I rarely tell the truth when I’m asked about the worst day of my life.  I’ve been through difficult times, times that have pushed me beyond the limits of what I could bear.  Difficult times are comprised of a period of difficult days in a row, though.   Difficult times are different than a single, terrible day.   If you asked me for the worst event in my life, you would receive a different answer than my worst single day.   For me, this was the day I gave birth to my oldest child.   I generally find this opinion too selfish to voice. 

Other women have stillbirths, other women lose their lives giving birth.  Since humans came to be, women have been giving birth in much worse circumstances than I did, and uncontrollably more often.  I know all these things.  They are the reasons I rarely tell the truth, when asked.      

Birth has always been brutal, dangerous and terrifying.   In our modern times, though, we have medical advances that remove most, if not all, of the brutality and fear from birth.  In our modern times, we become accustomed to stories of positive and relatively painless birth experiences, as told by our peers. 

I expected to have such a birth.  I had no fear in my heart as I did this. 

I was unprepared.  I was so unprepared.  I was born with a bleeding disorder (similar to hemophilia) which was a cause of concern during my pregnancy. Most likely, everything would be fine.   However – what if, what if, what if?  My grandmother passed away, suddenly, when I was 34 weeks into my pregnancy.   My OB did not want me traveling out of state at that point.  Because – what if, what if, what if?  If I’d found myself in a situation where I started miscarrying or bleeding out, if I’d found myself in a situation where something went wrong and I was not near the hospital, if I’d found myself not near the doctors who knew what was going on and how to treat me, it could be fatal.  I remained in Kansas City while my grandmother was laid to rest.  There was a definite danger in me in giving birth. 

It was never mentioned to me that my bleeding condition might eliminate me as a candidate for pain relief, and that is exactly what happened.  I started contracting around 10pm Wednesday night, as they tried to coax my stubborn cervix open. At 8am, Pitocin was started through my IV.  This raised things to a very uncomfortable level.   At 10am, my OB came in and broke my water.  This step of the process launched me to a 10 on the pain scale immediately.  Still having no idea I’d already been excluded by anesthesia that day, for liability purposes, I began my passionate pleas for help.   

My contractions were pitiless, one minute on, one minute off for 9 straight hours.  To this day, I recall the image my hands, knuckles white, gripped around the rails of the hospital bed as I attempted to brace myself for the next contraction.   I heard my primal scream that day. I have only heard it twice in my life.  I saw people in the room who weren’t there.  For the majority of the day, it was just my husband and I.  I lost my place in time and space.  I became so confused, as the day went on, I was unable to remember why I was there that day. Why this was happening to me.   There was no baby, there was no sense of purpose that I felt during this process. I only existed in pain, and I had failed to understand why.

My doctor wasn’t even available when it came time to push.   I was left for 20 minutes with two nurses and my husband all shouting “Don’t push, don’t push, don’t push!” My doctors took his time getting there.   

My husband and I had decided to not find out the gender of the baby because, of course, I wanted that Hallmark moment of the doctor saying “It’s a ……!” as I looked relieved and my husband smiled and wiped sweat from my brow.  (Baby cries, everyone smiles and cries.)  My doctor said nothing in the moments following.  I waited, then finally raised my head up and asked, what is it?  He said, Oh, it’s a girl.  He was unimpressed.  Even this one moment, where I could be like the other women, had been taken from me. 

When it was over, I cried for myself.  I cried for the cruelty of it.  I cried because my OB and hematologist did not go to bat for me with anesthesia.  I cried because the anesthesiologist didn’t even afford me the dignity of explaining the situation to me, personally.  He hadn’t looked me in the eye when he slunk out of the room.  He had the nurse come in to tell me of his decision to not treat me.  I cried because I’d already known brutality in my life, I’d already overcome so much. Why was it, out of all the women who labored that day, that I was chosen to suffer the most? I cried because, if I’d known, I would have never agreed to the brutality of an induction. 

Of course, when it was done, I felt it had been worth it.  I went on to have another child.  I had a much better plan the second time.  I had a new OB, a new Hematologist and had things worked out with anesthesia well in advance.  I went into labor on my own.  My walking down the hallway after my water had broken, all on it’s own, made it on My Top 10 Happy Moments. It made all the difference, the second time.

The process of birth.  It bears similarity to the process of rebirth.  Both can be unbearably painful and agonizingly brutal.   Both are worth it, in the end, even though you were pushed far beyond what you were capable of bearing.  People will fail you.  You will feel very alone in your pain.  You may become so confused that you forget what purpose there ever was in this.  You may lose hope along the way.

