Displaced

When I was pleading with M to try to save our marriage the day I found out about the affair, one of the things I said to him was that we'd been through so much together. No one else would ever understand what it had been like to lose B, and how that had changed us.

I was right. 

No one will be celebrating B's birthday with E and I tomorrow. I didn't plan for a big production. I just thought my immediate family would remember, and be able to spare 30 minutes to come out to the cemetery, listen to a song and eat a piece of cake. That's it. Somehow, no one is available to do that. I just wrote a long whiny post enumerating the reasons why, but as I rambled on and on, I realized that I wasn't even upset about that. 

What I'm upset about is that this day should matter to someone else just as much as it does to me. B had a mother and a father, who held her while she died. I should have someone to lean on, to support, to grieve with. I'm desperately looking for that in the people around me, and I'm not finding it. Because it's not anyone else's responsibility but his. I'm feeling disappointed in the people around me, but it's displaced anger. I'm not mad at them. This cross isn't theirs to bear. I wish they were a little more supportive and a little more intuitive about how I might be feeling, but they're all doing the best they know how to do. But he isn't. He left us, he left me to grieve alone. 

Tomorrow also should have been our 3rd anniversary. When B, perfect little B, was born so unexpectedly on our first anniversary, I thought it was a sign that we were meant to be together. Cliche and corny, I know. But I did think that. I thought it meant that I had made the right decision to stay with him after the first time he cheated on me. I thought that it meant that God was blessing us with an extra special little baby (which of course he was) to raise together. 

I never dreamed it would end like this. With a dead baby and a deadbeat dad. 

So for today, I'm angry. But I'm going to try not to take it out on the people who won't be there to celebrate B's short life with me tomorrow. I'm going to try to direct the anger toward the person to whom it belongs.