a glutton for punishment?

She’s exactly one day ahead of where I should have been.

Why do I torture myself?

I check her blog daily. And yet I’ve never commented. I can’t make myself do it. I look at her ultrasound pictures. I see that black and white image on the page and I see that it looks like an actual real, live baby now. It’s so hard to read about the things she’s going through. But it’s like I have to do it. I don’t have a choice. My fingers type in the website that I know by heart. I yearn for a new post and yet I cringe every-time I see some new milestone that she’s passed. It’s like she’s me, only living in an alternate universe. One where things are working out and everything hasn’t gone all pear-shaped.

I know her baby isn’t mine. But once a day, I can look at her blog and pretend for just one tiny second. Every-time I look, I think “This is the last time I do this, I swear.” But everyday, I’m right back.

Does that make me sick and twisted? Sad and pathetic? Or just in major denial? This is something that I can’t discuss with Arnie, this inability to let go of what is not going to be. He just wouldn’t understand. He wouldn’t like to see me in pain, especially since it’s basically something that I am doing to myself. Self-inflicted cuts and bruises to my heart. Will I ever be able to stop? Will it stop when she has the baby? Or when I manage to get pregnant again?

down the drain

I think about how much I want a baby every single day. I think about how many weeks I should be and about whether I would be showing yet. I think about how I’m going to feel at Halloween when I don’t have to decide whether I should take a newborn to watch my nieces and nephews trick-or-treating. I think about how I’m going to feel on Christmas day, when I’m not taking pictures of my baby’s first Christmas. I think about how I die a little inside when I talk to the lady at work who is exactly as far along as I should have been. She doesn’t know I was pregnant and she’s so excited. She had a miscarriage before this pregnancy, she definitely deserves this pregnancy. But I deserved mine, too. I think about how I should have an ultrasound picture and a silly nickname for the baby.

I really don’t want to be sad anymore.