My second heartbeat

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My second heartbeat

Somehow, in the quiet of it all, I’ve come to understand that this is how we survive. We carry both—side by side, grief and love, loss and life—and in the space between, we find a way to keep going. It’s not easy, and it’s not without its darkness, but there’s something profoundly human in the persistence, in the hope that even in the depths of sorrow, life still offers its light.

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The unfixable problem

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The unfixable problem

I understand why those doctors, sisters, friends, thought I needed therapy. I was filling out those questionnaires at every postpartum appointment.. “How many times in the last two weeks have you felt down, depressed or hopeless…Little interest or pleasure in doing things…” According to these forms, something was wrong with me. It was quantifiably pathological how sad I was, how I sat for days on end crying and staring at the wall.

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Trauma and the odds

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Trauma and the odds

And anyway, those of you reading here will know: it’s not the numbers that matter anymore. Now that it’s been you, you know it’s always someone, that there’s a person behind those numbers, and hey, why shouldn’t it be you? I feel like I was trained, somehow, to imagine that it would always be someone else, that there was no reason it would be me. I think in 2023 we call that toxic positivity.

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Objections

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Objections

There is a nihilism implicit here, I know. I see it too, lurking behind my snarky objections and passive-aggressive stance towards the constant self-improvement and self-branding in workplaces these days. What is the point of setting goals? What is the point of organization and preparation; collecting glass bottles and like-new fuzzy pajamas with feet if the baby - well, you know the story by now. What is the point of anything at all? As soon as you have set out your plans in neat, bulleted lists, a pandemic hits, the laws change, a storm floods your city, the power is knocked out for three days.

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