I’m tense to the point of nausea. I feel like I’m skating on the edge of what may be my first migraine.
This week, my vision has been blurry. I forgot a coworker’s name. I opened my email and stared blankly at the words and characters, wondering what any of it meant.
Waiting for our pregnancy results, something I care about so deeply, feels honestly insulting to any sense of spirituality I claim to have.
Right now, I don’t feel spiritual. I just want what I want.
I’m starting to believe the lie that I’m unique and alone. I have to write about it publicly to get it out of my system.
I don’t want to burden my wife with my own struggle. I’m afraid that adding more stress to what she is already carrying could somehow hurt her chances of staying pregnant, if she even is.
I’ve seen myself become the person who wants something so badly that I start destroying my own chance of receiving it.
I need to want less.
My best problem-solving happens when I am relaxed, removed, and able to approach the work with some sense of play. This is not that. This is awkward. This is uncomfortable. This is fear pretending to be vigilance.
Is this stress growth? Is it the kind of pressure Rabbi Dr. Abraham Twerski describes when he talks about the lobster outgrowing its shell?
Can I use adversity properly and become stronger? Can I let go enough to stop damaging what I am trying so hard to protect?
“Yet each man kills the thing he loves
― Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol
By each let this be heard
Some do it with a bitter look
Some with a flattering word
The coward does it with a kiss
The brave man with a sword”