Where do I start?

This post has been sitting here for the better part of two weeks. Unpublished, waiting. I have dreams about it when I'm not online. I know it's here, it knows that it's here. And yet, I find myself unable to push the publish post button. I've 'written' what I want in my head but my fingers seem like phantom limbs as I attempt to type the words seem to be an alien language and nothing seems right. Because admitting this terrifies me to no end. And I've done so well (or maybe not?) by telling people 'not yet.'

I guess you could say that I'm a member of the club that no person ever really wants to be a part of. I'm the mother of a child who was not meant for this earth. My son, born early and with a diaphragmatic hernia, a genetic anomaly that would cost him his life. My son, who never came home in the short 5 months of his life. Whose only cry came the second he came into this earth and who was only ever able to be held 3 short times. My son, Gregory.

A mother by definition and yet not. Did it change the day he left this earth? I see children his age and wonder what he would be like. Would he be playing soccer like his mom or run like his dad? Would he be tearing apart our electronics with Eddie or reading a book like me? And yet it feels like my world stopped with his. Time stood still around me while it has progressed for everyone around me.

The cold steel grasp of fear grips me and I can't shake it. The rational part of my brain knows that the it is very unlikely that another child would have the same genetic anomaly. The logical part of my brain knows that everything will be fine. The emotional part won't move. It's loud and it's screaming over the parts of my brain that tell me it will be ok. I can't move forward and yet I want to.