Irrelevant

Remember how I told you that I was doing ok, that the pain of the failed pregnancy was surprisingly dull? Well that didn’t last long. Thanks to chlomid and other factors, what began as a humming ache progressed into bat. shit. crazy.  I hate to admit that I am not in any way exaggerating this point.  I am literally losing my mind, which is something I said to Trever last night when I crawled in bed after an hour of sobbing hysterically.  I wasn’t even crying about pregnancy or motherhood, I’m actually not thinking about that much.  But the grief of everything and the constant hormonal tweaking is causing feelings to sprout up into my orderly and predictable mind.  This makes a circumstance that might call for a glossy eyed nearly-cry escalate quickly and without any sense of control into absolute and total mania.

It was while I still maintained some semblance of rational behavior before the great melt down that I met with Ash to discuss prayer.  He asked me where God was in all of this.  We were in a loud starbucks and people were walking in and out so I kept getting distracted and looking away, while desperately hoping that the question might itself become distracted and walk away as well.  After a socially unacceptable amount of silence and delay I turned back to Ash and all I could say is, “He’s irrelevant.” 

I don’t think prayer changes things, I don’t think God speaks back, I don’t think God intervenes hardly at all, I think there’s a chance He comforts us but I doubt it, and I really don’t think there’s much relationship to be had in that sense.  I have come to terms with God’s existence, I’m making progress in accepting His goodness, I do not however think I can manage to believe He’s relational with us. I told Ash all of this, I told him how I tried to study and practice prayer in faith and it felt disingenuous and false and so I stopped.  Just to give another quick shout out to the psychedelic rave my emotions are throwing in my brain, it is because of them I no longer have a filter.  Was it necessary to clarify that?

Ash asked me if it’s possible that I’m waiting for God to respond to me, but that I’m only allowing Him to respond on my terms.  He asked if it was possible that God was actually right there in the emotions and I wasn’t recognizing His presence.  I contemplated this, I maybe even felt a little convicted by it.  I quietly vowed to practice faith in a relationship with God whatever that might look like.

Then I had an emotional breakdown last night referred to previously, woke up the next morning and felt like I had been drunk on feelings the night before, like they had taken me over and I felt like a fool.  So I took back my vow, if God’s in my emotions He’s really unstable, and if He is in circumstances He’s even more unstable, and if He speaks through visions he has an unhealthy obsession with sail boats, all of these things equally concern me. Let’s all, in hope for my salvation, pray that God tunes us out when we’re on synthetic hormones.

In the meantime I have virtually no control over the way I feel right now, so I will do the only thing I can control which is input.  So I am inputting all the time, as in if I’m not watching Ryan and Marissa quarrel with the passions of a soap opera then I’m hiking or doing yoga or pretty much anything but letting my mind sit still. I will now be leaving to go to Peter’s Canyon where I will hike the hill to the top where there always seem to be a vague scent of maple syrup in the air.   In my thorough assessment the scent is due either to a bizarre maple essence plant or else an elaborate scheme from IHOP to make tired and hungry hikers subconsciously crave breakfast foods.  Either way, the contemplation of the schemes of nature to make us clueless homo-sapiens crave sugar keeps me from being angry, which is really all I’m hoping for at this point, non-anger. Goals.

Haunting Humming

Well the first test was negative.   I’m gonna go watch the OC for the next couple of days, buy a new pair of shoes and maybe get a tiny bit drunk.  See you on the other side.

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I’ve come out of my cave of mourning which did involve a lot of the O.C. as predicted. I actually took it all pretty well.  I took a pregnancy test on Thursday and it was negative, then I took another one on Friday, still negative.  So by the time Saturday rolled around and they did the blood test I was already fairly certain that I wasn’t pregnant.  I had planned on heading to the beach after the appointment because Trever was out of town for the weekend and I needed to be in a happy place. 

One of my favorite things about the beach is that no matter how many people there are, the waves usually overpower their noise so it always feels weirdly private.  I was laying on my towel raptured in a book when my phone buzzed that an email came through.  It confirmed negative results and I cried for about a minute.  I sent a quick email to family and friends updating them on the results and I turned off my phone and stared at the beach, thoughtless. Then I started reading again, went home, had drinks with a friend, did yoga the next day, made mango sticky rice with coconut milk and went to supper club. It was all normal, and I feel mostly upbeat.

