I can't deal

Oh guys... March. The month of if onlys and the last times. I am a complete disaster.

I'm sitting at Panera. It's spring break and the hubby and I are trading off two hour blocks of time to work, study, etc. I spent the last half hour reading the blog of a bereaved father and crying, at the corner table, in Panera. I have a book on lizard behavior open in front of me topped with a to-do list that just keeps getting longer. I can not concentrate. I've been vacillating between frantic hyper focused bursts of activity and hours curled up just staring into the distance. I can't deal... I can't deal.

I'm back in grad school. GRAD SCHOOL, what the crap Jodie? Seriously? You still can't consistently communicate with other human beings and you're taking on a PhD? What-on-earth?

If I'm being honest I've actually been doing pretty well. I get into an academic situation and people start discussing speciation and gene flow and genetic drift and some part of my brain that is undamaged wakes up. It's the scientific, logical Jodie. I can rock a scientific discussion but if you want to talk to me about the weather or my favorite foods or, hell, anything chit-chatty I just shut-down. My brain stops working, literally (and I do know the correct use of that word).

Then, enter March. I can't think. I don't care. I just want to die. I want to curl up in a ball, sob until the tears wont come anymore and then just cease to exist. This is grief. It DOES NOT get better. It doesn't you just get better at handling it, until March.

At night I sit in the dark holding my rainbow baby and the flashbacks come. I've largely gained control of them... until now. I can't stop them. I can't control them. Damon...

I can't figure out my purpose. I can't figure out the point. Everything I used to cling to is gone. My foundation that I was so sure of has crumbled. The illusions are torn away and I am here, naked, staring into a black hole.

Here's the truth. I desperately want to believe there is some good supernatural being that gives a crap. I want to so badly that it makes me feel sick but I just plain don't. I'm past my rebellious phase where my anger drove me to hatred. For a long long time I hated God. I mean vehemently, horribly, desperately hated. I would think things like 'if the bible is true and it hurts you to lose your children then I'm willing to sacrifice myself to hurt you.' That's how much I hated him. I wanted to go to hell just to hurt him. I wanted to suffer for all eternity just to cause him what little pain I was capable of inflicting.

I still have those moments but they are fleeting. Now, I have resigned to a painful increasing belief that everything I believed so fiercely was a lie I told myself to cope with the crappy reality that is life. I told myself that there was a design. That there was a way to rise above. That even when things made no sense there was a higher purpose. I just wasn't capable of understanding it, being a lowly human and all. Increasingly, I just don't buy it anymore.

You have no idea how strong the motivation is to believe in a god, in an after life, for a parent who has lost a child. I guarantee I want to believe it more than the most dynamic preacher you've ever heard. I want to... but I don't. I want to believe there is some f-ing REASON. That I will hold my child again. That he is safe and happy and not just GONE. But the more I try to work through this. The more I study, the more I learn, the less convinced I am and that is a horrible feeling. Beyond the fact that it is terribly isolating to live in the bible belt and less and less believe the bible (which, by the way, I know pretty darn well) I no longer have a direction, a point, a purpose.

I simply cannot fathom a god who would allow this kind of agony and this agony opens my eyes to the unbelievable pain, loss, and devastation experienced by human beings every second of every minute of every day. Right now thousands of parents are watching their children breathe their last breath. Stop, stop yourself from rationalizing, stop yourself from skipping over that reality. Stop your self from erecting the shield that protects your heart from the truth that is life and death and think about that. Let it touch you. Thousands of spouses sit alone in a home that they shared with their beloved for decades just waiting to die. Thousands more are watching their partner slowly disappear as disease destroys their brain and body... making choices between feeding their children or housing them... making choices between surviving or killing.

I do not know how to deal. I miss him so much. I miss him so much. I cannot understand. I cannot function. It has been nearly two years. Flashes of his sweet baby body dressed in his pajamas flash in front of my eyes. His lips slowly turning blue as he died in the a hospital bed. How... how do I cope with this? How?

I can't deal...