requires, to consider words and their nuanced meanings, to try hard to get at the exact truth and to determine how to express that truth. I feel like I’m flexing muscles in my brain that I haven’t used in years.
And it feels so good to honor August in this way. To keep him alive in some sense. To keep talking about him; to keep telling the world that he was here, that he mattered, that he is missed.
After my audition for the Listen to Your Mother show, Wendi Aarons asked me how it felt to read my essay aloud. It’s a sad piece; I almost teared up a few times as I read the words. I felt uncomfortable reading it, though I knew Wendi and her associate, Liz McGuire, were already familiar with the piece. I guess it seemed too sad to read aloud. And yet — as I told Wendi — reading it aloud felt good, because I am always looking for ways to honor August that feel right. Cupcakes each year on his birthday, shared with my husband and my friends who were with us at August’s birth — that feels as close to right as I can get. Attending support group meetings to share this loss with other bereaved parents — that has felt right for more than two years now. Talking about August whenever he comes up, despite how uncomfortable I sometimes feel doing so, also feels right. And now it feels right, and so great!, that I get to take part in the LTYM show and read this piece aloud to an audience of potentially 300 people.
Oh, I expect my piece will make us all sad. But then the next writer will take the stage and read her piece, and maybe that one will be a funny one, or a heartwarming one, and it’ll take some of the ache away. After all, my experience of motherhood as August’s mom — it counts, too. And I’m not alone in this experience…which is very, very unfortunate, but also quite fortunate in a different way.
Eh. It’s late and I’m blathering. But I wanted to post about this good thing that happened, since it makes me feel so good, and feel closer to my sweet boy August.
12. Sometimes I write articles.
12 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
Ones that seem ineffective; that don’t quite capture what I want to say, probably because I have no idea what that is. As I wrote in my previous post, I don’t understand anything, and won’t, ever. That’s how it feels these days.
Here’s an article I wrote for Live Mom about our daughter Pearl, and perhaps even more, about August. As usual, I worked on it for weeks, refining it slowly, and felt good about it…until the day it was published, at which point I suddenly figured out a bunch of things I wish I’d added, deleted, or worded differently. Oh, well. I guess that’s the thing about writing; it’s never really done; there’s sort of no such thing. A written piece is a strangely living organism; as long as the writer is willing to keep reworking it, the piece stays dynamic, always ready to shift with each new day’s shifting perspective.
August, you were born exactly two years ago. (Since you were born at 1:24 AM on 1/12/10, I’m setting this post to publish at 1:24 AM on 1/12/12.) I miss you and love you so hard, every day. I look at your picture by my bed every night, and wish you were here. I wish Pearl could get to know her brother. I wish our missing family member could be with us once again. I still remember exactly how it felt to hold you, all nine pounds of you. You were warm and heavy and big, and so beloved. I hope you knew exactly how much.
11. Sometimes I reflect on how much parenthood hurts.
10 Jan 2012 Leave a Comment
So far, for me, parenthood is much, much harder than I ever expected. It hurts a whole lot more — infinitely more. It’s hard and sharp and brilliantly beautiful, like looking straight at the sun through a diamond prism. The hardest thing in the world; the most compellingly gorgeous; so bright and dazzling you can’t look away, but the longer you look, the more painful it becomes, the more you cry, and the more permanent damage you sustain.
Sometimes I think about the saying, “Whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.” I’ve thought about that idea so many times over the past two years. August’s death didn’t kill me, but it most certainly weakened me. Applying the above metaphor, I guess my soul is the part of me that has sustained permanent damage. Or maybe not my soul, exactly, but my emotional self: the part of me that feels broken due to this one event — his death. Or maybe my soul and my emotional being are one and the same, and both have been changed forever; both are less whole than they once were.
Since August died I have wrestled with questions about meaning and meaninglessness — “What the fuck is the point?” kinds of questions. Losing him is teaching me such a worthwhile lesson about myself: that I am not special. That I am just one among many in this world, this life. Believing I was lucky or untouchable was the most misleading of illusions, and one based in the simple fact that until August died, nothing ever happened to challenge that belief.
