Helplessness

Few words can bring the gut dropping, throat closing sense of fear like the word “helpless.” I hate this word. It freezes me. Angers me. Reminds me of how utterly powerless I am against the powers of the universe. Helpless throws into stark relief just how totally ineffective my flailing efforts are in the vast scheme of things.

The older I get, the more intimately acquainted with this word I am becoming. It’s a tense relationship, for sure. For most of my life, in fact, it’s actually been a relationship of denial. I steadfastly deny any sense of helplessness and Helplessness denies that I have anything to say on the matter.

Nothing has brought the clarity of helplessness for me like being a parent has.  My first introduction to Helplessness was through our mutual acquaintance, Infertility.  This was my first experience with the reality that I do not really have much control over what my body does or doesn’t do. It didn’t matter what I ate or didn’t eat or drink or didn’t drink, how much I exercised or didn’t exercise, what drugs and hormones I put into my body or not. My ovaries and uterus stubbornly refused to do what they were designed to do:  release an egg, move the sucker along the fallopian tubes where it would be happily and gleefully greeted by millions of candidate sperm in a biological version of The Bachelorette to culminate in one single perfect sperm uniting with that egg and their blissful and orgasmic (because it should be a golden, glowing, music laden, fairy dust kind of moment, right?) descent into the uterus where this new ball of cells would be welcomed lovingly and warmly and cocooned and nurtured until it was ready to emerge a fully formed, kicking, wailing, HELPLESS mini me-and-Lee that we would love and guide through life until our mini-me became the perfect compassionate, entertaining, beautiful, warrior world leader. (gasp)  

Oh, how the universe/God must laugh at me and my puny little plans.

Helpless had other plans.  Eggs rarely emerged. When they did, forced out by a deluge of synthetic hormones, they bumped bewilderedly along the tubes, trying desperately to find some sense of order in their chaotic little world. Those eggs viewed any waiting sperm as enemies in a tragic mistaken identity crisis probably born of cellular anxiety of (god help us) loss of control. Fragile egg and weary sperm eventually all fell into the dry, dusty uterus that had absolutely no intention of welcoming, let alone nurturing, anything and expelled the whole lot of pathetic intruders monthly and without fanfare.

Thus began my journey with Helplessness. I was helpless in getting my ovaries to behave. I couldn’t convince my eggs that it was okay to leave the ovary, to enjoy their journey down the tube, that the sperm weren’t invaders out to attack them. I was helpless to make my uterus a loving, warm, welcoming, pH balanced, brimming-with-life home. I was helpless to control the insane mood swings caused by the drugs my doctor prescribed to boost my reproductive activity. I was helpless to convince my husband that I really wasn’t a nutcase and that, yes, I would eventually return to “normal.” (I still haven’t found that yet.)

Obviously Helplessness and I had a rocky beginning. But in my life, most rocky relationships tend to be the richest, most rewarding, most profound and effective ones and Helplessness is no exception. Through the helplessness of infertility, I met God. Through God, I met Forgiveness (of myself, of others, of myself again…) Through Forgiveness, I met Saved (from a life of hopelessness – a word even more scary than helplessness). Saved introduced me to Thankful and my relationship with Thankful has brought me full circle back to Helpless. And, in a way only God can do, I am becoming Thankful for Helplessness. Our relationship is most certainly imperfect. It’s an ongoing process that I expect will never really “end.”  It’s kind of like a scar that is a reminder of something I survived, but it’s a blemish and a reminder of pain that I’ve experienced. Sometimes you look at the scar and think “hey, that was an awful experience and I’m glad it is over but it IS over, thank God.” And sometimes you suddenly notice the scar you have mostly forgotten about. It jars you because 1) its just ugly and 2) you can’t believe you forgot about it and the pain/experience that caused it. Sometimes I cherish the scar of infertility because it’s where I met God and where I started to find myself – the part of me that deep down inside needed to be freed from the confines of well-behaved stuff-it-down-and-smile-anyway-ness. Sometimes I hate it and just wish it would go away because I don’t want to relate to someone over it (good grief, I’m DONE with that, can we just MOVE ON NOW? I have an entire lifetime of stuff SINCE then that I am dealing with!!!!). Sometimes I just don’t want to have the damn thing anymore because I’m more sick of the pitiful reactions I get from people when they see it than of the cause of the scar in the first place. (For the record, if you have friends dealing with infertility and don’t know what to do or what to say – just say that. Say, “I don’t know what to do and I don’t know what to say.” Do NOT offer advice, do not offer them a book or invite them to a bible study. Just BE with them where THEY are. Don’t try to FIX them. Don’t let your anxiety about the situation force you to barge in on theirs and just make the whole thing worse in the long run.) End soapbox rant.

