The Edge of Despair

As I sat in the NICU for the 3rd week with my baby who I thought would be home quickly after birth, I had the pleasure of listening to the family next door being discharged. I have no idea what their baby was “in for” and I have no idea who these people were other than surmising from their conversations that they were likely in their early 30’s with some amount of professional education. I did however know, without a doubt, know that this was their first baby.

I listened all afternoon as they asked every question under the sun about the care of their baby. Good grief. “Do the straps on the car seat look ok?, “How do we bathe her?”, “So I’m feeding her every 3 hours, IS THAT ENOUGH?”, “How do I know when she is full?”, “Can you go through bathing her once more?”, “WILL THE CAT ACCEPT HER?!”. Just a tiny TINY glimpse of the questions asked that day with the exception of the cat. For closure, I am all but positive the cat will never accept that baby. No fault to the baby of course but for the poor assignment of being born to these helicopter bafoons.

I was annoyed and perplexed why you would choose to have a baby if you were so uncertain about your own ability to keep it alive. I was also, wildly bitter that they were so happy. Because I, was not. I was the person who was worse off than them.

There is always someone who has it worse than you. So true.
But comparing our visceral responses to someone else’s difficult situation is like comparing apples and oranges. Such a good point.

Unfortunately for me, in this difficult season I’m finding very little relief from these platitudes.

(In fact, they are kind of pissing me off.)

I sat in my infant daughter’s room reminding myself that there were other parents who had it worse than me in the NICU right then. Scarier circumstances. Less support. Fewer resources.

You can’t compare your emotions to other people’s circumstances; I believe that’s true. But there is also something powerful about perspective that can pull you out of a funk and helpful you feel just a tiny ray of gratitude for what is going right.

So which is it? Are we allowed to feel what we feel or do we need to bid farewell to our beloved pity parties and find perspective?

At this moment. Where I sit right now in my plush purple chair, writing with my college education, in the den of my architecturally acclaimed home, in my white suburban neighborhood, in a country founded on freedom, I can tell you with some delight that the cry of my heart is that THIS ISN’T FAIR and I DON’T LIKE IT. And I do not care who has it worse because I am edging towards such despair that I cannot fathom a world where the hurt in my heart is absent.

Tomorrow I will probably feel bad about it and find immeasurable shame in my privilege. I will remind myself that ‘gratitude is an attitude’ and to ‘pull myself up by my bootstraps’ and to ‘put my big girl pants on’.

So there you have it. The end is the beginning and the beginning is the end.