When death brings new life

I had a difficult conversation with my Husband this evening. I told him that I needed some feedback. I wanted to know how it has been to live with me lately and I know ‘easy’ would not be the word he would use to describe it. Yes, things have just been so difficult lately, but I just know I can't carry on this way.

He was lovingly honest and every time I would respond with “I can’t believe you feel this way, he would look horrified that he may have said something to hurt me and say “wait this isn’t coming out right, let me say it better” when the truth is he could have said it in a million different ways and with a bag of sugar in his mouth and it wouldn’t have made a difference, because he was right.

He even seemed to be a bit frustrated which is a state I rarely see him in. He wants me to be happy and I actually wish that his wish would be my command. He is always so positive and he says things like what keeps him going is focusing on everything that we have. Sometimes I just want to punch him when he says things like that. Not because it’s not true but because I’m envious that he is able to be that way, even after loosing his father just a few short months ago.

It is now past mid night and I am wide awake mulling over the conversation. A part of me wants to be really mad at him so I don’t have to take any responsibility but I can’t because first of all I asked for the feedback and second of all he always lets me be me. He lets me feel my pain and always listens intently, quietly and never tells me what to do or gives me advise if I don't ask for it. But too often lately I catch him staring at me with a deep look of concern in his eyes.

I haven’t spoken about my late Father for a while now and it came up in the conversation this evening. He was a man with great potential but gave up on life at an early age. He was a brilliant, well respected Doctor but could not get past his addiction to prescription meds. He never coped very well with life’s challenges, and he never showed up to life and in the end he gave up completely. Carl Jung said it best "Nothing has a stronger influence psychologically on their environment and especially on their children than the unlived life of the parent".

So between sobs I am explaining this to my Husband and it suddenly occurs to me that that is exactly what I have been doing, my whole entire life.  I have been so unhappy  for so long and I haven’t wanted to do life, at all. I have been my father’s child. And suddenly I am looking at the look of distress on my Husband’s face and having a flash forward, imagining my own children one day having to go through what I went through, witnessing a parent just give up on life like he did, give up on his children. And then I realise something big, something huge...I realise that I do want to live life, I want to be present, and I want to experience joy and happiness. I no longer want to identify with my Father through pain. I don't know if I know how just yet and I am petrified at the thought but I am aching to.

This year has brought me to my knees. From loosing my dearest Father in law to not being able to fall pregnant I have had to re evaluate everything in my life. It was either that or live a non-existent life., which isn't living at all. I want to do things differently now, I want to move past this depression I have been in for too long. This feels like it could finally be the death of the pain in my life and the birth of joy.

And in all of this I realise that I have been missing out all this time, missing out on the happy moments because I haven’t been able to see them and I am suddenly desperate to get these 29 years back.

And then it came to me, a voice in my head.  It said; ”Perhaps it’s not a baby that you have been yearning for for sixteen months, perhaps it’s your life”.