thoughts after seven months

3

October 13, 2013 by narvyspeaks

Thoughts about my identity have been brewing since July, and in the past month have crystallized in a new way for me.

It was a phone conversation that did it.  It was a fine chat.  The person I was talking with sounded happy; I might have sounded happy (I don’t know – it’s hard to tell how I come across to other people…).

But after I hung up I had a yucky feeling in my guts, as well as a thought that I have had before.  It’s the thought that creeps in when someone messages me on Facebook and uses too many exclamation points, or when I visit with someone for a couple of hours and my son (or my motherhood) never comes up in the conversation, or when I talk on the phone with a friend or family member and they sound so darn happy and don’t ask about how I’m doing.

Not that I need the focus to be on me, or that all I want to talk about is my little boy.  I don’t, and anyway, that’s not the point.

The point is that these exchanges make me wonder…was my loss on their mind as we talked?’  Because the truth is, it is always on mine.  Oh, it ends up back in the corners of my consciousness sometimes, and it’s not always front and center, but really, it’s never gone.  I am always aware that I have a son…that my family has a hole in it…that there is a deep sadness in me…and that my whole life has been rocked in the recent past.  It’s who I am.  You can’t have me without my loss.  There’s no ME without the loss.  And I don’t know if people get that.  I don’t know if they understand just how deeply my Zeke has changed me.  I don’t know if they realize that my identity as a mom whose child is with Jesus is such a complex thing.  I don’t know if they know that I’m happy, but not all happy.  That I may be working at jobs that I enjoy but feel a significant lack, nonetheless.  That I can rejoice with them in their children, but am unable to fully engage.

I guess I just didn’t realize until recently that LOSS has been etched so indelibly into my life and that, while others move on and perhaps don’t automatically think of what’s missing from me, more than ever I sense how rooted the loss is in my view of myself.  I feel sad, and strong, and weak, and old.