running

Did you ever have a dream where you’re running and running but you can’t break free, you can’t get anywhere?  That’s what life is like to me now.  I am running my hardest but it’s as though someone slipped a treadmill beneath my feet without my notice.  My legs are flailing to keep up, my heart is beating like it’s going to beat right out of my chest, my breath is as though I’ll never get enough air but I am going nowhere.  I’m nervous that I’ll never get away or catch up or whatever, so that I have butterflies. 

I can see the world go on around me.  I have occasional interaction ("Nice day today," or "How you doing?") like the breathy “hello” or silent wave of a jogger going by but everyone is passing me.  They all look at me knowingly, sadly, “she’s the girl who lost her baby,” “Poor thing, look at her.”  No one wants to tell me I’m standing still.  No one knows how to start the conversation to tell me I can stop running, that it’ll be okay to just walk for a while, that the worst of it is over.  (It is over right?)  Even if they could come up with the words they are afraid to tell me, I might break down and cry, I might get angry and scream, no one wants to upset me.  I don’t know if I’d believe them anyway.  How?  How will it be okay exactly?  I’m not angry.  I’m just sad, that I’m running in place and I can’t stop.  I don’t know how to feel right with the world again.  I don’t know how to feel like I did before. There is no way I’ll ever be the same as I was before.  I suddenly don’t trust the world; I don’t trust that everything will be okay like I used to.  That implicit trust in what will be is the right way is gone and I don’t know how to view the world, the future or any of it anymore.  My impression and way of thinking about life is altered and now I’m totally clueless with all of it.  I try to just let go.  I want to live free again, but I’m terribly afraid now that at any moment I could lose more.  I could lose everyone, anyone, anything that has ever meant anything to me.  So I run.  I run in place with tears streaming down inside, heart constricted because I don’t know how to just be, to be what I was, and think what I thought, or to think new thoughts and I'm terrified that it could happen again, that I'll lose again.  I don’t know how to adjust to the world now.

Separately, there is still this trouble with babies.  He says he understands, and I know implicitly that he does.  He says he doesn’t care, and I know that is the truth.  But I know too that he wants to hang out with all of them, all of our friends.  I don’t want to pull away from them because they all have babies.  I am glad that they are all healthy and beautiful.  I, truly with every part of my heart, am glad that they are all okay.  But that doesn’t change the fact that every one of them reminds me that I don’t have mine.   We went to a wedding the other day.  I counted at least three babies there.  I cried for a bit, thankful it was dark.  He held my hand. They aren’t my baby.  I don’t begrudge them their happiness.  I also have a severe amount of guilt attending an occasion where there are babies and that someone may notice I’m sad, and become uncomfortable at a place where they should be able to relax and be happy, and show off their precious babies.  I want him to be happy too, to be able to relax and not worry about me (although I don't think he'll ever stop worrying about me.) So perhaps it’s not separate at all, this trouble with babies, it’s that I just don’t know how to adjust to the world and I don't know what my place in it is.