mother's day

not much to celebrate in a room full of ghosts

I once had a friend tell me she didn’t like that I grieved my pregnancy like I’d actually lost something.

We are no longer friends.

Today, I tried really hard to distract myself. Tried filling my day with reading, but my mind kept running off. Tried warming my skin with sunshine, but my body felt too antsy to keep walking on. Tried overrunning my house with sound, with music I could delight in. Rocked in my rocking chair with the door wide open, flooding with daylight. The sounds of planes coming and going. A clear blue sky. I even put on clothes and a bit of a face, nothing extravagant but enough to make me feel something.

But all that met me in my reflection was grief.

We went from Maddie and Tae to Maren Morris to Sza to Sailorr to Kendrick to The Mexican OT to BigXthaPlug to Albert King to Rod Wave to Wicked (Cynthia Erivo’s Defying Gravity only) to silence. And their absence is too loud.

What I’m missing sits in each room with me like a ghost. Each little soul, more of an idea than anything else. A mother in concept.

Nothing to show for it but some really shitty memories, recollections of morning sickness, and a lot more blood than expected. Hushed conversations, long phone calls. Crying. Arguing. Resolve. Two different eras. Two very different Mikayla’s. But the grief still holds. Hand gripped tight around my throat, the air huffing out in short breaths.