After the miscarriage, I would just start crying at a moment’s notice. Something or someone would cross my mind, and my heart would break and tears would come. I felt somehow if I could just let all the tears out, I would feel better. However, I didn’t know how to let them all out, at least not at one time.
It’s like when you feel that you want to sneeze but then nothing happens. However, that feeling like you want to sneeze can linger for a while.
I think grief for me has been like sneezing. You’re going about your day, and then suddenly sadness or tears just come and overwhelm. I just hurt sometimes. It just hurts.
I am grieving. I am grieving because I may never become pregnant again. I may not have children that look like Ben and me. In all my life, I had never once, not ever once worried about having to help my imagined future child with math. I just assumed that like everyone in my family, my child would have the math gene. My child would excel in school the way many of the members of my family have. I have always motivated myself to learn Mandarin because my future children would be half-Chinese, but will they? Will there be future children?
How do I construct a self-identity, or a purpose entirely based on myself? Or better yet, how do I construct an identity that is malleable, that can be resilient in the face of suffering that naturally comes with life?
I posed all my thoughts to Ben. I asked him the question that I struggled with most, “Can I love myself if I’m not able to have children?”
I told him that I was finding it hard to find a meaning for my life. I had read all these books that said that I was worthy of love no matter how much I had accomplished at the end of the day or even at the end of a lifetime. I had read that real love was not something given to you but was something readily available and overabundant in myself. But how did I access that? How did I come to believe that? Live that?
I then told Ben that he didn’t have to answer that question. I wasn’t expecting him to have an answer. I already appreciated him just listening. However, he responded, as he tends to do.
He told me the sweetest things. He told me that I was very worthy of love. He told me that I was smart. That I danced and sang beautifully. He told me that I worked so hard, and I amazed him. He told me that I was very thoughtful.
And I smiled, and I thanked him. And then I said, “But what if I couldn’t dance and sing anymore? What if I wasn’t smart, and I stopped working so hard?” Am I still worthy of love?
I emphasized again that he doesn’t have to answer these questions.
I said, “There is just something about this experience that has ripped the rose-colored glasses off my face, showing me that the human experience is embedded in suffering. No amount of money, good deeds, or prayer will save you from it. It has also taken every method I’ve used to build up my self-esteem and alienated it from me.
Imagine that you are suddenly in a dark room surrounded by all the ways you have identified yourself. Smart, singer, dancer, hard-working, etc. However, these attributes are no longer actually attached to yourself. They surround you like computer or television screens. You can see them, but they are not actually a part of who are. And when you look down at yourself, you see nothing. Absolutely nothing at all. You can see right through where your hands, stomach, and legs should be, but you can still feel that they are there.
How do you love yourself just because you exist?”
Again, I emphasized that I wasn’t expecting him to have an answer. But again, Ben began to offer an answer, and I started to smile with laughter in my eyes. Here we go again. I really wanted to emphasize that I didn’t need Ben to have an answer, the listening was more than enough. I wasn’t looking to him to save me or make me feel better. But at my laughing smile, Ben gave me the evil eye, and I grew quickly serious lest I upset him further.
He said, “I’ve also struggled with this question before, and I don’t know. This is from the Bible. When I think about how Jesus Christ died on the Cross for me, I think that my life is a gift. There is nothing I have to do to be worthy of love. Christ has already suffered so that I might have life. So, even if for no other reason than this, my life is meaningful, and I am worthy of love.”
I was surprised. I had not expected his answer to speak to me, but it did. What spoke to me wasn’t the, “Jesus loves me, so I am worthy of love.” What I heard was, my life is gift.
A gift.
I like gifts. And I love the gift of life. And if I love the gift of life, then I must love myself because I am the embodiment of that gift. I am not a gift to someone or something in particular. I am not a gift to the world, meant to save it. I am not a gift to my family, who may or may not like me.
I am just a gift. A gift in the truest sense of the word. In that it is given without the expectation of anything in return. If anything, I am both the receiver and the gift itself.
I cannot say why or how, but this idea spoke to me. I could love this gift of life, even if I could not have children. I felt somehow that this gift was already enough. Even if I could have children, this child would not be my gift. A gift, yes, but to this child. He or she would be a gift unto herself. Both the gift and the receiver.
Perhaps this realization seems trite, or at the very least, lacking in creativity. Wasn’t I taught to be grateful for every morning that I woke up, especially the days I had good health and strength? Yes, I was taught this.
But I wasn’t taught to appreciate myself just cause.
That was the shift. I was always to be grateful for things outside myself. For things I was given, like food and shelter and education. I thanked God that I could see and hear. I thanked God for all the achievements and even the failures. I thanked Mother Nature for all she provided in abundance.
But I never learned how to be grateful for me. How to appreciate and love myself. We should teach that more, with all the other gratitude we teach.
You are a gift. Your life is a gift. You are worthy of love.
I wish everyone to live the truth of these words in the coming year. Happy New Year!
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