how? how? how?

How could this have happened?

Sometimes I can't help but get caught up in these words.

They came to my lips yesterday during an unexpected trip into Peyton's nursery. You could ask me why I entered, and I would have no answer for you. (I haven't been into her room since writing this post in early February.) I can only say that as the knob was turned and I stepped in; as I looked around at the unused baby items, the clothing, the crib, and remembered for too brief a moment what life was like at the time when that room was set up, those words came to my lips... 

How could this have happened?

Tonight a friend stopped over, and out of nowhere, in a way that I haven't in months, I just broke down to her mid-sentence and cried.

I cried that I used to be so in control of things; that I had plans, on top of plans, on top of plans; and now feel that everything is so completely out of my control, that all I can do is collapse into how overwhelming a feeling that is. I feel like a pawn, anxiously awaiting whatever move the universe doles out for me next, and it's terrifying.

I want to be in control of my life.
I want to feel alive.

Even the choice of adding to our family has gone awry. I take shots and patches and pills in an attempt to make happen what had come easily for me in the past, and it doesn't seem to matter.

I see baby items in our house and can't believe that we will ever use them. Not truly believe it. Not in a way that brings any security and comfort to my heart. After all, these things, these precious items that were hung with care, have now been left stagnant, untouched, for a year and a half.

Seeing them makes me feel like they belong to someone else. I feel isolated, left out of a world where babies  happen with ease (or so it seems) to everyone but us. 

Don't get me wrong, I don't want to feel this way.

I have tried positive thinking, The Secret, the law of attraction. I have tried prayer, meditation. I have tried to envision everything working out, but try as I might, right now, I just can't see it, and that hurts.

As someone who so prided herself on five year plans for everything from home ownership to career moves, it breaks my heart that I can't plan five days, five weeks, or five months down the line, because nothing feels within my control. This, too, brings to mind the words...

How could this have happened?

After a blood draw at my RE's office earlier this week, I, like a moth to a flame, walked to the bathroom in the waiting area to wash my hands. I did this, not because they were dirty, but instead for the smell of the soap. Pink and watery, this soap, I had discovered in a flashback of awareness, is the same institution grade soap that we used when scrubbing into Peyton's hospital room.

To anyone else it would smell like soap, but to me it smells like my child. My perfect, beautiful, brave little child who was here long enough to haunt my memory, but too short a time to remain in the memories of others.

Lately Peyton has felt "surreal" to me in a way that hurts like losing her all over again.

I washed, and washed, and rewashed my hands, working the soap deep into my pores, wanting to soak it in, and then as I drove home, I held my fingers just below my nose, breathing in the memory of her, and reminding myself that she was here. She was here. I know she was.

She was real.
I was her mother.
I had a daughter once.

It all felt so cruel to be driving away from the place that signifies my stolen fertility, breathing in the scent of my stolen child, and asking myself over and over...

How could this have happened?