I realize as I write this that Helplessness has invaded so much of my life now that we are probably more like roommates that started out absolutely loathing each other but who, through studying each other’s every move, have learned to tolerate and maybe even like each other a little bit. Helplessness has been helping me let go of needing to be in control of everything and to learn to BE in the MOMENT. Not planning the next moment or analyzing the last one. Because I can’t do anything about either one. But I CAN just BE. I am learning to be empowered in BEING. 

I am not helpless when I just AM.

Because that is what God created me to be. 

Me.

Now I have to figure out just what that is, exactly, but I find that sometimes figuring out what it’s not can be just as helpful. 

I am NOT my mom but I AM my mom’s daughter. I am NOT my kids’ pal but I AM my kid’s mom.  (You get the idea, right?)

Learning to be me also means embracing what God has made me good at and letting go of what He hasn’t. I don’t HAVE to be good at EVERYTHING. As much as I WANT to be and feel like I SHOULD be good at it – I am not a planner. I can plan but I am not, at heart, a planner. It stresses me out if I have to do it constantly (another cosmic joke as I have one child who is a compulsive planner and the other is an anti-planner). I am, however, an enjoyer. I am more likely to have a party and enjoy the people around me and the food and spend hours chatting and catching up before it ever occurs to me that this is a birthday party and we are supposed to be having cake and opening presents, etc. Thank God I have my sister because she remembers those things and keeps my parties on task. Otherwise, we’d probably still be having my 13 year old son’s 10^th birthday party and just now getting to the presents…  I’m working on it, but it’s not always easy or consistent like it is for my sister. She is organized. I am pretty sure her DNA is organized neatly and all paired up nicely like it should be. It wouldn’t dare get out of order. My DNA? Yeah, it’s probably mostly jumbled up with some proteins swapping sides just to see what happens (like freaking out my little anxiety ridden eggs) with some stretches of solemn, solid nicely organized DNA chain in between. This is me. A jumbled up mix of randomly organized and chaotically strewn molecules.

That said, there are some things I can do really well. I love well and I grieve well. (I do other things well but these are two things that tend to go with the Helpless thing the most.) I generally like most people and can feel love for people I’ve just met or encountered. Rarely do I have a full-on negative-from-the-beginning reaction to someone. Empathy is like a second skin for me. I have cheered ecstatically when someone I barely know is able to beat cancer. I have been moved to cheers of joy watching an autistic child spontaneously reach out to hug their parents on a rare occasion. I have cried like a baby at a funeral for a girl I never met (and felt like a complete idiot the whole time as the friend who brought me to the funeral with her – who was actually friends with the deceased – sat solemnly without shedding a tear). And for heaven’s sake, DO NOT SIT NEXT TO ME AT A WEDDING. As many of my family and friends will tell you, I am a ridiculous mess at weddings. I have embarrassed myself enough as an emotional bridesmaid. Thankfully, most of my friends are married now. Whew.

Recently, my ability to love and grieve unexpectedly came head to head once again with Helplessness, and it’s taken me a few weeks to find my voice in the whole thing. And it all started with a baby bunny. (Damn rabbits. They seem to be some kind of spiritual sign for me… both times that I have helplessly witnessed the death of a rabbit, it has caused me to enter into a great introspective cycle that is painful and profound.) The first time I saw a rabbit die, I was driving to class my senior year of college. The car in front of me hit the rabbit when the rabbit jumped to get away and right into the path that the driver swerved in order to miss the rabbit. It completely undid me as I watched it happen in slow motion, helpless to stop it. I cried pretty much all day that day through class and couldn’t get that image of the frightened rabbit jumping to where it probably thought was safe. I cried all night. The rabbit had been helpless. I was helpless. The jackass driving the car in front of me was probably also helpless but for a long time I just wanted to think of them as a callous, murderous bastard. After a few days passed and I still couldn’t shake my grief and shock over this rabbit, I realized that maybe, just maybe, something was more wrong. So I dragged my sorry butt to the clinic and discovered that I was “severely depressed.” (Note: When telling someone that their questionnaire results show that they are “severely depressed,” try not to make the very next question “how are you feeling right now?” Because after delivering that nice bomb, they are very likely feeling pretty damn lousy.) This began several months of counseling during which I discovered I was a control freak and I began to actually be aware of my conscious thoughts and the power that they could hold over me. And I learned that I had power over my conscious thoughts. I was not, as I had previously believed, HELPLESS against the destructive and depressing negative thought patterns.

