Have you ever had a really good cry? You know, the one where you just let go and sob and your stomach heaves and your shoulders crumble and sometimes you even lose your balance and have to sit down. The one where the sadness is purged from your body one teardrop at a time until you run dry, and when you’re done you take a deep cleansing breath and suddenly the world feels right again. That cry that is so freeing that when you go to sleep that night you find yourself in a deep, peaceful slumber. I haven’t. At least not since Ava died.

The morning after her death, Travis and I laid in my hospital bed holding our daughter, and I started to cry. My tears poured out and my shoulders shook. I could feel the grief bubbling up from my belly and into my throat. A few loud sobs escaped from my mouth and then the physical pain hit me. My incision bounced under my grief and it felt like my insides were being ripped apart. I was afraid that if I continued to cry my body would literally tear open. I placed a hand on my stomach trying to offer support to my useless abdominal muscles and I sobbed harder as I realized that it was too painful to cry. Everything had been taken away from me, my baby, my body, and now, I couldn’t even cry. I wanted to scream with rage. Instead, I buried my face deeper into Travis’ chest and willed myself to stop after telling him through sobs that it hurt too much to cry.

I continued to cry at least once a day since the moment Ava was born but it was never for very long or very hard. I couldn’t stand the physical pain, and besides, I was trying to be strong for everyone else. I didn’t want my son haunted with memories of his mother crying and I tried to put on a happy face when he was in the room, but it wasn’t just him. I tried to put on a happy face for everyone because I didn’t want them to see me cry. I tried to protect everyone else from my pain. I didn’t want them to worry, or feel like they needed to say something, and truthfully, I couldn’t stand to be that vulnerable. I didn’t know how to be that vulnerable. So I took a lot of deep breaths or just turned off my brain altogether, anything really to avoid crying.

Occasionally I let it out or it would slip out of me, like at Ava’s funeral or sometimes when I visit her grave. Or sometimes something will set me off and I can’t contain it anymore but the tears are different now. These tears aren’t like the ones before I had Ava. These tears don’t come with any release. There is no end to my grief and the pain never eases. Sometimes I will really try to get the tears out. My mouth contorts into a hideous expression, my entire body will shake and my face will be wet with tears and snot that I don’t even bother to wipe away, while howls of the deepest sorrow I have ever known fill the space around me.  I hear my wails and sometimes I can’t believe those sounds are coming out of me. Sometimes it is hard to tell if I’m a grieving mother, or a toddler having a tantrum, or sometimes even just someone who is laughing uncontrollably at a really funny joke. I’ll let myself stay that way for 10, 15, even 20 minutes but the relief never comes, the void in my heart just continues to widen and I fall deeper inside.

But still almost every day I let myself continue to cry alone. When my husband is at work and my son is asleep I will attempt, in vain, to purge myself of this grief. Sometimes, when I really let go I can feel the darkness making its way to the exit. I can feel it sitting on the edge of my throat and if I can just push a little harder it will leave me, but like a stubborn sneeze, it refuses to budge, it just sits there taunting me. I simply cannot cry hard enough. I will look at Ava’s picture or re-read things I’ve written, my version of emotional cutting, something to trigger me so I can cry hard enough to just let some of this burden out of my soul but time after time I fall short. Time after time I cannot reach that coveted moment of release. I am emotionally impotent. But I have to keep crying. I have to keep trying. I cannot let the grief consume me. I will continue to purge my pain one tear at a time in hopes that one day I will feel something that resembles relief.