I'm going to press post, but I want to warn you, I am a major bummer today. Danger! Danger! Danger! Debbie downer ahead! All silver linings and happy pink thoughts, beware!!
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I want to vent, but I'm not sure what to say.
I guess I feel frustrated with myself because I'm not sure how to shake myself free from this anger inside.
I feel angry at god. Angry at the world of people. Angry at my sister. And I feel frustrated about that, because I don't know what to do with anger and it seems that all the anger I haven't felt these past years (decades?) is welling up inside of me, bursting out in ragged sobs once it is dark and my house is quiet.
I feel frustrated that I don't know how to cry without the feeling of drowning and splitting. My face is all swollen from crying, and I look ugly. I feel worn.
But I suppose what I'm most frustrated about is my seeming inability to look at what's right in front of me. Always missing the trees for the forest, hah. In an effort to talk myself out of self pity last night, while the children were at Nana's and I had the house to myself, I spent the night thinking about all the ways it could be worse, and the ways it is worse for so many mothers with their equally beautiful babies. Powerless to change the situation. Powerless to protect them.
And then I had dreams about Syria, and Los Angeles, and Mexico, and the mother's along the railroad in Calcutta, with their starving babies, the flies swarming in the corners of their unblinking eyes, and how stupid I was at 17 when I was there, thinking I had answers. Thinking I knew what love was. What hardship can look like. What courage means.
I feel frustrated that, as a culture, we've defined courage in violent terms, rather than in gentleness. The courage to feel. The courage to look. The courage to love. The courage to extend a hand, to set an extra place at the table, to stay the extra few minutes.
I feel frustrated with my husband, who is acting like a selfish teenager. But, to be fair, I'm terrible to be around right now...(no offense Ephie, you're not the most reasonable or accurate individual on this fine morning).
I feel frustrated that, while sitting in my warm house, with food in the fridge, with healthy children at my side, trees around me, friends only miles away, two living parents, I am only seeing pain.
I feel frustrated that, no matter how hard I pray, no matter how loudly I yell, there's not diddly I can do to protect all the little children from unnecessary atrocities of the world. At the end of the day, I am so small. And usually, that feels like a relief. Today it feels like shackles.
I don't understand it. Usually I see beauty and hope everywhere. Everywhere. In the darkest places. But today I seem blind to it. Right now I don't understand the world. And I feel desperately frustrated by that.