and i am marie of roumania
If you're not in the mood for a generous helping of self pity with a side of hopelessness, you might want to try another blog. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Lately, Furrow has been talking about the role of narrative -- the idea that the story you tell yourself about your past is almost as important as what actually happened. Thinking along those lines, I've been trying to imagine how I could try to put a more positive spin on all the bad, bad things that have happened to me. And I'm talking about a long chain of disasters that I'm not going to list, a couple of which were even more exquisitely painful than the twins' deaths. I suppose I could frame it as a saga of the indomitable human spirit with Niobe gallantly facing adversity, and, in her darkest hour, learning that within her burns an unquenchable flame of strength and hope. Or perhaps, bravely picking herself up and going on with her life despite the many painful setbacks, Niobe realizes that at least she can use her hard-won knowledge to help others and make the world a better place for us all.
But honestly? The story I tell myself is: There's something very wrong with Niobe's life. Niobe has, for lack of a better way to put it, a hole in her soul, an invisible sign on her forehead telling fate to kick her in the teeth. Over and over again. If we're talking about narrative, the catastrophes that have brought her to her knees sound, frankly, like a lazily-plotted novel, where one character keeps getting clobbered in more and more improbable ways.
I want to say: what else can possibly happen to me? But I've found that no matter how bad things seem, they can always get worse. Much, much worse. And they generally do.
What I've learned is this:
the world, which seems
to lie before us like a land of dreams
so beautiful, so various, so new
hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,
nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain
The instructors change, but the lesson never varies and I'm pretty sure that by now I know the whole thing by heart.
16 comments:
I am sorry it seems like it. I surely hope this is the end of the bad stuff. Really really hope...
And you know what? You do make the world a better place for at least some of us. Feel free to squirt me with lemon juice, if you'd like. Just calling it as I see it.
And you know what else? I'd rather you were the most sleep-deprived mother of twins out there than the person making our world a better place in this particular way. Yeah.
I wish I knew a way to make it all better for you. I don't.
But I can still hope that things change soon.
Like today. Now.
oh niobe.
I don''t have the right words, i rarely do. But know this: here in this bloggy world, you are safe and cared for. here you are perfect and whole and your soul is beautiful.
hope
This is the word that keeps bubbling to the top for me.
Things are bad. And in my mind I make them even worse. Yet somehow I still search for hope.
I have hope for you as well, even if you don't have it for yourself.
Niobe, I'm sure people who practice THE SECRET would tell you that the narrative you're telling yourself isn't helping matters, and blah, blah, blah--but I don't, so I won't. You feel the way you do, whether it's true or not. I wish you didn't, and I wish bad things hadn't happened to you, and I hope enough good things are coming to cancel out (or at least balance out) the bad. And that they're coming soon.
In the meantime, for what little it's worth, here are a few lines from "Eurydice," the poem I read (out loud, to the cat--yes, I'm pathetic) as an antidote to the "Dover Beach" mood. I hope they help, at least a little:
"At least I have the flowers of myself,
and my thoughts, no god
can take that;
I have the fervor of myself for a presence
and my own spirit for light;
and my spirit with its loss
knows this;
though small against the black,
small against the formless rocks,
hell must break before I am lost;
before I am lost,
hell must open like a red rose
for the dead to pass."
I'm sorry that you have had so many awful things happening to you, and around you. I have found that it's a very bad idea to ask "what more can go wrong?" as the universe is swift to reply and show us exactly what else can go wrong.
It's always the people who 'deserve it' the least, that have so much heartache and struggles in their lives.
I'm reminded of this quote.
"Bad things happen to good people" it's really fucking shitty, quite frankly, that some people sail through life and some people seem to have to deal with a whole heap of crap.
I don't know the way out of this mindset but I think it's a totally normal reaction to a run of bad things.
I hope things look brighter for you one day soon (hug). Caro XX
But you see, it's easy to see the bright side when something good is happening to you. I haven't had it so bad. You've been one who has helped me realize that. Though, certainly, I'd rather you have your twins.
I have no idea why the world can be so terrible. The narrative we tell might be important, and mine usually involves thinking, "well at least I have a great marriage, great parents, great friends," etc. I can't seem to make bad events into good lessons, or find any "unquenchable flames of strength and hope" either, though.
Julia's so right though, you've helped me find life bearable via your blog and comments on mine. But I wish none of us were even here.
"There's something very wrong with Niobe's life." You summed up my mood today in one succint sentence. I hope things get better.
Thank you so much for dropping by, and I am amazed to see my blog in your list, thank you for putting me up, I am really touched.
And the bad time has to end at some point, doesn't it? May it be this month.
I'm sorry that things are so hard. Your complicated family (families?) probably doesn't help. I hope the bad abates soon.
Niobe,
I don't mean to sound like a therapist, but do you always remember feeling this way? Or can you pin-point an exact event that precipitated your current world view? Did you feel this way as a child?
Mine changed with the first miscarriage, but I felt like I was, to use the extrememly non-elegant phrase, "waiting for the other shoe to drop most of my life. It was awful, but not surprising.
It all sounds very Buddhist. I think Judiasm and Buddhism (hence the "Jew-Buh" phenomenon) have more in common than people think.
Missed Conceptions: Yup. I can remember the exact date when my whole world collapsed: December 31, 199X. Before that, I honestly thought I had a very good life. Not perfect by any means, but filled with just about everything I could possibly want. After that date nothing has ever really been okay again.
I have an exact date, too. I look back at previous self and can't decide if my happy self was normal or naive.
Others I know who have a date can link it to a fatal diagnosis, a death, etc.... I also know people who were victims of abuse who have felt that way as long as they can remember. I don't know which is worse.
I see I logged in differently -- Liz and MissedConceptions are the same person.
Christ, I hate to be the one to sound preachy..but here goes. Niobe, if you are going to be hit by a Mack truck tomorrow, worrying about it today won't do any good. So how about trying to work with your fatalistic attitude. Instead of wondering if the MAck truck will be green, red, yellow, or who is driving it... think about what you can do before that. You might be thinking.., "who gives a 'F' what I do today if tomorrow I'll be hit by this truck? Because you can only control what happens today, and only that to a certain extent. Yeah, I guess I'm asking you to be the opposite of Oedipus (sp?). Instead of worrying about your fate and trying to avoid it, maybe just live in the moment. Who knows, what may be fated after all isn't.
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