I'm Tired.

This is making me tired.  Grief is painful, tiresome, seemingly endless work.  I feel like I give it 100% each day, and each day I run the risk of being right back where I started.

A while ago, when trying to explain my grief to a friend, I likened it to running a marathon. 

When it’s laid out in front of you, it seems an extremely daunting task, and people really think you’re crazy to try it.  You know you’re crazy to try it. But, there you are, on race day, at the starting line ready to take what comes your way.  The gun goes off, and off you go.  Running a pace that seems manageable. One mile down.  Two.  Three.  Maybe four. But then all of a sudden you blink and you are back at the starting line again.  What just happened?  What about the “progress” you just made?

Tough shit. 

Here you are back at the beginning, so off you go again, except this time you’re more tired.  What choice do you have?  You can’t quit.  You ready yourself again and off you go.  Running perhaps a bit slower this time, but steady nonetheless.  Before you know it, you may be half way done and feeling pretty good about your “progress”, but again you blink, and when you least expect it, there you are again at the starting line.  Now everyone else is much further down the road than you ever managed to get, and you are more and more alone.  Running this same road over and over again all by yourself.  What are you supposed to do?

Running again seems impossible, but giving up is not an option because this marathon is a run toward your life.  Your future.  Your family’s future.

Now, your body is exhausted and your mind is foggy.  What is the point?  How can anything you do really matter, because it seems you are destined to “start over” forever.

The biggest way that this run differs from a regular marathon, I am beginning to understand, is that there is no definitive finish line at mile 26.2.  This course stretches to the rest of my life.  There is no “half way” or “almost there”.  There is only the course. 

And there are hurdles along the way as well.

I am not only dealing with the grief of losing my daughter.  I am dealing with the grief of being unable to bring another child into this family.  I am dealing with the insecurities that go along with that.  Being 33 years old and as barren as the Sahara.  It’s heartbreaking.  Every day when I have to apply my pseudo estrogen so that I feel “a little closer to normal”, my heart breaks.  It’s not what I planned.

I am dealing with the fact that I have three amazingly loving boys who miss their sister more than they know how to express.  Every day trying to navigate this confusing course with them, attempting to explain it all in ways their young hearts and minds can understand.

I am dealing with the fact that if Steven and I do decide that our hearts are open and ready to travel down the road toward adoption, we will face many more hurdles (financial, emotional, spiritual) and possibly heartbreak.  Are we strong enough to stand that?  Are we strong enough to stand it if we don’t adopt?

This is so far beyond frustrating.  There don’t seem to be any real answers.  There is no plan.  No protocol.  We just have to keep going, because we have No. Other. Option.

Can you imagine that?  Can you imagine a pain so great that nothing- NOTHING- exists to take it away? 

Some say, “God will take it away.”  Some say, “time will take it away.”  Some don’t say anything at all because they know there is nothing to say.

I have turned and will continue to turn to God and Love for support, but nothing can take away this Brynna shaped hole in my heart.  A hole that will never be filled with anything else, because nothing else fits.

Some people wonder (and have said in so many words), “how can she love her so much? She only got 6 days, she didn’t even have time to get attached.”   Or they wonder, “isn’t she ready to go back to work yet?  It’s been 6 months.”

I ask you all to think about your own children.  Now, tell me the day you became “attached” to them…

Was it after 6 days?

Now think about your child being gone.  Forever.

Would you be “over it”, “through it”, “passed it” in 6 months?  6 years?  Ever?

I am tired.  This grief road is a painful, tiresome, seemingly endless road.  And I miss her.