A few months on, and I'm finding I'm absolutely swamped by those feelings again. I'm struggling with the reality that things are NEVER going to change. Struggling with the feeling that I'm always going to have this twisted, bitter person inside when that's not who I am and not who I want to be.

I think it's just the nature of things at the moment. A pregnancy announcement at church from the woman who's always given me a hard time and completely lacked any shred of understanding regarding what it is like trying to do things around a baby and especially what it is like for me trying to do things at all while struggling with a chronic illness. Apparently she's ok to talk to the person sitting next to me holding my baby, but can completely ignore me at the time. Is it wrong for me to be secretly hoping that she gets a really unsettled, colicky baby that never sleeps and just screams?

And then I arrived home yesterday to an email from my mother letting me know that one of my cousins is pregnant. I want to be excited, but I just can't be. It explains a lot, really - she completely refused to hold Sam when he was born and acted as though she was frightened of him... I now recognise that as the reaction of someone who's trying and a little scared... But I can only put a time-frame of six months on that one - maximum, so I'm finding it REALLY hard to be happy. I'm hurting.

I think, if anything, it's getting harder and harder as time goes on... Or perhaps I'm just feeling especially raw at the moment. Pregnancy and infant loss remembrance day today and an angel's anniversary next week and I'm quite possibly just in a bad headspace as I've been having more of a battle with my health than normal lately.

*sigh*

I guess it's time to face reality that I really am a bitter person on the inside. Bitter that my health sucks and that I'm not likely to ever know a day to go by without physical pain and needing to take handfuls of tablets every single day. Bitter that something that should be so natural is so damned difficult as to be nearly impossible for us.

BW