after

Last night I bought the Anne of Green Gables series.  I loved the books as a little girl, and I have been wanting to read them again.  I wanted to lose myself in something mildly familiar and comforting.  But what I really wanted was to read book 5, Anne's House of Dreams.  I am starting with this book because I know what happens: Anne marries Gilbert, moves into the house of her dreams, gets pregnant, and delivers a stillborn daughter.

I don't remember if I know this because I actually read this one when I was young, or if someone told me what happens.  I am not actually sure if I ever made it through all 8 of the books in the series.  But I have been thinking about Anne, and kind of... worrying about her, in a strange way.  Poor Anne, having to go through this.  The writer of the Anne series, Lucy Maud Montgomery, suffered a stillbirth.  She had three children, all boys, and the second was stillborn.  It really bothered me, upon reading her Wikipedia entry, that the stillbirth of her son is only given one sentence.  I am sure she was forever changed by the death of her son, like I'm changed by the death of Nina-Lou.  I saw my life going one way, and then it made an abrupt turn, not just in another direction, but into another reality.

Everything before is so different from everything after.

On Saturday night, I wanted to watch The Royal Tenenbaums, largely because I wanted to see how the person I am now would relate to the film.  I find myself wanting to re-experience all kinds of things in this new reality.  Life is so different now; sometimes more dull, sometimes more vivid.  Sometimes it is so vivid that I can't stand it and I have to look away, shield my eyes behind dark glasses and stare at my phone for too long.  And sometimes it's so dull that it smothers me in dry ash, stopping up my throat and caking in the pits of my eyes and I have to try desperately to drag myself through the day under the weight of it.  I admit that there are still times that I want to die rather than live in this.  But I know these moments will pass, and I have neither the true will or the stomach to hurt myself.  There are times when I think it would be nice to just lie down and let the avalanche of pain bury me, but no matter how long I lie, the pain fails to do me in.  So I get up and do stuff.  I prefer life, anyway.

I'm only about 9 chapters into Anne's House of Dreams, but knowing what's coming, and knowing that Montgomery also knew what was coming as she wrote it, the whole book becomes so heartbreaking.  Right now, I'm in Anne's "before".  When she knows that she is the luckiest woman in the world, to be with the person she loves, in a beautiful place, surrounded by things that make her happy.  Anne's before is a tad more romantic than my own, but I know what it is to feel blessed.  And I am so sad for Anne that she is going to find out that she really isn't, that no one is.

I don't believe in god, or believe that any deity blesses anyone.  The idea that some people might actually think that god or the universe or some sort of omnipotent being has chosen to bless them rather than me and my husband just really fucking pisses me off.  You are not blessed.  You are lucky.

The really fucked up thing is that I felt that way once.  Although we had little by way of money or material things, Turner and I have been lucky to find each other early in life, to both have been raised by parents who love us deeply and would do anything for us, to have been well educated and to be surrounded by a community of wonderful friends.  I suffered through my 3 miscarriages and then got pregnant with Nina-Louise and I thought that my suffering had served a purpose.  I thought that maybe the universe was bringing me what I needed at just the right time.  When I was about 6 weeks pregnant, when we knew the pregnancy could very well end up to be a miscarriage, we ate dinner one night at the little Vietnamese restaurant up the street, and I got a fortune at the end of the night that said "Luck is coming your way."  I saved it, and I still carry it in my wallet.  At the time, I was really hoping it was true, and there are times now when I still feel that way; when I hope that maybe I just haven't gotten to the luckiest part of my life yet.

I hope I haven't used up all my luck already.  I hope that the after can have times that are as good as the before.  I know it will be different.  I know I will always see things through the lens of bereavement.  But I want to feel lucky again.