Lamentations

9 March, 2006

I am finally going to write about some of the most horrible thoughts I have. I'd caution you about reading it. But I know you've already reached the point of no return.

Sometimes I think it was very wrong of me to have Vei. My life has been so unhappy. Why would I do that to someone? And it's not just me. When I was forteen or so, I thought it was just me. My life was horrible--everyone else's was great. I really didn't want to die, so much, as want to live, which I felt I was not. But now, I think that in some way, life is an unceasing tragedy for everyone. The small fraction that aren't starving or abused or lonely are mostly not "saved" and, I am to understand, they're eventually going to end up in Hell. So it would have been better if they'd never been born. I am so against abortion. But for the years when I was undecided on the issue, it was because I really thought maybe it would have been better if none of us had ever lived. The world just keeps getting...maybe not always worse, but certainly not better, and it never will. There'll be more overpopulation, hunger, disease, abuse, violence, murder, and as the population of the world increases, the percentage of those who know God decreases.

Sometimes I think it was wrong of me to have Vei, because I could have adopted a child who was alone, abused, neglected, and didn't so much as have a mommy to comfort him. I just can't imagine being a little child and being so sad, laying in bed crying, without my mom...that is not something I can accept. Somewhere there is a child (child--hell, children--thousands of them) that I could have adopted. Cared about. Loved. But I had to have my own. I had to say to that lonely child in an American foster home, or a forien orphanage, I realize you have no one to love you. But I won't love you either.

Sometimes, (I think this is probably very abnormal and wrong) I feel bad that Vei is healthy. I feel...sometimes, I wish that she where handicapped in some way. I don't know. Like I was given a healthy, perfect baby, and someone else, who couldn't love a child who was different, as much as a "normal" child, was given that child. But I guess God knows what he is doing. Maybe He knows that person can learn to love that child, and must, and will. But does that mean God recognizes that I could not? Does it mean that I'm not capable of unconditional love?

Worse, often, I think that God didn't give me a baby with problems becuase of the way I behaved when i was pregnant with her. I smoke, I took antidepressants. I didn't eat right. I did some drugs. He knew I'd never overcome the gult if I thought I'd hurt my baby. Which, actually, I did. She had apnea. She would stop breathing. She could have died. I begged God not to take her--not to end her life because of what I'd done. But I didn't deserve to keep her. That was grace. Mercy. I deserved to feel the guilt of killing my baby for the rest of my life. Instead, I have a beautiful, happy, healthy child, when other women who ate lentils and legumes and leeks while they were pregnant, and never took any medicine, their baby dies suddenly in the night.

I prayed, asking God for a baby. We intentionally got pregnant. Then I was so ungrateful. I even told people I wished I could arrange an adoption. I very seiously considered suicide while I was pregnant.

But I loved her so much when she was born. And I was so...if something had happened to her...it was sickening. Maddening. To think about. I was too afraid to express it. To ask. I didn't know what was going on. I didn't understand how serious what they were telling me was. I felt, they might know she was going to die of SIDS, and they wouldn't tell me. No one would. They'd see I was already sick with it too much. But it was worse, the not knowing, but to ask, to have that ominous silence that would go before whatever hard truth they'd lay out for me, even if it wasn't as bad as it could be, was worse still. There's nothing like it. Like being in a place so horrible, that you could never have imagined, and, yet, thru a window, you see halls and halls of places worse still, where may lie your fate. It was, beyond all consideration, the worst experience of my life. I wish I could make you believe that I love Vei. How precious she is to me. But every fucking time I think of her--see her--the feelings attached...guilt. Fear. Debt. Unworthiness. Inadequacy. Vulnerability. I didn't want the gift God had given me. That I'd asked Him for. I did want things I knew would hurt her. I smoked. I took antidepressants and Ambien. I smoked grass five times. Took Lortabs twice. And I didn't eat right. Now I don't give her enough attention. I don't play with her enough. I make Jos take her all the time. I was the one who insisted on having a baby, but he's the one who's such an awesome parent.

It really is that I'd want to die before something happened to her, but that's not even a compassionate or gracious love. It's selfishness. It really would hurt me so bad--so bad it's like I can feel it in a sharp pain when I think of it.

I love Vei. And it kills me. This responsibility...Oh, it's horible! If only the fear and guilt didn't just swamp the joy I could feel at having her. But all the time. When she's sick, I'm so afraid. I was not prepared for this. I don't give it a thought when I'm sick. I asked God to take me a hundred times. I know he's not going to. Until Evie was born, it wouldn't've mattered if He did. Now, it's like I'm not even free to fool around with suicidal ideation. I have to feel bad about it because it would mean leaving my child to be without a mommy--to cry alone in her room at night. To cry and cry and cry. All night. Night after night after night....when I'm suicidal, I'm used to being very self-centered.

Another of the things I'm going to admit this time: Rationally i know I'm never going to do it. But, now, when I think about it, sometimes I wonder if I should take her with me.

If she's sick I know it's my fault because I don't make her wear socks or a coat, etc. If she's underweight I know it's because I don't feed her well, or because I don't show her enough love, and so she is sad and doesn't want to live, so she is self-starving. I'm not making this up. She was diagnosed, "failure to thrive".

The world is so horrible. Life is so unbarable. Often I think the merciful thing to do is blow it up. I know there are things I cannot understand about God and why he allows things things to go this way, as long as I am human. I can never know all of these things. But I can still know about them, and feel because of them.

The World is too Much with Us.

Sometimes, I think, how can anyone spend money on anything else, knowing that by doing so, they're allowing children to die? Sometimes, it really upsets me. Yet we all do it. It just shows the extent of total depravity.

I'm only going to do this once, but I am going to tell you some specdific examples of what things I think of that are so, so horible, they are, otherwise, and will evermore be, unspeakable.

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No, i'm not going to afterall. You know already that horrible things happen in the world. I have my list, and they are real things. Not citing them won't make them not real, or make me forget. But we are all sad enough as it is without ennumerating them.

I think, when I stop thinking about them, stop being sad, I hate myself. I don't want to live with this self. But when I think of them, it makes me so sad, I don't want to live anymore.