Mountain Climbing

It’s been a while since I’ve been this depressed. A year, in fact. This is my annual trip into the depths, a self-deprecating pool of shame and guilt that marks what would have been the impending due date of the pregnancy I terminated all those years ago. This year it’s even more gut-wrenching and hollow, knowing as I do that for sure, for sure, that was my one shot at it.

I’m sure because we’ve decided I should stay on the Pill. I think this is the only way that I am going to be able to get past this rough patch. The best that I can hope for is to be happy with the life I’ve got (which is pretty damn good). How can I be happy with my life while I am trying desperately to change it, fundamentally and irrevocably? If I continue to leave the nursery door open, even a crack, I’ll eventually want to open it wider and wider, while reality is pushing to close it. I don’t want this struggle in my life any more. I haven’t been a good wife, sister, daughter, friend, or even employee for quite a while now. As Jenna so nailed it in her comment, I have a lot of life to fill and I don’t want to waste the next 10 years waiting for a train that’s never coming.

Am I sad? Do I feel like a failure? Yes, and yes. This will be a process, with ground gained and slips back, but I have a support system that will allow me to do this, I’m safely bound on this slippery slope by many ropes.

When I questioned my husband whether it would have been better not to have gone down this road at all, he disagreed, saying we are both better people for it, and have a stronger relationship. Whatever my faults, I must have done something right at some point to deserve to have this man in my life.

I mentioned immortality in my last post. I realized later how grandiose that sounded. How many people on this earth actually achieve immortality? How many have it for all the wrong reasons? I have good works still in me, perhaps even a novel or two, and many opportunities left to make a difference. As I thought about this I felt a tectonic shift in my thinking about my husband’s son. Up until now his very name would knot my stomach and overwhelm me with sadness. Now I realize that even though I might never meet him, the fact that he exists means that my husband’s genes will live on for at least one more generation. And that means more to me than I can express.

Here's a song for all of us still trying to find where our soul and our home is.
Nelly Furtado - I'm Like A Bird (acoustic)

P.S. This is not the end of my story, or my blog, not by a long shot.