We all experience small rebirths along the course of our lives.  These can be uncomfortable, but not entirely unpleasant.  One day you wake and the winds of change are upon you.  You find the courage to leave the job that was sucking the life out of you.  You go back to school.  You make a commitment to live a healthier lifestyle.   You move into a new home or start a new chapter.  Human lives are a series of chapters.  It is generally for the best, change, in the end.  When you can look back upon it.   The ever-shifting winds of change call upon us to readjust, but are unlikely to change the person we are fundamentally.

And then, there are the big ones. The rebirths by which we measure our lives. These are built upon our personal destruction.  In these times, we are taken down to the very basics of our soul before we are born again.  The big rebirths are vicious, brutal and painful.  They often push us beyond the limits of what we can bear. 

Creative destruction. The process in which something new brings about the demise of whatever existed before it.

The rebirth by which I measure my life happened to me at age 22.  I’d already known both distressing emotional and physical pain at this time.  I thought of myself as an intellectual.  Street smart.  Retrospection is a mixed bag.  At some point in the future, you are able to look back and see the growth in yourself.  You might not have known, at the time, that you would survive what you were going through.  Later you see that, not only did you survive it, but you went on to live in greater authenticity.  You developed a greater sense of compassion for others.  You realized you showed strength. You didn’t give up.  You see the new people who came into your life when the false friendships were swept away.  You find yourself weighing your suffering against your growth.  Would you choose to undo it, if you could? 

I experienced the loss of a serious relationship, at age 22.  That event began my destruction period.  This relationship had been tied to a specific future in which I envisioned myself.  My future was the second to go.  My religious faith began to crack and crumble as the belief in which I had been living was contrasted by what I was experiencing.  My pain became too great.  My pain was fatal.  I fled.  I returned home to Kansas City.  A few month later, my family relocated.  I chose to remain behind.  Their move happened just as I was starting to feel some stability in my life.   I was still feeling very weak and battered.  I was too fearful of leaving all that was familiar to me. I feared that I would not be able to emotionally withstand starting over again, at that time.  I had planned to be married by then.  I had planned to be making my own decisions by then.  The prospect of moving to Denver felt insulting to me, truthfully.  It was evidenced that I had failed at getting married. Thus, I was still regarded as a child who would live with her parents and not an adult taking care of herself.

On the very day my family moved, I lost my job.   I lived with my best friends’ family (she herself was away at school) until I found another.  I put a down payment on a one room apartment and moved in.  I had only one piece of furniture for the first seven months, a waterbed given to me by a co-worker.   This was the first time I had lived alone.  I’d been raised in a large family and then moved to college living with roommates.   I was lonely and felt forgotten a majority of the time.   At one point, I contracted influenza.  I was incoherent, burning up with fever, for days.   It was frightening, to be so sick, and not have anyone to help care for me, to even check up on me.  I don’t have many good memories of the year I spent living alone.  I suppose the one thing I did learn, was that I had grit and could endure a great deal. 

This destruction phase of my life lasted 2 years, when it was all said and done. It did not release its grip on me until the rebound relationship I’d gotten myself into, after my exodus from college, ended. This relationship had buoyed me enough to feel some happiness and hope. However, all I learned about losing my relationship at college was that it continued to hurt me. I did not learn the lessons intended for me. I proved this by getting involved in the same type of relationship I’d always been in. This seems more common than not in rebound relationships. Often, we only pick up where we left off the last time. This destruction phase did not release its grip on me until I lost the entire primary group of friends I had at that time. I left my apartment, skipped several places and then landed in a duplex with a coworker of mine.  It was then that my rebirth finally began. 

I see myself at age 24.  I am happy.  Truly happy.  It is such a beautiful day, this day, that I get in my newly purchased car and drive out to the countryside.  My windows are down and my is music way up.  The sky looks bluer than I ever remember it being.  The music touches my soul on a new level.  The joy I feel inside of me is solid and real.  I am happy.      

I am back in college.  It is a smaller college, which I love.  I have a full-time job.  I work, then I drive to college for classes.  I then go to the gym for an hour.   I get home, shower and watch a talk show at 10pm.  I have been training for a year to try out for the Kansas City Chiefs Cheerleaders.  I do not end up making it, but I gave it my all.  I am single.  I am happy being single, because there is joy in my life.  Years of therapy have caught up with me, at last.   Although I do not have all the information I will have later, I know I do not want to be in a relationship like I have been in the past.  I finally believe that I deserve better.   I do not know it, but I am a month away from meeting my husband.  I journal daily and, on this day, I am writing the words to a song, “In the House of Stone and Light” by Martin Page.  Although I had not known or intended it, I had built my previous house upon sand.  All had been washed away.  The house I was building now was real and good.  I saw myself in the words of this song, building a house for myself, built of stone and light. 

