Optimistic outlook

Today, the day of the new administration and President's inauguration, I am feeling weirdly optimistic. Sometimes, the worst things happen, bad people get elected, good Presidents step down, fathers die, you find out you're infertile, and the world still keeps moving. The sun rises, rain falls, people eat, coffee percolates, and the universe survives.

If you had asked me when I was in law school what my goals were, I would have told you, to be a wildly successful lawyer. Back then, I had no idea how soul sapping big law was. I had no idea that I would lose myself for years. This former waitress and high school dropout would hide herself in a office dressed in a three piece suit. But then, slowly, I would return and find myself through poetry. My early poems snatched pieces of fragmented memory and put them on a page. Many of the poems turned into stories.

I define success much differently now. I define a successful lawyer as one that makes a difference in the world and as a deputy public defender, I am able to make change on the micro level. One person at a time. Every kindness means something to me and the world. Everyday, I see my colleagues fight the good fight. That is success. Success is having time to write, and cuddle with my husband on the weekends, and spend time with my mom and sisters and of course, the shih tzus.

Success is family. I never thought about having children until it was almost too late. But, I have decided that my dream of having children will happen. It will. It has to. Because some things are too vital, too important to forget about. I refuse to put my dreams into a sock drawer to be forgotten.

So, today, of all days, I have the audacity to continue to have a thing called hope. And I hope you do too.

all I ever wanted

I've been on vacation the last couple of weeks. My goal was to write, write and write some more. But instead, I've been running around as usual filling my days with record stores and lunch with friends. And music. I've been listening to a ton of music. There is something to be said for this. Music has always been a salve for my soul and unleashes my creativity. I bought a new live Iggy Pop album where Bowie plays keyboards. I listened to it as soon as I got home. I played with my Sex Pistols figurines, another splurge, and danced and sang. I felt free.

Then I started thinking about childhood. About fun. About passing that down. Or the inability to pass it down. My husband and I been trying to have a child for almost ten years. Or maybe it's been nine. Regardless, a long fucking time. Too long. Too many false hopes. A miscarriage after IVF. And then the last two years.

The last two years have been hard. I am not the same person. I'm angry. Angry at God. Angry at my husband. Angry at the world. I have a ball of frustration inside of me. My back is always tight. My body feels like it's breaking down. Whether it's due to the miscarriage, my age, my overall hopelessness or mere coincidence, I don't know.

What I do know is this. I've changed. I haven't been able to write much. The childhood stories are blocked by something. The joy I used to feel when writing is gone. Poof. It feels like it's all too much.

I guess I'm stuck there. In that place between the hope I had when I found out I was pregnant and the day I was told there was no heartbeat. I didn't cry that day. Remembering back, I think I just felt numb. As if I already knew. That numbness is what I can't shake.

Where I go from here is the question that remains, a question I can't answer because I don't know.

How do you find peace in failure? Can there be peaceful resignation? Or maybe, just maybe, I should try again and risk the worst kind of heartbreak.

I know I seem as if I am wallowing. But somehow, I think that wallowing is what I need, to be in that place that I have been avoiding for so long. It's not a pretty place.

But to transcend that place, I need to try to live that pivotal loss of hope moment again.

So I can let it go.