i'm not dreaming

currently, i’m not feeling like my days are merry or bright.
of course saying this makes me want to list about nineteen gabillion things that i’m grateful for, or that are bringing happiness to my life, or that do provide candles of warmth in an otherwise grey misty landscape. but i won’t. i already know that at my core, i have joy woven into my soul by my Creator that, well, compels me to make that list of nineteen gabillion things. this slow, stifling sadness is an alien and disturbing thing that is not part of who i am. and yet it sits within me, like a heavy sticky ball of unresolved goo that makes me sluggish and weary.
the holidays are not the easiest time; i went through these last few weeks thinking: finally, a Thanksgiving with no dead babies! if that sounds morbid and shocking, perhaps it’s supposed to be; to wake me up from this creeping suffocation. i lost both of my children around this time, a year apart, and while i’m relieved to be going into Christmas without feeling like i just buried part of my shredded heart, this also means i’m staring down the long, murky road of infertility. i was officially there awhile ago, given my “advanced maternal age,” but now i am long past when any woman with my – on paper – excellent health supposedly should have become pregnant again. at least the holidays that featured child loss meant that the grief was hot and pure and spiky and sharp; it kept me defiant of despair and awake enough to pursue healing. i don’t know what to do with this amorphous sorrow; it oozes and drips and makes my grief shadowy and elusive. i don’t know from one moment to the next if it’s that i miss my babies, or that i cannot seem to get pregnant, or that my dreams of family now seem ludicrous, or if it’s my secret devastation that my husband is still not a father.
as each month with a normal cycle blends into the next, i have found that somewhere along the series of 28-day lines i slowly stopped believing. first i gave up thinking that i’d ever have a normal, healthy child. then i stopped thinking i’d ever carry to term and have a live birth. and now i realise i’ve even let go of thinking i'll ever be pregnant again. these all now seem to be mildly interesting events that happen to other people. i’m trying to figure out now if loss of belief means loss of faith, and if loss of faith thus means loss of hope.
i think not yet. i still have faith that my story will unfold with the timing it is supposed to. i still have hope that answers for how we will add to our family will become clear. but i admit, here and now, although it is like another tiny death, that i do not still believe. at least not today.
i am, however, open to the possibilities of tomorrow.

thanks, Elizabeth

words of wisdom from a woman who will be missed:

"If you know someone who has lost a child, and you're afraid to mention them because you think you might make them sad by reminding them that they died -- you're not reminding them. They didn't forget they died. What you're reminding them of is that you remembered that they lived, and that is a great gift."

-Elizabeth Edwards (3 July 1949- 7 Dec. 2010)