How do you know when a destruction phase has ended, when you have at last reached your rebirth?  Music sounds better.  You are filled with the strength of yourself.  Colors are more colorful.  You are often caught smiling.  Your hope has been restored.  You start to feel a separation from the life you had, the one that had caused you so much pain.  It is integrated into your person, making you authentic, more complex.  You feel true love for those who did not fall away in your destruction.   You have hope again.   I remember. 

This period of destruction at 22 changed the course of my life.   I believed, until recently, that this was my greatest learning experience, when everything false in my life was washed away.  It wasn’t the only time, unfortunately.  I was destroyed again.   

My current cycle of destruction began four and a half years ago, with a single period of feeling suddenly lightheaded, confused and shaky.  This episode repeated itself the following month.  The next month, it happened several times.  Soon it was every day, then several times each day.  I physically deteriorated.  Although I would not be diagnosed for a period of 10 months, I had a one in a million tumor in my pancreas.  This tumor was secreting a small amount of insulin around the clock.  The episodes I was experiencing were hypoglycemia.  By the time I was diagnosed, my life had narrowed down to a single focus, staying conscious, and trying to bring my glucose into normal range. 

I was relieved of my gallbladder, 3 inches of pancreas, 4 inches of stomach, 6 inches of intestine and 23 lymph nodes, all through a 13-inch midline incision.  The recovery period for this surgery lasted a full year.  During this time, l observed the rest of the world going about its business from inside my house.  I was chronically displeased with my healing.  My youngest child began to act out, doing poorly in school and being quite difficult to get along with.  Countless nights I would cry myself to sleep and wake up to the same reality.  I was in pain.  My child hated me.  My husband was frequently traveling on business.  I feared things would never get better, that I would remain trapped in my present nightmare forever.  I believed that the mattress and pillows I slept on had become unbearably heavy, absorbing my pain and sadness as I slept.  I believed that a cloud of cold tears rained down upon me during the few hours of sleep I was afforded each night. 

As the ball dropped in Times Square eight months later, I told myself that the coming year would be better.  I have always wanted to believe that life respected the calendar. I have always wanted to believe that life saw January and be like, well the time of persecution has expired. That life was obligated to abandon it’s efforts against you just because. January.  

Not even two weeks passed into 2017 when I found out we would be relocating to Florida.  The night I received this news, I lay awake in bed all night long without sleeping.  It felt as though the air was sucked out of me.  Six months would pass before we actually moved, but I recall those months as existing in a completely numb state.  I had a high-level headache the entire time.  I somehow moved on auto pilot as I prepared to put our house on the market and leave the city I had come to love dearly.  Leaving the place where I had raised my children. Leaving dear friends and the many community activities I was involved in.  It was a painful divorce, in the end, and one that I had not initiated.    

I acquired a talisman to wear around my neck during this time.   It was a pendant of Lord Shiva, the destroyer.  It had sharp and spiky edges.  When my emotional pain would become too much, I would squeeze it in my hand, the points of it pressing painfully into my skin.  It would make the tranquil smile upon my face possible.   Lord Shiva was destroying my life. I knew this.   I resented this,  immensely.  It had been a good life, before I became ill, a life full of friendships and fun times.    

Alton.  The city and I were on the same frequency.  My story had matched so many others who had spent their lives there.  I came to this place by chance.  I stayed here because I loved the city, and the city loved me back.   As I prepared to leave, I felt not only the separation from those living, but also the ghosts there that I was tied to.  The darkness of Alton called to me.  An invisible river runs the length of the city.  Within it are all those who have felt its call.  I will join them there, someday. 

During this moving period, I was unable to picture a single day of my life past August 21.  That was the day I was scheduled to drive down the peninsula of Florida. It was the last day of my old life.   When we left Alton, my oldest child and I headed West.  College.  My husband and our youngest child headed South, High School.  We departed the home where our children were raised.  It was no more.  Returning to the familiarity of it was not an option.  The finality of it.  Out of all of us, I took it the hardest. 