So that was the first rabbit. The second rabbit - or bunny, I should say – was a few weeks ago. Lee and I had taken the boys up to visit Papa and Nana (my dad and his wife, Tracy). Tracy loves animals and they have a virtual mini farm up there in Northern Arizona.  Two of their rabbits had gotten together (somebody screwed up when they told Nana that she had two males) and one morning Nana went out to discover that her boy bunny was, in fact, a girl, and there were now four additional bunnies in the family. One baby bunny, of course, was a runt and significantly smaller and less active than the other three. You can, of course, guess which one wriggled right into my heart upon first glance. Yep. The babies were a few days old when we arrived and the mama bunny had just that morning moved the runt baby to the front of the box, away from her and the other three. Nana said that she was worried because her friend had told her that this usually meant the baby was going to die and that the mom somehow knew that and separated it beforehand. (This feels damn cruel. Nature is freaking brutal.) So while the other three warm, furry babies wriggled around in the box with their mama and nestled into eager hands to be held, I held onto that tiny one, holding her (I say her, I have no real idea if she was a she or a he) close to my heart, willing her to draw the heat from my body to warm her own and to feel my heartbeat and let it pulse the will to live into her. After an hour or so, that sweet little thing started to move around and even squeak a bit. She even nuzzled at my finger as if she were hungry. So we grabbed to tiny bottle/syringe of animal baby formula and gave her a few drops. After a little while, she nuzzled for more and we gave her a little more. On and off for an hour or so this went. Soon, the tiny, cold, skinny baby bunny was warmer, fuller and seemed content in my hands, cupped against my heart. Dad and I breathed a sigh of relief because for the first time, we started to feel a sense of hope that maybe this little girl would make it. Dad went off to take a shower and I continued to hold her close to my heart, making sure she could breathe while staying warm. All of a sudden, I realized she wasn’t breathing anymore. Or moving. 

She was gone.

My heart split. Raggedly. If my family hadn’t been there, I would have screamed at God and told Him exactly what I was thinking. I settled for silent sobs while holding that little lifeless ball of fur. Nana saw me and realized what happened. She took the bunny and went to tell my dad. Lee saw me and came and sat with me and held me. All I could get out was “Dammit! I am so SICK of being so DAMN ineffective and HELPLESS! I can’t help my kid. I can’t help the bunny! I hate this!”

I cried for a while. I got up and walked around alone outside for a while and I quite frankly bitched at God about it. I explained how angry I was about this bunny not making it. I let God know how this was NOT helping me feel better about how ineffective and helpless I was feeling to help my struggling son. Then I ran out of words and just sat there for a bit and shut up. I went back inside. I hugged Nana. I hugged my dad and Lee and the boys. I held the baby bunny again and wrapped her up in my t-shirt and gave her back to Nana. I said goodbye. And then it started to settle on me, as I sat there with my dad trying to avoid talking about how pissed off we both were that she didn’t make it, that maybe I did exactly what I was supposed to do. I did what I could but in the end I was helpless to “fix” it. But I didn’t stop. I kept hoping. I kept holding her. I loved her to the end. She didn’t die alone or cold or hungry. We were both helpless, but we weren’t alone. We connected. And that, I believe, was the point that maybe God wanted me to get. It was like He was saying, “Kiddo, I’m not expecting you to FIX everything or make it all better. There are some things I just need you to be there for. To just BE. Not DO. Just BE.”

So maybe there’s a part of helplessness that isn’t powerless. Not if we learn to BE in those helpless moments. Just maybe.