Today I am thankful for returning to this blog, however sporadically. There is so much I could write about. We have just returned from an amazing, amazing vacation, and vacations are always very refreshing for my relationship with Daniel. For the first time in a long time, I didn’t perceive a chasm between the person I am on vacation and the person I am at home. It was lovely not to feel the anxiety of wondering how I would incorporate the vacation me into the daily life me once I got back. Of course there are small behaviors from vacation that I would like to carry over, but I didn’t feel as divided as I usually do. I am very, very pleased about that. I am deeply grateful that I am in a position to feel more myself to myself more of the time. I feel generally like I am growing back into my capacities and optimism. I’ve signed up for a language class — the kind of thing I never would have done a few months ago. I would have deemed it impossible. Now it seems not only possible but logical.
I’ve also started a new meditation practice in the morning, per the recommendations in June’s Yoga Journal magazine (no link, sadly. YJ is pretty protective of its content). As always when I start some new form of meditation, a lot of anxiety comes up, but I’d rather know about it and face it than not (most of the time).
What brought me back to the blog was the itch of awareness that the anniversary week is coming up. And the follow-on awareness that some of my anxiety is tied to that — this memory that comes to my body and psyche before it comes to my consciousness. Yesterday, Daniel and I were talking and he was reflecting on some excellent and much longed-for developments that have happened in his professional life — a very big improvement that he’s been waiting for and fighting for for a decade. And as he was sharing his happiness with me, I found myself feeling resentful and withdrawing. I was upset that he’s getting what he has so longed for, that his life is approaching the possible perfection (that is the perfection that is possible in a life — the closest realization of the ideal that an imperfect world permits) while I feel mine never will. There will always be this absence, this hole.
Later, during yoga class (restoratives — always a place where stuff will come up), I felt the purest and most intense sadness I’ve felt yet. Thankfully, it was very short, but it was unadulterated. It wasn’t mixed with envy at what other women have, or resentment at Daniel, or unforgiveness, or comparisons. It was just a deep sadness, and deep longing. I was so sad that my second baby wasn’t here for all this good stuff. I had wanted her to be born because I knew we would get to this good stuff — Daniel never had that faith. Of course, one could argue, with the wisdom gained from several Star Trek episodes, that there’s no universe in which both this good stuff and that second baby exist simultaneously. Changing one thing changes everything else. But at that moment, I just missed that baby so damn much. I just missed her.
So, in most ways, almost two years out, the pain of what didn’t happen, the pain of non-gain-that-feels-like-loss is much less, and the joy and fullness and depth of appreciation and human experience from what I have learned from this experience is huge. But in other blessedly infrequent ways, it hurts even more. I am sad not only for what I am missing (and Daniel and Milo, too). I am so very sad for what that baby who never was is missing.
Another Door 