Today is hard. The
hardest it has been in a long time and I don’t want to start the New Year this
way. I don’t want the coming year to be
filled with hard. I know life is not
full of easy, but I sure would appreciate a year of not hard.
Today I want to give up.
I’m still standing, but just barely.
I feel like a shark, hurting, wounded, but still swimming because if I
stop I may never get up again. Every
fiber wants to get in bed and stay there.
I don’t want to work, I don’t want to play, I don’t want to talk to
anyone or pretend everything’s going to be okay and that I have some special
unwavering faith and that is why God has placed us on this journey.
The truth is that my faith wavers every day. Every day I just want to stop trying. To find refuge in the shallow. Sleep.
Food. Even alcohol is tempting. Anything that promises to make this easier. Because it sucks. I feel like I could cry for days on end and
there would still be tears. Tears for
dreams unfulfilled. Tears for
myself. Tears for J. Tears for my mom and for J and E who may
never know the joy of cousins. Tears for
the jealousy in my heart and the envy I feel.
For no one else I know personally has this struggle. NO ONE in my group of friends has had any
trouble conceiving. They are the
opposite, the “Fertile Myrtles” of the world.
And I know that all of their journeys are different than ours and that
we aren’t meant to be the same and they all have their own struggles and
private heartaches. But this is
mine. And I don’t know if my heart will
ever be okay with it. Some days it seems
like it will. But others it feels like
it is going to explode. And then I won’t
have any heart left. Already I hide it,
this heart that is fickle and hurts so much, because I don’t want anyone to see
this pain. I don’t want people to see
the part of me that gives up, that finds life to be too much. I don’t want them to see me. I don’t want people who have no idea what
this feels like to offer advice and words and possible meanings. I want to be left alone. And I want to be paid attention to. It’s a lose lose situation. No one can win with me, the way I am right
now, so I hide, so that no one can even really try. Because I don’t want them to fail, to feel
badly, to know that nothing can make it better.
It doesn’t work, you know, hiding it. I don’t hide it as well as I think I do, and
when I do I am really just doing a disservice to everyone and not trusting
anyone. There’s a lot of pain in showing
it, but a lot of joy, too, when I realize that someone loves me anyway. Someone loves me in spite of the ugly.
I am so tired. My soul is weary. I pray that the year to come is not like how I feel today.
A shark swims to move water across its gills
Which keeps oxygen in its lungs
And life in his body.
He doesn’t stop, and if he does
He is clever about it, finding
The vents in the tanks at Sea World
And stationing himself there,
A veteran of the aquarium who no one
Dares mess with.
I move to keep the blood flowing,
To keep my heart beating
And life in my body.
I don’t dare stop, for if I do
It will be the end of my cleverness,
Of hiding the failure of my body
And of my mind.
I am a veteran of infertility who no one
Dares mess with.
