Fall Holds No Joy For Me

I am just going through the motions. My husband – who left for New York – was worried to leave me because I can barely function. I can function (get up, shower, walk the dog, feed the kids). But I can’t do it with any glimmer of joy or hope on the horizon. And my face looks like a thundercloud to my kids.

For once, it doesn’t feel like something for which I need to find a solution. It feels like God has backed me into a corner to squeeze something out of me – to force me to face some truth of which I am unaware. And I don’t really want advice. I don’t want to know anymore whether we should keep the dog and pay for more training with money we don’t have, give him to the SPA or euthanise him (apparently this is the standard practice for biters in the UK?). Sometimes too much conflicting advice is heavier than none at all.

I don’t want to know the thing I need to do in order to lose weight and get in shape. I just want it to magically happen because years and years of trying this thing or that always results in failure because I haven’t gotten to the root of the hollowness I am trying to fill with food.

I don’t want to plan for how to get out of our financial pressures by tightening this belt or cutting that corner. Every time I see a solution – a road paved out for us – an expensive rug to sell, a refinancing, added hours teaching – something else breaks and needs repair. Our pockets are lined with holes and our sandals are worn out.

I don’t want you to rip the coveted idol out of my hands of literary success – that my words mean something, that I am successful and set above the ordinary. I want to be side-by-side, arm-in-arm with my brothers and sisters, but I want to be someone special. And if I unclench the fingers that grasp this idol, as if it can offer me breath itself, I’m afraid I’ll just be nobody.

The little things – getting out of bed early with the sunrise, a steaming cup of coffee, a calming meditation, a brisk walk as the sun highlights golden leaves in relief against a purple sky – the joy in these things goes no further than the whispered words. My senses are untouched.

You couldn’t be more surprised than I am by the fact that my miscarriage three years ago seems to have sucked all the joy out of autumn. No longer is this turn of season about my birthday, my husband’s birthday, my son’s, our wedding anniversary, a change, a stepping stone, a new beginning.

No. The first whiff of cold air in my nostrils brings spectral nausea of a pregnancy long past. And the countdown to Christmas with its white lights and pine scent and frosted cookies and spiced apples is really a countdown to the day after Christmas – the day when something I hoped for ended.

And it seems like it’s the beginning of a season of endings, and that all hope is lost for new beginnings.

I’m depressed – even on medication, I am depressed. And I don’t want advice.

I want relief.

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