I don't know if I can listen to this song without crying, and I don't know if I'd want to.
I've come to associate this song with the time in my life where I was diagnosed with infertility and came to realize that the treatments for it were out of reach for me. Being a parent was all I had wanted to do with my life. I had fully expected parenthood to become the center of my life, the place from where meaningfulness would flow. And suddenly, that was gone.
I was lost. "Let me tell you about rage when the signal died that day, there's nothing out there and I don't care if they take my life away." And I didn't care. I wanted to die. I wanted to die because I couldn't imagine a life without a child in it. I twas impossible. I couldn't imagine existing another 50 or 60 years without having a child and grandchildren. Life had become utterly meaningless. Utterly pointless.
"I'm not ready, and I don't want to see, nope."
It took me so much work to be able to imagine a new life. Because, for a long time, I didn't want to imagine it. I wasn't ready to let go of all that I had hoped for. But slowly, over time, I became able to envision a life that didn't have a child in it, no, but a life that was meaningful nonetheless. It was a sheer act of will to get through that. It was agony.
It was five years ago this weekend that I tried to kill myself. Five years of reinventing who it is I am and what I'm supposed to be. And I can say now, without a doubt, that I will have a life that matters no matter what. I look back on what I've done in the past five years, the people I've loved, returning to grad school to enter a new profession so that I can help people, becoming true to myself again after years of trying to be something else, the beauty in the world that I've seen, the autumn leaves and the sparking water, the flashes of lightning, the shooting stars in the sky - all that I would have missed out on if I had succeeded in giving up. And I've still got a long way to go.
I don't know if I can listen to this song without crying, and I don't know if I'd want to.
I've come to associate this song with the time in my life where I was diagnosed with infertility and came to realize that the treatments for it were out of reach for me. Being a parent was all I had wanted to do with my life. I had fully expected parenthood to become the center of my life, the place from where meaningfulness would flow. And suddenly, that was gone.
I was lost. "Let me tell you about rage when the signal died that day, there's nothing out there and I don't care if they take my life away." And I didn't care. I wanted to die. I wanted to die because I couldn't imagine a life without a child in it. I twas impossible. I couldn't imagine existing another 50 or 60 years without having a child and grandchildren. Life had become utterly meaningless. Utterly pointless.
"I'm not ready, and I don't want to see, nope."
It took me so much work to be able to imagine a new life. Because, for a long time, I didn't want to imagine it. I wasn't ready to let go of all that I had hoped for. But slowly, over time, I became able to envision a life that didn't have a child in it, no, but a life that was meaningful nonetheless. It was a sheer act of will to get through that. It was agony.
It was five years ago this weekend that I tried to kill myself. Five years of reinventing who it is I am and what I'm supposed to be. And I can say now, without a doubt, that I will have a life that matters no matter what. I look back on what I've done in the past five years, the people I've loved, returning to grad school to enter a new profession so that I can help people, becoming true to myself again after years of trying to be something else, the beauty in the world that I've seen, the autumn leaves and the sparking water, the flashes of lightning, the shooting stars in the sky - all that I would have missed out on if I had succeeded in giving up. And I've still got a long way to go.
Where I've been, and where I am, is the show.