Tag Archives: sadness

What this day means to me

The calendar hanging on the wall reads May 20. But I don’t need the calendar to remind me. I’ve actually been thinking about this day all month. I’ve been thinking of this month all year. I couldn’t let this day slip past without an acknowledgment, because this day is pretty significant to me.

Today is the due date of my second child.
I have no crib set up.
There is no freshly painted nursery.
No hospital bag is packed and waiting by the door.
There is only a what if and a why.
There is only my thoughts of how different my life would be right now… if only.

I think of her a lot. I call her Ivy Quinn. I don’t know that she was a girl, she didn’t make it long enough to find out, but I have a hunch.

Physically, she was only a part of me for a few weeks, but she will be a part of me until I take my last breath. She was mine regardless.  Her life ended, but mine continues. Her heart stopped beating, but mine beats on–even with a hole in it.

There is pain. There is heartache. There is something missing that was to be.  Then suddenly wasn’t to be.

I never felt her kick or held her in my arms, but I hold her in my heart and I always will.

I wash dishes in a sink full of suds, but there is no baby bottle to rinse. I fold clothes and stack them in piles on the couch, but they are absent of tiny gowns.

I can’t help but feel guilty. All the ‘ifs’ haunt me. If I had only wanted her more? If my initial reaction hadn’t been one of inconvenience? Would it have made a difference. If only she had known how very much she would have been loved? If I hadn’t been so overcome with doubt, worry, and fear? Would it have mattered. If I had felt more excitement? If I had told more people?

We had a photo taken. It was clever and cute and we were going to announce it when the time was right. I hung it in our bedroom. We told our little Emma. She was so excited. Then I had to tell her the hardest thing I’ve had to tell her yet. She was quiet and then she said maybe the baby will come back later. Then nothing else was said. Ever. I put the photo away in a drawer.
Out of sight, but not out of mind.
Especially today.
On May 20.
The due date of my second child.

jesus-with-children-0408

 

My Heavy Heart Needs Lifting

Lately I’ve found myself in a very deep place of sadness.  I can’t seem to shake it.  I’ve tried prayer, meditation, positive thoughts, reading His word, music, exercise, even sitting alone and forcing myself to smile for a minute at a time.  I’m about to resort to shopping.  I may temporarily feel better after these endeavors, but it is short lived.

No one knows I’m sad.  Not even the people I share my house with.  They just think I’m constantly in a bad mood because I mask it with irritability.  My heart’s hope is by blogging and sharing my struggle, it will help me find my happiness.

I could blame it on the rainy weather that threatens to  linger through 2017 or through Christmas at least. But I think that isn’t the cause of my sadness, but only exacerbates it.

There’s other factors as well.  I’ve been fighting an infection for over a week, and in other body news my thyroid which revolted against me 20 years ago is completely out of whack right now.   I’m not sleeping and I just feel overwhelmed.  I know these physical conditions can affect the mind.  But again, I don’t think they are the cause.

I am battling with my weight, exercising all the time, and then counteracting the good effects by eating much more than one woman ever should.  This is a troubling cycle which only causes frustration.  Each day, I stand again on square one.

I am not a crier, but fighting tears has become too common lately.

When I delve deeply and truly question it all, when I sit still and don’t distract myself with the boring household chores or the internet, when I truthfully look at my situation, I realize the reason for my melancholy is that I feel all alone.  I am living in a beautiful place, surrounded by glory and majesty and color.  A place where people escape to.  I’m surrounded by people and yet I am all alone.  I have no family here.  I have no friends here.  It’s not even that I’m a big friend person.  It’s that if I wanted to call someone up and say, “Hey let’s do something”, I wouldn’t have that option.  Sure, me and EK have a play group and story time and church that we attend each week, but those are just people I see every week, not people who know me.

Is it also that I feel purposeless?  Yes.  Being a housewife is boring and tedious and repetitious.  But do I even want to leave this messy house?  No.  I want to stay in bed, letting the raindrops make trails down my window and imagine God is crying with me.

I know there’s many people who suffer from the blues.  I’ve not been one of them really, until now.  Down in the dumps usually last only a short time for me.  I don’t want to call this the D word, because it will pass, but while I’m here in it, it really sucks.  I also feel really guilty for feeling this way, because I’m super blessed and I have no reason to feel sad.  So then I throw guilt in the mixing bowl with all my other emotional ingredients and I end up with a batter very unappealing.

But anyway, I’ve said enough.  I do feel better, strange as it seems, to open up my soul and show all of you my ugly insides. It’s like a release.  And because I know many of you after you read this will stop and send happy thoughts my way, all the way across the states, the plains, hills, and streams, all the way to this valley that I’m sitting in right now.  And I will see your happy thoughts coming on the winds, like little messenger pigeons bringing me your well wishes, your smiles, your “everything will be okays”.

I will look to the sky and wait for them.  As they approach, I will open my heart and reach out my hand and catch them as they flutter to the ground.  I will clasp them to my chest, close my eyes,  and then send you one back.

 

“Every man has his secret sorrows which the world knows not; and often times we call a man cold when he is only sad.”
― Henry Wadsworth Longfellow