I am thoughtless though, that is sort of how I’ve been all weekend. I had accepted what happened pretty quickly but seemed to have this humming noise of sadness expressed in lethargy and it’s still haunting me. I hardly think about this unsuccessful round of pregnancy and I assume it’s because I have a high tolerance for pain right now. When we found out about our cause of infertility back in November, we were fairly certain we would never have our own children that was real grief, so this is just going through the hassle of maybe making it happen, I can do that. Sometimes though I realize I’m a bit sad in very inopportune moments.  I saw the owners of my yoga studio for my first class post IVF and I told them I could move again and I almost broke down in the lobby.  My friend Natalie came over to ask me how I was and I was hard as a rock, no feels. Trever and I were discussing next steps and I teared up in the lobby of Gulf Stream before our anniversary dinner. 

I don’t know what the hell is going on.  I’m fine.  No I’m not. I’m just going go take a nap because sleep solves all of life’s greatest problems.

Don't Look at Me

 A few weeks ago I went on a spiritual retreat, alone, all by myself, alone.

I was staying at a Franciscan Monastery up in the mountains in Malibu, which made for a good distraction from the utter silence of being alone. I went for a six mile run down to the beach the first day I was there and I had a couple epiphanies.  Malibu is the center of wealth in LA and the retreat center is inside a gated affluent community.  From a hill above where the Franciscan retreat center sits, the measly middle class religious types can peer down on the .1% of the world while they play a quick round of tennis after work on their private courts, and hire valet service for their parties, but mostly just walk inside at 8pm and click on the Television for the evening.  A note on the tennis courts, do people really play tennis that much that they need their own court?  I doubt it, I think it’s just a silent nod to their level of wealth. 

So I’m running down this street and a guy in his driveway yells at me to pick up my pace.  I laughed awkwardly trying to discern what he was actually saying to me.  Thinking in my head, this is my pace jack ass, so I run a 10 minute mile I’ve made peace with it you should too. Then as I ran away I realized he was mad I was running on his street (which didn’t have a private sign, I looked) and he wanted me to move faster to get off of it, can you believe it?!? He already had a fence towering around his property that was filled in with hedges twenty feet high to be sure no passing giants would be able see in.  That is a serious need for privacy, he should just get a forehead tattoo that reads– don’t look at me.  

I kept running as Telsas, Bently’s, Ferraris, and a whole lot of Range Rovers zoomed past me in their immaculate uniformity, and I was so pissed, I couldn’t get over it.  I kept going through what I would have said if I went back.  Something like – “well if you don’t want anyone on your street maybe you should add another gate to keep everyone out, if you’re lucky it will resemble a prison and then you will really have made it!” Buurrnnn. (I am the youngest sibling, I have a genetic pre-disposition for being bad at come-backs). I was annoyed at myself for caring so much, it was probably because he made me feel like a criminal and like I didn’t belong, that’s not a good feeling.

So anyways, you remember in Farenheit 451 when Guy is walking and meets Clarisse and she tells him to his complete amazement that her family walks places and that her Uncle sometimes gets arrested for just being a pedestrian? She also tells him they don’t take part in all the entertainment? Remember that? How Guy’s wife spends every evening living as a character in her TV shows, which are projected on all four walls of their living room. Remember how they all have ear buds in for constant entertainment throughout the day not dissimilar from the new iPhone ear buds? REMEMBER?

Malibu is Ray Bradbury’s fulfillment! (sans the book burning). You get stared at if you are not in one of five acceptable car brands but simply walking instead. Everyone is inundated with constant entertainment, from TV to social media or at least some music playing in their headphones. This includes me, thus my second epiphany – entertainment necessitates entertainment.

Note: Ray Bradbury was sort of right, George Orwell was too, who knows, maybe Suzanne Collins has some accurate predictions as well.  DUH Duh duh.

The whole first portion of the afternoon that I arrived I could not settle down. I tried to pray but my mind was still at a city pace and thus restless in the stillness. Reading kept movement in my mind, which helped but I could not for the life of me be still. This is when I went running, got yelled at, spent a couple of hours trying to wordsmith the perfect come-backs for random rich guy, and finally ended back on the hill as the sun set. By that time I had been alone and unplugged long enough I started to settle in.  The view alone became wild entertainment, my eyes balls erratically followed the frantic bats for longer than would be normal, I stopped reactively looking for my phone for updates, and then I finally prayed. I am most connected to God in nature, I have no problem believing that a divine being created mountains and oceans and tiny sing song birds, they’re just too brilliant.  So in the quiet of nature, I prayed like someone was listening.  A.W. Tozer says we can experience God in intimate ways like any other human relationship.  I don’t really think that’s true, but whatever it was that I experienced it meant something to me.

I got in my car to go home at the end of the trip, and the idea of having the radio on felt like an intrusion on my space.  SHHH I wanted to say to the world, you’re so loud.  The caffeine jitters of my mind finally wore of and I was for once moving slowly, with one direction, and with clarity at last. I was perfectly happy talking to myself, slowing meandering through the gardens and smiling up at that beautiful birds.  Crazy? Maybe. At peace? Finally.