attraversiamo

thirty-five.
35.
trentacinque.

it feels like a big one, to a girl who cares not about birthdays. thirty-five times two is seventy and then i guess after that...bonus years. in high school, i always thought that my forties would be the best years of my life. i thought i would reproduce in my twenties and be kinda free and settled by then, in a life and family and career. getting older never upset me.

coming up on paige's two years, i'm feeling...ok. i don't know how that can be possible, but it is. is it one of those things, though, where two years is "ok" and then you just go to utter shit yet again? that was cute at the dreaded four months mark, but at two years out, no one wants to hear about that shit anymore. but we all know that, don't we.

attraversiamo, crossing over. crossing over into 35+, into two years+. crossing over into the rest of my life, although every single day, every single minute, is the same thing, no? maybe it just feels good to have it feel like something bigger than that (WARNING to SELF! GRANDIOSITY SLIPS INTO SABOTAGE!!). well, anyway, whatever.

i read "eat, pray, love" within a few months of losing paige. i really liked it then. i just finished it again, and so much was lost into the miserable abyss during the first reading. it's a great and wonderful book, and seeing as it is a very open and emotional time for me, i've been inspired.

my life has taken a very different turn since the beginning of this year. it started with ivfs, and here, midway through 2009, i write check after check for (nothing? freedom from what-ifs?) failed ivf treatments with an IUD in place. my life is very different than it could have been this year.

crossing over. i'm crossing over to my other path, the one without another baby. that is sad for me, yet, this is my life. it is sad yet not sad, because another baby would have never been paige and really, if i'm honest, i wanted a do-over. it's not sad because it forces me to accept my dead baby without a buffer. if i can't do it over, i have to live, totally, with what is. it's all sad, but i'm learning. it's not sad, because i'm learning. it's also not sad because i have a new and mysterious path to walk.

i recently learned that i'm eligible for dual citizenship (italy). i tried a few years back, but didn't know the right answers, being estranged from my father. since reuniting with my father's side of the family (dead baby->therapy->reunion), i learned that i AM eligible. i am going to get my italian citizenship. i got rosetta stone and i'm learning italian. (this is all so incredibly SAPPY, and as we say in jersey, GAYYYY, having just re-read EPL...just so you know, it doesn't escape me...but fuck it...just a coincidence. HA!) the idea of it thrills me, and so, i will have thrills on my new path.

i made a reading list, and in my possession is 'radical acceptance: accepting your life with the heart of a buddha.' i need to accept. i need to learn ways to help me accept, and not just my dead baby. i need to accept every minute of every day, good and bad and indifferent, for what it is- nothing more or less. next september all my children leave for kindergarten and i'll be fucking damned if i spend this next year all tangled up in emotional bullshit. the idea of acceptance fills me with peace, and considering all there is to accept, i'll take peace where i can get it. i am a seeker on this new path.

since the IUD placement in march, i've kinda easily dropped 35lbs. it's amazing to me how much of that feels like an emotional release, not a physical one. letting go of the idea of another pregnancy made it almost easy. i have to be honest and say the whole thing- pregnancy? not? another baby? treatments?- made me quite depressed. when i was released from the 'trying,' i lost weight. i physically and emotionally feel so much better. i've learned alot about how i use food and the effect it has on my body and psyche. i intellectually know about health and nutrition but that means nothing when it comes to using food to cope. i've been dealing with it for decades. day by day, i'm gonna try to stay in touch and not cram food down my throat in an effort to make *it* all go away. i'm gonna try to use what i learn through my seeking (i dread to say 'spirituality') to fill the black hole in there. i don't want to suffer with diabetes (which, HELLO! two pregnancies of gestational diabetes, one of which was uncontrolled!?). i need strength and health to walk this here new path. i need to have clarity of mind and body to recognize the way when i feel it.

next year, when i am suddenly left alone (yay?), i will start nursing school. after paige was born, in the hospital bed like a huge rotten sack of potatoes, i had a brick wall smash into my brain that left an indent that read, "BE AN L&D NURSE, YOU IDIOT!" after graduate school (public health) i had triplets and so, needless to say, didn't start a career at that time. i've been wondering for years what the HELL i was going to do when the kids went to school. who the FUCK would take a degree i earned in 2003 seriously without, you know, ACTUAL WORK EXPERIENCE? no one. lying in that hospital bed, i knew what to do. why, actually, had i never considered it? all the jobs in public health i'd ever seen listed that i was interested in wanted an RN. almost two years later, i know i must be a nurse. i may not work in L&D forever, but i know i need to do it for a while. i hope to work in a hospital with an antenatal unit, but around here (the country!) there's one ward for everyone and the L&D nurses do it all. so be it. i will do all the normal work and, sometimes, when the worst happens, i will be there for that, too. not because i can "help," but maybe just not being the only woman in the world with a dead baby will help her at that moment. in that hospital bed, we were all "the only one," weren't we? i see it now, scheduling OB/GYN surgeries. i saw it yesterday, when i told a woman with a dead baby in her belly that it happened to me. i see it every time...none of them want to be alone. i want to do something with my life that helps people. i want to be effective, i want to make a difference. i hope i can do that; i hope that, by the grace of this universe, i can do that on this new path.

in EPL, in bali, she says that babies' feet never touch the earth before they are six months old. if a baby dies before then, it is given a special cremation ceremony and not placed in a human cemetery because this being was never human, it was only ever a god.

i think this may be so. who else but a god can touch someone this deeply, open someone to a new way of being?

my very own personal jesus.

now it is up to me; reach out, touch faith.


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edited to add:
that sounded pretty good, huh?? i published this what, ten minutes ago, and it's making me sick. who the fuck am i to plan any of it? i am not good at emotions, i am good at action. problem is, there's only so much ACTION you can take RIGHT NOW, IN THIS VERY MOMENT. i guess i'm glad that i posted again, that i wrote all that out in words...but it just feels like bullshit on a certain level. what is that? maybe it's the contradiction of seeking a life "in the moment" and then planning out all that other crap, including how to live in the fucking moment.

maybe i should just accept that i like to think about doing things and then see what i can accomplish.

maybe i should get the hell out of my head.