I will not fear today

July 27, 2010

Yesterday at work I was reading through the medical records of one of my clients and hospital memories began to flood my mind. I wonder what it would be like to read through my records. How would those pages depict the most horrendous days of my life? How would they talk about Harper and her birth? I bet I could read about every time we listened to her heart beat. They must have made some notation about that. Would they have written down any comments I made during that time, little notes anywhere speaking to my state of mind or emotional wellbeing? I realized I had been holding my breath and forced myself to exhale. My heart was beating quickly. I looked out the window at the cityscape, but that's not what I saw. I saw myself in the ER on the day I thought I was going to die. I saw myself losing consciousness several times that day. I felt the humiliation I felt when my bed pan overflowed with blood and feces there beneath me in the bed. I felt the pointlessness of the fight for life because I had just lost Harper. It's been two years and I still struggle to find the courage within myself to face a life that I fear holds more pain, more loss, more heartache. It takes so much work, so much work to sort through the mess that grief made when it hijacked my thought processes. But still I soldier on. I look for the moments of ease in my life, the people who I can relax around, who understand that I'm still sorting through it all and they are okay with that. Those people have become an oasis for me. Because every day it's a struggle in my mind to make sense of my life now. I'm thankful for the moments of distraction, for laughter, for a good night's sleep without fitful dreams.

Here I sit. Finishing my cup of coffee, preparing myself for a day that I have decided will be a good one. Telling myself in my constant state of prayer that there will be goodness today. There will be goodness that I will notice and will embrace. I will not fear today.