I wasn't expecting this

I don't listen to a lot of music but occasionally I want to hear songs I like. I keep a list of those songs in a draft email message because I have a hard time remembering song titles and artists. Today I was working through the list, enjoying the videos for Porn Star Dancing (a catchy sort of song and one I definitely like) and How It Ends (a long-time favourite).

I watched different versions of those videos before I moved onto another song I love: Hallelujah. As I was listening to it, the tears just started flowing and all of a sudden I was bawling, crying so hard I could barely breathe. I don't know why. I figured that obviously I needed to cry so I listened to other versions of the song - the Jeff Buckley version is far and away my favourite, but I cried through all of them. After a while I started repeating, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry" through my tears.

Most of what I was feeling was grief and a sense of deep, profound loss. I've lost my dad and a lot of friends over the last few years and I know I was grieving for them because I kept seeing their faces. There was more to it than that: on this date 16 years ago my baby would have been born. I didn't carry the baby to term and so it wasn't born on that day: my niece was born instead, two days early. I was (and still am, apparently, because tears are running down my face as I type this) grieving for the baby I didn't have.

Things worked out for the best, back then, but they were very painful times and I don't like to think about them. Apparently my mind has other ideas, however; maybe I need to go back and come to terms with everything that happened then. Right now I can't look at everything... it's all I can do to think about and grieve for that baby, and I can barely even do that.

Today's tears and grief came as a complete surprise to me, and have left me feeling drained, empty, and sad. I'm going to take it easy for the rest of today and probably the rest of the weekend while I deal with some of these emotions.