That is a great thing to learn. We are all the same. Losing August is also teaching me about pain, suffering and compassion: I have such a much greater capacity now for all three. This enables me to connect more readily and genuinely with others in pain.
But I don’t know if that helps them. They are still in pain, even if I’m feeling it exquisitely with them. How does that help? Besides, when you’re in pain, you aren’t really aware of others sharing it with you. You just hurt. And hurt, and hurt. At least for me, it created a huge self-absorption that lifted only when the pain stopped being quite so constant. I think this may be common: You only start to notice other people again, and feel grateful that they were there the whole time, helping you carry that impossibly heavy load, once your pain has begun to lift.
Also: Two years ago! August was born and died two whole, long years ago. Soon it will be three, and five, and ten. Pearl, August’s sister, will be a toddler and a child and a preteen, a young woman, an adult. As we move further and further from August’s existence in time, will his absence hurt less? Will the trauma of his birth recede? Will his life turn out to have more meaning, or less, or both? Will this mountain of shit seem less like it happened yesterday? Will it become more abstract? Will it start to seem like just an event — a particularly sad one, but just one amongst the jumble of all the events of our lives?
I think I am glad for the lessons… I’m not sure. All in all, since becoming a mom two years ago, I just feel sadder and more confused. Everything is even more of a contradiction than ever before. I feel more fucked, but also luckier, because August died. Eternally devastated, and yet richer: Had he never been here at all, I would be like a paper-cutout version of myself. Now the truth of life, the wisdom of the universe, the complexity of being human, seem somewhat closer, and yet entirely out of reach. I will never understand. Anything. Ever.
Speaking of things I will never understand: My friend Esme died on January 1 this year. I keep thinking of her mother — how she must be feeling the screaming shock, the bright, mad, ripping pain that I felt when August died. Right now, she is inside that insane fun house that I was inside once. I hold her in my heart with so much love and commiseration. Most likely, she will find her way out of that fun house, but right now I imagine that all she can see is her own, warped reflection, stretched and twisted in countless mirrors, and the Exit sign nowhere to be found.
One of the biggest fears you have when your child dies is that after a while, no one will remember anymore, and your child will no longer matter. One thing that comforts me about my friend Esme is that I do not think that’s possible with her. She was the brightest light, the kindest, most encouraging and enthusiastic person I think I’ve ever known. She had hundreds of friends; maybe thousands. She made each of us feel like her favorite person. There’s no way we could forget her. I hope her mother knows.
10. Sometimes I thought I didn’t count as a real mother.
03 Nov 2011 Leave a Comment
I wrestled with this question a lot after August was born and died: Am I a real mother? Do I count in the “mommy club”?
I tried to reason through it logically: I had had a child. Physically, by definition, that made me a mother. But I didn’t have that child anymore. I never got to raise him. In my mind, a mother was someone who had a child in her care, someone in charge of a little person’s life and wellbeing. That wasn’t me. So I wasn’t a mother.
The phrase “childless mother” ran through my mind a lot. Often in the cold months after August’s death, I would go running, and as I ran, alone, the chill air rushing in, out, in, out of my lungs, my arms pumping, my feet rhythmically hitting the sidewalk, I would think about those words. Childless mother. I would turn them over and over in my mind and frown to hold back tears as the air chilled my eyes, making them water anyway.
When other women, friends and coworkers, talked about their pregnancies, I would weigh in, adding my own experiences and memories — but I would cringe inwardly as I spoke. I felt as if I was faking something, being too desperate — “Me too, I was pregnant too…!” It was such a profoundly uncomfortable space to occupy: having experienced and enjoyed a whole, entire pregnancy, but having no baby to show for it. Did I get to take part in the conversation? Was I in the club? Did I count as a mom?
Another question I wrestled with: Was August really born? I remember saying something to my sister about that once, and she looked at me as if I were nuts. But I couldn’t figure it out. Obviously, August had come out of me, into the world; but he wasn’t alive. I associated being born with starting life. To me, his life never started. Had it? After all, he hadn’t qualified for a birth certificate (something that bothered me deeply for a long, long time).
