it is what it is

I don't know how much sense this post will make. I'm writing here today in an attempt to prime the pump, so to speak. It's been a month since I've written, and I don't really know why. An inadvertent break.

I suspect my silence is the result of feeling inexorably dragged through a normal looking life towards a giant billboard in the sky that reads: It is what it is. The ultimate in resignation. The ultimate non-answer.

"It is what it is," is a pretty common sentiment around this Yankee part of the country. I hear it all the time from my in-laws, from the coach of our local NFL team, and most recently from my massage therapist/spiritual healer in regards to my reproductive system. Yikes.

I am not liking year two. They told me it would be different, but there's no way to know that until you arrive here, dumped out on your ass at the end of some enormous Rube Goldberg machine, surrounded by the rubble of your life. I don't even think about her all day every day. I don't sob in the shower or in the sheets any more. I don't touch her things or flip through her scrapbook. My cells no longer ache to nurture her, and even my heart no longer swells with that overpowering love and longing and grief. She's just gone. Just dust. And I'm just stuck here. Alone.

My mourning pretty closely resembles self-pity at this point. This is shitty mothering, for sure.

I'm sure we could each come up with a long list of beliefs that followed the nurses out the door when we handed our dead children over to them for the last time. I'm having a hard time living without: a) a sense of magic and serendipity; b) a sense of the universe being on my side and of having some ability to fulfill my potential; or c) a belief that everything turns out okay in the end.

I have a friend: 35, long-divorced, beautiful, employed, extroverted, open-hearted, a great lover of prosecco and goat cheese. Over dinner recently we discussed her dating difficulties. There is no one on the horizon. But she is ready. I wanted to say to her, "It will be okay. It will happen." But I couldn't. Not anymore. Two years ago, I would have been cheering her on and giving her suggestions and encouraging patience. I would have felt absolutely hopeful on her behalf. Instead I said, "I'm sorry it's so hard. That really sucks."

Because you know what? Not everyone meets the right guy. Some people really do die alone. Some never get out of their dead end jobs. Some have a fight with their kid and never see them again. Some lose their dream homes and live out their days getting bilked by a slumlord. Some get chronic diseases that consume their once active lives. Some perfectly healthy people die in car accidents. Some babies die, too.

How the hell do I know if she's going to meet a good man soon? I couldn't even bring myself to say it. Is this the woman I'm going to be now? The downer? The one who sighs and says, "It is what it is"?

My life has become both more scary and more dull. I have a hard time making plans and dreaming up dreams, because without that little bit of hope that things will magically and supernaturally come together, well, the whole thing just lacks spice. It might all come together. Or it might all fall apart again. I just plod ahead and take my chances.

Is this what full adulthood finally looks like? No God, no magic, no serendipity, no plan, no meaning - just whatever I choose to create and to take responsibility for? I suppose there is some good in that. Growing up is good. Personal agency is good. But seriously, universe - if there's anyone out there - were you so sick of me dragging my heels on the way to adulthood that you had to grow me up fast by taking my baby?

There I go again, thinking there was some point to all this.

I miss feeling joyful. I miss feeling confident. I miss feeling like I'm worth taking care of. I miss feeling like good things are in the pipeline, coming my way. I don't know if I can ever get those feelings back. What could be the mechanism by which my faith could be restored?

Wait, I know this one. Time.

I've just written myself into a gloomy mood. But at least it's an honest mood. This horrible lostness... this not knowing or liking or trusting of the self... or of others... or of the outside world... it passes? Right? And until then, well, it is what it is?