Depressed. Dark rain cloud over my head constantly.  Grieving all the time.  It has been a slow decline into the pit of despair for me.  I don’t know how to explain myself.  Maybe its post-natal depression?  Can you get post-natal depression twenty-three months after his death?  I know I was depressed after he died, and about five months after he died I was diagnosed with post-natal depression.  But for the past two months, going on three months I have gotten gloomier and gloomier by the day.  I can’t seem to be motivated to do anything.  I don’t cook anymore.  I don’t bake anymore and I don’t go out.  I just feel trapped and this constant sense of being suffocated, and dealing with so much anxiety that it rips my heart out.

In a few weeks’ time it will be my son’s second birthday.  Two years since my life changed forever.  And I have this sense of feeling trapped and defeated.  That somehow I have failed.  Failed in every aspect of my life.  So depressed that I stopped doing the things I enjoy doing.  And what hurts the most is that I feel lonely all the time.   I don’t think I would have been lonely if Sebby had lived. I had everything planned out to minute detail up until my son’s second birthday whilst I was pregnant with him.  But of course he is not here and therefore we cannot celebrate his life in the way that I would have wanted to.  I don’t even know what I will be doing this year on his birthday.  I do want to remember him, and I do want to celebrate his life in a positive but healing manner.

In the end I am just sinking deeper and deeper into this deep thick quagmire of negative marshland as I try and cling desperately onto something.  Perhaps there is hope at the end of this dark road?!  I don’t know what to do anymore.  I am just sinking further and further into this gloomy dark pit.  I don’t know how I will cope once his second birthday rounds the corner (twenty-five days to go), whilst this one toddler at church will turn two on the day I was told that he had died, and another baby will turn one the day before his birthday.  Why did my baby have to die?  I just don’t get why Sebby had to die? Why did I have to go through this trial?  Why did I have to go through this pain and not someone else? (Don’t get me wrong.. I don’t wish this on anyone)… but I just feel like this trial is too much to bear.  I guess I just have to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  I just don’t know what to do anymore.. I have tried… to be happy, to be joyful, and to be at peace.  But I simply am HEARTBROKEN.

No-one seems to understand me.  Understand the pain I am going through.  The memories of a forgotten past rearing to the surface as I am forced to look back over the past two years and try and see what I have accomplished.  Maybe September will always generally be a difficult month for me.  A tough month to get through each day as I am reminded of what could have been but isn’t.  A month of many painful memories, bittersweet moments.  Moments of happiness and then suddenly that month turns into the saddest month of my life.

Has it really been two years since his death?  Two years since my world changed forever?  What happened to the carefree ‘Hannah’ of two years ago when I was ready for the challenges that would await me?  I remember praying as a young woman for God to give me trials so that he could build my character.  But really?! OK, I am thankful for the lessons I have learnt in the past twenty-three months and the lives that I have been able to impact.  But I simply feel like no-one seems to understand my pain.

No-one ever seems to notice the ever present tears that are so clearly at the surface.  Was I ever cut out to be a mom?  Did I even deserve to be a mom?  Some people once told me it must have been a BIG sin that I committed for God to punish me that way by taking away my son.  What do they know about that? I mean come on.. Really? Seriously… I think God uses suffering and experiences so that we can help others in similar situations.  It is the love that we receive during our trials which enables us to love others who will one day go on to have a similar story to mine.  It is only then that we are able to reach out to others and help them.  The final stage of healing is when we are ready to help others who are going through similar experiences as you.  Other people have told me ‘You are the strongest, bravest mommy we know’. I did what I had to do.  I left the country I was living in to protect my unborn son. The irony of it all – in trying to protect my son and myself, he died in the end.  Would it have made a difference if I had stayed where I was living instead of leaving that place of deep unrest? I simply don’t know the answer to that question.

But I am just feeling worn-out. Depressed.  Frustrated. Fed-up.  Isolated. Despair.  Hurting.  Weepy all the time.  I miss my son more than anything in this world and I wish that I could have him by my side for just one more sunrise.  I wish I could kiss his little cheeks. And watch him grow into the man of God he was meant to be.  But that won’t happen, because he is already by God.  At the feet of God.  And I am still here on earth learning the lessons that God has in store for me. I wish I could see Sebby’s smiling face in the morning, and his eager little steps as he greets me after a long hard day at work.  But that won’t happen either.  It is just one big awful silence when I get home to nothingness.  I will get through this somehow.  With prayer to my God who will not forsake me, nor abandon me in my time of need. All I wanted was one more sunrise with my little miracle.   All I wanted was to hold him and see him, and tell my little boy how much I loved him and would have loved him.  I still love him.