I feel as though I have been channeling Greta Garbo today: I vant to be alone. All by myself. Left to my own devices. Footloose and fancy free.I can feel myself going through the first of many waves of discontent over our remarkably and especially bad luck (on a good day) or just plain cruelty in the world (on a bad day) that has left us with the Second Strike, Scarlet Letter B, second run around the miscarriage loop. Small things usually set it off - seeing someone who is pregnant, etc. But once it gets going, I consistently and faithfully go back to the same questions: "why did it have to be us? Why can't it work just once? Why have been at this almost three years and have no baby to show for it?"
To be sure, it's an exhausting set of questions that often leaves me doubting my goodness, worth and whether I deserve to have a child. After all, without some other explanation, the inclination is to turn the analysis inward and introspect as to what flaw, what deficiency of mine could possibly explain all of the unbelievable crap that we have been through. Because, as I have hashed about so many times before, it is not satisfying to say that there is no reason (although that is likely the truth). It's the eternal question of why bad things happen to good people (don't get me started on this one) or why good things happen to bad people.
Rationally and dispassionately, I know that it is not this simple. Good things happen to good people and bad things happen to bad people. Life is the good and bad. Wouldn't it be awfully boring if nothing bad happened? Wouldn't we be unable to really appreciate what we have in life if we never were faced with not having them? I understand and accept that bad things have to happen to you in life for you to be a well-rounded, grounded and otherwise well-functioning person. I just wish those bad things weren't this bad.
Being an atheist also means that I am without a very significant source to turn to for help and guidance, namely god and religion. This doesn't bother me, because I'm an atheist for a reason and I ground myself in secular thought. This also requires me, though, to accept that there is no defined path, no preordained way in which this is supposed to work, no plan. It also requires me to accept that one precept that I just have such a hard time with: there is no rhyme or reason to what happens to us. I just happened to get the short end of the stick (again). I liken this to eating rice cakes - you know it's good for you but it is just so damn unsatisfying.
I will be continue to be angry and discontented and sad and all of it about this and probably will be for a while. And, like last time, I will just have to taste each one and pay it its due before I'm allowed to move on.
I just didn't want to be in this place again ever. Or at least not this soon.
.jpg)
11 comments:
sounds like we're hanging out in the same pit of despair. i hope that we don't stay here long. :)
There may be "no defined path, no preordained way in which this is supposed to work, no plan" but doesn't that also mean that the possibilities are endless ~ not just bad, but good also?
Rail against the injustice of it. Wallow in it until you're ready & able to move on. Then you won't feel cheated or shortchanged of your feelings, cuz you've had time to fully immerse yourself in them all.
Does that make sense?
I think rice cakes suck. so your point is well made.
It's the Whys that make it so hard. The Whys are hard to let go of.
There's nothing wrong with being angry. It can be righteous, it can be downright refreshing at times. Closets can be cleared, furniture can be built, pain can be born. Life is unfair, that's the truth, it isn't something that makes you feel better, it just is. And for some crazy reason, you still wake up and keep breathing.
My dear Mrs. X! Sigh. I wish this wasn't so hard.
I, too, am of the atheist-type bent, though I have some strange pagan-ish leanings. We humans seem hard-wired to need answers and neat, just, symmetrical resolutions. The world around us refuses to cooperate. But this world is all we have.
There is no way a woman can lose all that you have--the babies, the time, your precious effort and energy--and not reach this bleak place.
You won't be here forever (I know, big comfort); things will change. Until they do, know you've got lots of friends, including those of us sending virtual support your way through the ether.
I'm an atheist too, and I agree that one of the hardest parts of IF is realizing and accepting that there is no plan.
Very well said. That spring is on the way is irritating me.
I am not an atheist, so I am left to wonder if my faith has left me vulnerable to bouts of feeling incredibly irrational. Frustration at either choice- that there is a plan and this is it, just blows me away, or, that there is no plan, it is all just random, also blows me away.
Either way it blows.
I hope we both find our way through this as best we can.
Hugs to you.
I just got back off holiday, and was so very disappointed to read of your terrible news.
I am so, so sorry, Mrs X. My heart goes out to you.
I also am not a faithful person, although may be agnostic, not aethist. Either way, I think we suffer from similar thinking. I have had 2 losses in the last year. There were times when reading helped me, so I will give you two recommendations and you can take em or leave em.
Motherhood Lost: A Feminist Account of Pregnancy Loss in America by Linda Layne
also
Mourning My Miscariage by Peggy Orenstein (link here: http://www.peggyorenstein.com/articles/2002_mourning_miscarriage.html)
I am thinking of you.
I'm sorry. I've been there and it's absolutely no fun. It's completely cruel and unfair. I'm full of anger and bitterness.
Take care.
I'd like to have a boring life with a boring baby.
Post a Comment