Today is a lousy day in my personal calendar. 6 years since my first daughter was stillborn. Just a freak occurrence, nothing that could have been done, but.
@Dani My condolences. I’ve had a son who was born at 26 weeks, and whose lungs gave way in front of me. Six years back as well (but not to the day) I think of him much.
Here’s wishing you find closure, if you haven’t already.
@Dani Second one for us. I’m the only one to have ever seen him. I hug my first born , my little daughter, extra hard when I think of him. I’ve learned to avoid tears lately; therapy helped quite a bit.
No two cases are the same, but most people don’t fully appreciate what it is like to miss a kid you’ve never had a chance to be introduced to.
@aparna With everything else; hatching and working to un-repress a lot of things and all sorts of other things... I'm still not sure what "closure" looks like. In a way it's getting worse with feeling more in general.
@Dani I was going to say: trauma such as this actually contributes to hatching. I know I went into a very dark place and a major dysphoria cycle when it happened. Was angry and snarly all the time; put on a lot of weight (which added to the dysphoria and therefore, rage), started to be insomniac etc. Heck, I took up therapy partially to tackle dysphoria, but ended up speaking exclusively about the kid. Didn’t realise I had so many bottled up emotions. That notion of it getting worse… that was exactly how it was for me.
Closure for me is being in a state where I can talk about it all whilst being nominally functional and not get into rage or sadness without a bottom. I’m sad when I think of him, but I’m not sadder than before. Took me a long time to reach here, and with professional help.
@aparna I was deep enough into disassociation and repression to not notice the dysphoria... and did the thing where I buried all my feelings deeper because my wife was going through it and needed help. Not numb exactly but I thought the mask I was putting on was what I was really feeling when it was... well. You know, "I was OK".
@Dani Been exactly there. My therapist called it putting on a flesh-coloured band-aid on a septic wound. Been through exactly that; wanted to repress everything because my wife was struggling and, well, men aren’t supposed to feel anything. (And I was supposed to be a Man)
But I still didn’t want to broach GD with the therapist at that point ; was also struggling at work in addition to anger and sadness. Wanted to “solve” those before I got to GD. Guess that’s where I am now. Anger issues “solved”, now onto GD.
I’m rambling here. Just wanted to say, I know what you’re saying. Happy to lend an ear if you’d like to talk about it anytime.
@aparna Well... with the benefit of hindsight, I've been changing that metaphorical bandaid for 30 years or so. I think autistic masking before I hit gender dysphoria, and sorta existed like that. Built up a detailed enough mask to sorta get along.
Gender was sorta... so a bit before all of this my wife was working at a school for special needs kids and I realized hey, these mannerisms and stuff from the autistic kids sounded familiar.
@aparna ... were some other things about how my brain worked that didn't make sense. And I poked at it.
And eventually I started coming across more and more accounts of people who had disassociated enough to not have their dysphoria noticeable, and they started hitting more and more home.
So IDK, fixing a lot of stuff at the same time I guess.
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