But he had qualified for a death certificate. Sometime later, a friend pointed out, “If something can die, then it was alive.” That comforted me, and I added it to my logical arsenal — my case for August having been alive, having been here, having mattered.
And by that definition, hadn’t his life, in fact, begun? It started inside me, and ended inside me, just before I pushed him out.
9. Sometimes it is still so huge and deep.
21 Oct 2011 Leave a Comment
Times like now. A warm, sunny, lovely Friday morning in later October. I have been feeling so pleased all morning as I go around the house, doing laundry and saying silly things to the dogs, and I’m puffed up with that pleasure, the headiness of it, since it is so hard-won: Always, lurking in the back of my mind, there is the consciousness of the pain, such pain, and the loss that my husband and family and I have endured these past 21 months and nine days since August died.
I guess that’s a measure of how far I’ve come in this process of grief, or more accurately, how far I still have to go: A really, really good morning still makes me goofy and proud of myself, because really, really good moods, good moments, still aren’t the norm.
Even though we have a lot to feel really, really good about now. Such as this little girl who is sleeping in my lap, her loosely clenched fist pressed against her cheek in the contemplative, “Hmm…” pose she often adopts in sleep. She has a little faux-hawk, a tuft of hair right on top of her head that is surrounded by baldness. I call the tuft her eternal flame since it is reddish and wild and ridiculous and jaunty and wavy, and will not lie flat. (Not that I want it to, at all. I don’t.)
She is my daughter, my second child. She is seven weeks and three days old. She was born right here at home, on the floor between our bed and the bathroom door, in an explosion of energy and noise (from me, screaming and hyperventilating as I pushed her out) and light (from the row of bulbs above the bathroom mirror, shining down on us, illuminating the moment of this miraculous girl’s miraculous entry into this miraculous, terrible, beautiful world).
Born right here at home, just like I wish her brother August could have been.
Born alive and healthy, just as I still, often, fervently wish August could have been.
Her personality is emerging. She is hardworking, and spunky, and mostly easygoing, but she also knows what she wants. She expresses her thoughts and needs in definite terms: short, loud little yells that sound like an indignant “Hey!!” or soft, cooing sighs when she nurses that sound as if she’s saying, “Ohhh, this is sooo gooooood…”
And I keep wishing I could have gotten to know her brother the way I am getting to know her.
I wish I could have seen him alive. Seen those bright, sky-blue eyes of his open on their own, instead of having to open them myself and feel shocked by their bright clarity and color, and forever after wonder if I’m misremembering their exact shade of blue. After all, this little girl in my lap, who shares the same DNA as August — her eyes are a much darker, more blueberry shade. Surely his weren’t so bright-blue-sky as I remember them being. I think they were, but there’s no way to know. I saw them once only, and only for one moment. Never again.
Seven weeks and three days of caring for this new, second baby, this little girl in my lap, has consumed my energy, attention, time and emotions. I haven’t thought about August quite so much since his little sister was born. I still think of him every day — I expect that will never change — but now I think most often of this new baby girl.
But then mornings like this come along. I was just going along, feeling so glad and pleased, and so pleased to be pleased, and then something made me Google a woman whose first baby was also stillborn at 41-plus weeks of pregnancy. I read her blog from time to time. I have no idea why reading it again this morning seemed like a good idea. Suddenly tears were welling up and spilling over; snot was dripping; I was trying not to sob out loud, not wanting to disturb this sleeping baby girl in my lap with my noises or my shaking, quaking body.
The sadness, the loss, the grief. Missing that first baby boy, August. Wishing so hard and so futilely that he were here now. All of it. Still so huge, still so deep, even when I forget, for moments at a time, that it’s all still there, a wound I will always carry. A person we love who will always be gone.
