Wake me up when (a few) September(s) ends

Sometimes I feel really, really broken. And possibly like I'm losing my mind. This is so hard. At my therapy appointment last week, our therapist (who knows a lot of our background from working with Elena) said that she thinks I am currently trying to process and grieve over more than just Kate's death. She told us that traumatic moments tend to be linked in the brain and it is likely that in an effort to "keep going" in the past that I never fully grieved and dealt with things that happened, but now I've reached an overload. That now I'm grieving Kate and her birth, our experience with Elena's cancer, and other past events all at the same time without realizing it. Maybe. Maybe that's why this seems SO very hard. I feel like swiss cheese - missing pieces all over the place. It is sad and confusing and frustrating and feels so complex and overwhelming. I just want to feel normal. I want to rewind time and jump back in and change the story and have Kate here and life back the way it was. Sometimes I really hate all of this. I don't understand a lot of the way I'm feeling and I'm tired of it interfering with life. And I'm tired of not knowing how to feel or what to say or what to do. Would you believe it if I said that in the space of about 18 hours worth of day I have felt:

perfectly normal
like dying
irrational hatred of all nine month pregnant women
like I want to hold and squish every newborn baby in sight
invigorated from a workout
tired down to my bones
overflowing with gratitude from seeing the Lord's tender mercies
physically ill from an excited "so, where's your baby?" conversation with an acquaintance I hadn't seen in a while
happy
frustrated
sad
excited
melancholy
just fine
a great sense of injustice
spiritually high and in tune
worried about how my kids are coping with all they've experienced in their short lives and guilt that I'm so messed up myself that I don't feel like I'm helping them enough?

I am so tired of all the reminders of how my life was going to be and how it is now. I'm trying so desperately to heal and to move on, but it brings the hurt on fresh every time. When I sign a birthday card or thank you note with just four names (Eric, Briana, Elena, and Lily) and get slapped in the face by how I would have been signing five names by now. Or when I get a form with a slot to fill in "family size" and have to write four when for so long I've been planning on writing five. Or when I get an invitation in the mail for a walk coming up next month for families who have lost babies (speaking of irrational - here's another case where I'm so grateful someone thought to include us and also angry at the fact that we qualify to get that invitation at all!).

Sometimes I just feel so tired. Bills and medical needs and worries never seem to end. And although I know things are slowing getting better each day, I'm weary of feeling the way I have been over the last six weeks and feeling like there's nothing really that can be done. Everyone (my therapist included) keeps saying (and I know they must be right), you just have to be patient and feel the feelings as they come and let time pass. But that's kind of a helpless-feeling place to be. I feel a little like a small ship being blown around by the wind on the ocean, just waiting for enough time to pass and to stop being blown into these emotional storms. I like to plan and to be in control and I've never felt like this - so at a loss about what to do to make things better and how to plan. But I guess this is a life lesson I need to learn, right? We can't control everything and learning to cope with that is what makes us stronger, better people. It's just a hard one to learn sometimes when it hurts so much. But I'm trying.