I had two weeks between lives.  I belonged nowhere.  I had no home.  I settled my oldest at college. I managed through this goodbye, watching my child walk away from me, knowing I would not see them for months.  Knowing, whatever happened, I would be too far away to help them.  I was so upset when I reached my hotel, after, that I threw up.  I wept uncontrollably.  I took Xanax.  I slept a couple of hours with the lights on.  I awoke at 4 am and got in my car, headed to Memphis for the night.  Finally, all my goodbyes were complete.  I had done my last hard thing.

I had an expectation of death, because I had been unable to conjure my future.  My trip felt fatal, my death waiting for me at the end of it.  I was unable to conjure any day past August 21, 2017.  The day of the total solar eclipse.   I had become so fatalistic, so superstitious. I was resigned to expecting being evaporated completely, my car, driver-less, veering onto the shoulder of the highway and finally coming to rest.

The thought struck me, during the drive that day, I’d never been so poised in my entire life to die.  I’d said all my goodbye’s.  I’d settled all our business matters.  My belongings were already boxed up. I was gone, in everyone’s mind.   It felt as though it meant something.  2 days till the eclipse. The following day I felt ill when I woke up.  My condition worsened as the day progressed.    I eventually found myself in an ambulance, then the Emergency Room, then ICU.  Although I had presumed to meet my end as I drove down the length of Florida, I had not presumed to meet my end in Atlanta, GA.  It felt fated, anyway.  I had a spontaneous internal bleed.  I was beyond caring for myself and I was alone. 

Hurricane Irma came not two weeks later.  We evacuated.  My oldest child came out as trans-gendered within 2 months.  I would never see the curly red headed daughter I left at college again.  My child lived, and nothing about our connection was altered, but there was a period of grief for that as well.   I was diagnosed with Stage 1 Melanoma six months after.  This required a skin graft.  It set me back 6 weeks.   My younger child continued to act out, having school issues.   Six inches of my Whipple surgery incision opened up internally.  I had surgery for that, in which almost the entire site was reopened. 

My life had been destabilized for two years at this point.  All these things converged upon me, I was unable to absorb any further traumas.   I found myself suicidal, on the evening of Thanksgiving, 2018.  Weeping on the floor of my walk-in shower.   This, at least, shook me violently awake.  I was no longer walking in my numbness.  The downside was, when my body and mind came back to life, I felt all the pain of everything, again.  I sought therapy to start working my way through it.

I did have a reprieve.  I did have a good 6 months in which I felt myself.  I was making progress in therapy.  The end of High School was in sight for my youngest child.  I felt secure in myself, in this reprieve.  I suppose I did believe that my time of destruction had ended and I had moved to my period of rebirth.

My back was to the ocean, then.   I could only see what was in front of me.  I did not see the sea receding, behind me.   I did not notice the water pulling back, revealing all living things gasping for breath, pulling back with no mercy in a most ominous way.  My back was to it and I did not see the deadly tidal wave forming behind me.    

Within two weeks, the Earth crumbled, cracked and fell out from under me.  I spiraled into the darkness beneath me.   There was little to slow my descension.  I have not fallen as far or felt such death in my soul since I was 22. 

I’ve never been a person without love.  I have been very fortunate in that way.  By late August of 2019, I was left only with the love of those who loved me, and my heartbeat.   I had never been so frighteningly fatal in my life.  It was not over.  I endured this for 2 more months, before I finally was able to gain some traction beneath my feet. 

Once again, in my life, I had been reduced to the very basics.  That which was not was washed away.  Everything false in my life was powerless against this tidal wave.   The false parts of myself, the false friendships, the false parts of my marriage.  The things I believed gave me stability in my life were false as well, in the end.  They were swept away. These times, friends.  Having, my entire life, enjoyed solitude – I became very afraid of it.  I destabilized every time my husband left town.  My teenage daughter became responsible for me on more than one occasion, when I was beyond myself.  It was so dark and so brutal.  In mid November, I finally felt destruction release it’s tight grip on me.  I felt my rebirth cycle begin, at last.

How do I know this?  I remember it from when I was 24 years old.  The sky looked bluer, the music sounded better, I am filled with love, for that which remained.  I see that I had, again, built a part of my house upon the sand. It was washed away. 

Would you keep false friends in your life because they make it seem that your life is good?  If you had the choice, would you choose a life that seemed full but wasn’t?  Or would you choose the life that was all true, the life where all that is false is washed away.  While we make platitudes to ourselves, that, if only, we can get past a certain point, all will be well for us.  All that is false will fall away, eventually.  No matter how tightly we cling to it.  Will you regret it, when it’s over?  When you can see your situation with truthful eyes?  The business of rebirth is brutal and painful. Is it worth it, in the end?

Ask me next year.