no fancy title here

I told Conor this evening that grief feels like something living inside of you, or at least for me, it does, and that I have to get it out, I have to release it, even every hour or so, or else it starts to eat away at my joy and my peace and everything else that feels sane. So I walk around my house talking out loud a lot. I'm not praying, per se, just sort of chatting with myself - although I guess God, too, knowing He can hear it all, anyway - about what I'm feeling. I find it to be therapeutic to expunge my emotions verbally. This won't suprise those of you who knew me back in the days when I was prone to pick up a bar of Dove soap and stand in front of a mirror, doing a commercial for them. I've tried to do this several times in the years since and it doesn't come naturally anymore, most likely because I'm not really secure enough in myself to act like a total idiot knowingly, even with no one watching. Anyway, maybe idiocy feels more like comedy with a crowd. That makes sense, I guess. But that strain of my personality definitely resurfaces in this whole "talking to myself" business. I find that I'm actually pretty good at psychoanalyzing my emotions if I talk about them and I actually enjoy that feeling of introspection, seeing a part of who I am that perhaps I never had the time or energy or desire to really examine.

All that to say sometimes talking to myself can still get a little stale. And thus, I turn to the blog. So if you feel like I have become particularly verbose of late, just know it's not because I think most of you are just longing to know my every thought. It's simply that somehow, that creature, grief, has to be set free. And writing what I'm feeling down is just about as good as talking what I'm feeling out.

I am scared. Scared beyond any sense of scared I've ever felt. Friday, the day before my 28th birthday, was the worst day I've had so far. We got the word from my OB - Copeland is going to be delivered September 18th. We're "on the books," as they might say. I had 48 hours to process what it might feel like to actually have to pencil that in on my planner, that for most people c-sections are scheduled with a sense of excitement and joy, and that for me, it's like mindlessly agreeing that yes, we're ready to let our daughter die. It's strange. Will it all get worse - or better? I find that the anxiety I live with now can sometimes seem so unbearable that I actually have to remind myself to breathe. Which is strange. And a bit cliche, I realize. But I suppose like all the intense emotions we feel in life, grief has its stereotypes that turn out to be marked realities when once you're going through them. Having to remember to breathe has been one for me. Or maybe not remembering to breathe. Just finding an odd sense of comfort in breathing, like everything else in the world is crashing down but you can still suck oxygen back and that feels normal. The grief I felt Friday, the sadness, scared me. I had never felt that sad before. And it was physical. Exhausting and destructive and somewhat overpowering. It went away as quickly as it came, but the strength of it was such that I certainly don't look forward to it creeping up again. I feel like I should put up Post-It notes around the house with "Don't worry, it'll be gone soon" scribbled all over them. Just so I know that I'll get back to a good place again, at some point.

I have found that the crying is a lot like vomiting. It's one of those symptoms of pain and sadness that you know is bound to come, much like throwing up is one of the inevitable symptoms of being nauseated. And you also know that somehow, weirdly, once you've done it, you'll feel better. But it's miserable. I wake up each morning wondering if I'm going to feel emotionally "nauseous" - whether that impending sensation of crying will hang in my stomach and remain there until I've acquiesced and allowed myself to weep uncontrollably. The crying itself is sickening and overwhelming and at the same time completely cleansing. You're drained and there's nothing else to give so, for the time being, that 'nausea' you felt subsides. The grief creature is appeased.

Reading C.S. Lewis has brought about a new-found sense of inadequacy in much of the faith I've held for years, much of the evangelical Christianity that I've been cultured to accept as "real" or "solid" or "truthful." I don't feel that I can compartmentalize God anymore, or that I can handle this situation with neat little phrases that so often we toss about in times of struggle. I am not angry, necessarily, about this, just sort of disconcerted. Lewis wasn't American. Why does my Christianity have a red state/blue state feel to it? At the same time, the disconcerted feeling is also incredibly exhilirating, like jumping into a freezing lake or something - there's a rush of awakening that happens in your soul, a sense of relief, like there's more to the whole story than you originally thought. God isn't what you might have pinned Him to be in the beginning of your journey, no; He's more and better and not at all the somewhat ineffective deity I often make Him out to be. I don't think He's angry, necessarily, with our tendency to box Him in like that. I suspect it's just a bit annoying.

There's no real point to all of this other than the fact that I don't have to wander about the house tomorrow exchanging diatribes with myself about any of it. So that's good. Thank you for being willing to read. Someone told me recently that my blogs were kind of long and I just had to grin -- welcome to the world of all the people who've ever been asked, unwillingly, to edit my papers or articles or whatnot: I'm long-winded. I don't know how to say anything quickly or with just a few sentences. So enjoy what you can and pitch the rest. Just know I'm working on keeping myself afloat.