I’ve had a really tough time getting these words on the screen and even as I type now I’m not exactly sure how this may end.
Still Standing as a whole has a pretty faith-based audience and the majority of writers have some sort of faith, in something. I used to have faith; it was a pretty strong faith too. I never identified with being Christian but I had faith.
And now I don’t.
I recently had a friend ask me not to give up on God and I snickered this bitter, sneering chuckle (who is this person I have become that reacts this way?) and I replied that I gave up long ago. What I didn’t say was, God gave up on me even longer ago. I know, I know. “God never gives up on you.” “Let go and let God.” I’ve heard it all, trust me. I grin and bear it like many of us do because I know that it’s not malicious. Well, except for those people who tell me that if I believed, if I prayed, if I were nicer, if I gave myself to Christ and God, I’d get pregnant faster and not lose my babies. I realize though that people can be hurtful idiots and mostly I can let it roll off my back.
So how does one grieve without God? How do we keep our hope alive if we have no deity to lean on and pray to? I have no idea. I take it one day, one comment, one moment, one blink at a time. We draw strength from the depths of our being; we have nothing else to draw upon. We surround ourselves if we are lucky with people that help hold us up when we need it but we don’t have this “other”.
I’ve dealt with infertility for over 7 years and it is the infertility that lead to my loss in faith, not my pregnancies ending. Infertility is what has brought the despair and loss of hope, not my losses. You see, infertility takes away everything that could be, it’s a complete unknown. I may never have a living child. I may never have grandchildren; my father’s bloodline would end with me.
Every new cycle starts the grief process so for me its every 26-28 days I grieve. I hope and get pissed for even letting myself hope because why would this cycle be different? I get angry and bitter. I get sad; so very sad. I spend days thinking this can’t be my life and I don’t want it to be and there is nothing I can do about it.
Do I wish sometimes I had faith in something, anything, that I could look upon and feel in my heart and mind and soul (yeah, I know Atheists don’t do the whole soul thing) at times? It would be amazing to feel peace or find some peace in SOMETHING but that something isn’t God. God actually makes it worse for me. So much worse.
So what’s an Atheist to do? Same thing as any other person–religious or not–wait. I’ve learned that no amount of praying, wishing, good energy thrown to the universe will get me pregnant because–biology.
Either it will happen or it won’t and that’s life.
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