8. Sometimes I feel so, so sorry for myself.
20 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
Just now I was going through the journal I kept throughout my pregnancy with August, looking for certain data, like how much and what type of warm-up labor I felt leading up to his birth. I came across this entry, written almost three weeks before his birth, about a dream I had forgotten but now remember very well:
Dec. 24, 2009 — 38 weeks and 6 days pregnant!
Baby, you are due a week from tomorrow! Though Michele keeps telling me not to expect you until at least January 8. I’m getting so curious and excited to meet you and see who you are.
I asked my subconscious the other night to tell me when you might be born. I asked to dream a number. So here is what I dreamed:
I came downstairs in the house on Hardouin — the one where I grew up. My dad and brother were sitting in the game room, looking out the window toward the Klines’ house, crying and looking glum. It turned out that a little boy, about five or six years old (January 5th or 6th?), had taken a walk at 5 a.m. (is that the time when you will be born?) with his dog, and had accidentally pulled a tree limb down on himself. It had ripped him in two (is this a birth fear of mine?) and killed him (is that a fear I have about you — that you might die too young?). Are you a boy? When I woke up from the dream I was so sad — achingly, awfully sad — thinking of what it would be like to lose a child. I don’t think I could withstand it. I would want to die too, if you died. I wouldn’t be able to live anymore.
Rereading that entry tonight made me just…weep. I am still weeping. I am shocked by that awful, awesome dream, by its prophetic nature; it’s further proof that I knew. Not consciously, thank goodness; I thank the universe, again and again, for sparing me the information until I absolutely needed to know. But subconsciously, I knew August wouldn’t live. I knew he was a boy, that he would die too young, that I would be lost in devastation, and my family would grieve.
(Here is another post I wrote a while back about indications that on some level, I knew what was going to happen.)
It scares me beyond words, beyond description, to think this new baby, whose due date is tomorrow, could die too. Tonight I found myself telling E that if this baby doesn’t make it, he should put me on suicide watch. I hate saying thoughts like that aloud…I feel like it isn’t nice or right to voice such dark, dark things, even to my husband. (And that, in itself, feels beyond silly to write: It’s not nice to talk about suicide!) And anyway — suicidal, me? Never before. Even in my darkest moments since August died, I never wanted to kill myself. Sometimes I wanted to die, or simply not to wake up, but I never had the urge to do that to myself.
But if I thought I couldn’t withstand the death of one child…I know I couldn’t withstand the deaths of two.
Going to bed now, feeling very, very sorry for myself and for that sweet little baby whom we loved so, so much, who died too young.
7. Sometimes I thought August died because he didn’t want to stay with us.
02 Aug 2011 Leave a Comment
Six days after August was born and died, a friend of mine sent me these lyrics from a Patti Smith song:
Image from UK painter Mary MacCarthy — click image to visit site
Little emerald bird
wants to fly away
If I cup my hand
could I make him stay?
Little emerald soul
Little emerald eye
Little emerald soul
Must you say goodbye?
All the things that we pursue
All that we dream
are composed as nature knew
In a feather green
Little emerald bird
As you light afar
It is true I heard
God is where you are
Little emerald soul
Little emerald eye
Little emerald bird
We must say goodbye
I just came across them again, 18 months later, and they brought back how horribly devastated and betrayed I felt when he died. I felt like he left us on purpose. I remember our midwife coming over three days after the birth, and asking her, “Why didn’t he want to stick around? We love him so much. We were so ready for him. Why didn’t he want to stay?” She said, “Oh, sweetie, I think he did want to stay. He just couldn’t.”
It’s been over a year and a half and it’s still hard for me to understand. Sometimes I get it: Everyone dies. Some people die much, much younger than anyone expects. That’s what happened to August. That’s all.
But other times it just washes over me as strongly as it did from the start: Why didn’t he stay? Is there anything I could have done to make him stick around? Did he leave because there was something lacking in us, his parents? Something undeserving? Is there greater meaning in his life and death than simple biology?
Did he know how much we loved him and wanted him here with us? And still do?
Is this really a hole that can never, ever be filled?
Will I ever get used to that?
