Everybody Hurts, Sometimes

My initial response to hardship is anger. This is a recent realization, although in retrospect I can see that anger has coursed through my veins for years, pulsing with purpose whenever life lets me down. It makes me a perplexing anomaly, since I generally think myself to be a positive, easy-going and happy person. But when life hands me lemons, my first response is not to make lemonade, but rather to load those lemons into a baseball pitching machine and catapult them straight back in life's face while yelling offensive expletives. My anger is a dormant beast awaken very seldom, but when it's lanced with disappointment the beast is ruthless and full of spite. In this regard, I have come to find it more difficult to identify and harness my reactionary anger because it is masked so purposefully by a blanket of happiness. While tragedy has left me raw and self-aware, I am slowly realizing that in some ways, I am moored in a port of adolescent bitterness.

I recently endured an early miscarriage. I was only 8 weeks pregnant-so early that I almost feel silly for having such an emotional attachment to the blueberry-sized sea monkey. I had always been somewhat apathetic towards women who experienced an early loss of pregnancy. After all, I thought, the fetus was still just an amassment of cells and not yet a decipherable human baby. What I didn't take into account was the excitement that inevitably follows a positive pregnancy test- wondering whether it will be a boy or a girl, thinking up possible names, giddily whispering the new secret to your family and closest friends, imagining its face and dreaming about holding its tiny, warm body in your arms. Those thoughts are what bind us to the tiny bean growing in our bellies, regardless of its negligible size or inhuman appearance. Those thoughts cannot be rationalized away with biological explanations of its unachievable future. And then in an instant, those thoughts are purged from your body and you're left with an empty feeling in your stomach where the excitement of new life once lived.

When I realized I was miscarrying, my immediate reaction was not sorrow, but anger. I berated myself, because surely there was something I could have done to avoid this. I was angry at my husband for not having to endure the physical cycle of wholeness and emptiness in his gut. I was angry at the tiny baby for not keeping its heart beating. But mostly, I was angry at God.

It wasn't a logical anger, because had I viewed things rationally I would have understood that 30% of pregnancies are miscarried and my situation was no different from the millions of other women who suffer early miscarriages. But somehow, I felt it was a personal vendetta against me. "Make me grow up watching my little brother suffer through leukemia, then let me watch my father die a slow death, then take away my new future child," I thought as I yelled into my pillow. I was angry at God for allowing bad things to happen, when all I should have been doing was asking him for comfort. But I didn't, and the pain and rage endured.

The sadness came later, as did the realization of my misplaced anger and the knowledge that I have a lot to work on.

In my sporadic moments of anger, I forget that everything good in my life has come from God. I turn my back on him in an instant and persecute him for not making my life perfect. I hate him for allowing me to endure pain. I forget that the greatest lessons I have learned in life- that my growing compassion for others and budding self-awareness- have all been the result of enduring trials. I refuse to see that God has a plan for me, and enduring pain and suffering is ultimately part of life's beauty.

I want my father to be alive. I want to erase the memories of watching my little brother suffer when he was so young. I wish I had never felt the hollow hopelessness of depression. I want the baby back in my body. But to be honest, I wouldn't retract any of the invaluable lessons I have learned from abiding through those difficult times. That is what I need to remind myself whenever I want to punch a wall and curse God for letting life run its course. That is what I must remember when I feel the angry beast stirring in my breast.

In the end, life's beauty is only felt when we know what it means to hurt. And I guess that will make my next baby all the more cherishable.