It could be part of a children’s book series.

Little Bunny takes the train

Little Bunny goes to the park

Except my series will be called Broken.

Broken in my yard

Broken at my job

Broken in my car

Broken on a bus

I’m writing this Sunday September 29th, on my way back to Chicago, on the Van Galder bus from Madison where I’ve spent the weekend with Heidi. At first I thought I’d sleep. Or read. Definitely not think about everything that’s just happened. I’d have to tell the story soon enough—to my husband, to my sister Erica—why torture myself now.

Except then I started to let it all play.

The horrible pain that struck Heidi out of nowhere Saturday night, minutes after we were laughing at the table. It was the worse pain Heidi’s felt so far, which is saying a lot. How she writhed and cried into her pillow. She was being stabbed in the head with a knife and she couldn’t get away. It went on for hours–at home, then in the ER.

The moment the next morning when we sat in the living room in the gray rainy light, me with my coffee and the Bible shoved aside, and Heidi said, all I want for my birthday is to die.

She said, In books and movies people hang onto life for their loved ones. But it’s not enough for me anymore. I can’t do it for my kids. I can’t do it for my husband, or for you and Erica. All I want is to die.

She said, I just want to escape. I just want the pain to end. Because it will never be the same, even if I survive. I will always be afraid of it coming back.

Heidi looked at me, her eyes puffy, her body shaking. She said, I broke.

Broken in the ER.

Broken in the hospital.

Broken on a couch.

Broken in bed.

Broken as she brushes her teeth and drinks her coffee.

I just had a panic attack on the bus. It was very undignified. It didn’t start that way, though. I was thinking my sad thoughts to myself. Replaying the moment I looked at Heidi’s curtains and couch and thought, one day soon she’ll be gone and how will I ever look at these things she chose for her house because they were pretty? The couch nearly broke my heart. She was so excited about it, happy to get a good deal. It’s a great couch.

As the bus hurried down the rainy interstate, I looked out the window, letting all my thoughts and feelings from the weekend flip through my head. I was staying calm. I didn’t need to take a Xanax. I am calm. I am Zen. I am fine.

Then, at the Janesville stop, a pert young blond college student in leggings and a sweatshirt pointed at my stuff, which I had plunked down into the seat next to me to protect my space. The bus was mostly single riders at this point. But of all the seats she could have requested, she asked for mine.

“I’m not feeling very well,” I warned her, hoping that she’d imagine flu contagion and pick another seat. “Just to warn you.”

But that did not deter this young woman, who promptly sat down and got busy on Instagram with her phone.

The minute she was there in the seat, occupying the space I wanted to grieve in privately, stealing the remaining hour and a half of the ride to Chicago and making me—again—a public display—someone who needs to keep it together because this is polite society—I cracked. It started with tears streaming down my face, faster and faster. Then, the occasional gulping breath. Then, the silent spasms rocking my body as grief’s fist tightened around my heart, my lungs, my ribs.

Heidi wants to die.

She wants to die now. Starting this week. This October. It’s what she wants. And I will have to watch. And then go on. And on. And on. Year after wrenching year. It’s not my choice. But I will hurt forever.

I will hurt when I look at her kids. I will hurt when Erica and I are together. I will hurt, and hurt, and hurt.

The sobs became stronger. Soon everyone in a two-seat radius had to know I was crying. Then I started to hyperventilate. I grasped the ledge of the window and pressed my forehead against the cold glass.

“Is there anything I can do?” said the blond person in a tentative voice.

I shook my head. I couldn’t even speak. My sister is dying. My sister is dying. My sister is giving up. My sister wants to go. The story is nearly over. Except it’s not—it won’t be—not for me. It keeps going past The End for an unbearable amount of pages.

Finally I thought I would lose my mind, because breaking right next to someone who is busily tapping away on their laptop, it turns out, is unbearable.

I said, “Could you please give me some space?” My blond seatmate moved. I buried my head on the now-free seat next to me, not caring how I looked, and sobbed. And hyperventilated, and clutched my hair. I broke. On the bus. Surrounded by people. And besides my seatmate’s initial contact, no one said a thing. No one looked at me afterwards. There was no eye contact.

Hello, I am a Rare Unicorn of Grief.

It’s better not to touch me because I am a magical creature. Except that instead of rainbows, I am darkness. Instead of glitter, I am tears. Instead of fairytales, I am a nightmare. This is a nightmare. This is me in my nightmare, falling apart on a bus like a crazy person.

So—what am I saying? Of course you don’t want to touch me.

You wish I wasn’t here. It’s uncomfortable to you. Also I might be crazy. Unbalanced. You never know. Better to pretend she’s not there. How awkward. Maybe I’ll be an interesting story you’ll tell someone when you get off the bus. Oh my God, there was this lady who totally lost it on the bus, it was freaky. In fact, you’re an interesting story I’m telling on my blog. So go for it. Let’s be each other’s stories. But please, no actual contact between us. It’s all too strange.

Grief squeezed me like a tube of toothpaste. Everyone looked away from the mess. Not my business.

My strange private public grief.

Mine and mine alone. No one will carry it for me. It’s mine. So look away. There’s nothing you can do anyway.

We’re 9 months into the year no one wanted to have–a year where my sister Heidi, 31 years old with 4 little kids, is very, very sick with a rare blood cancer called MDS. Along the way, the treatments or tests or what-have-you ruined her kidneys, and now the very dialysis that’s keeping her alive is preventing her from getting the bone marrow transplant that could actually save her from the cancer.

For a while, there was much blogging. Heidi and I both wrote updates and posted them to social media. There were tears, but there was praise. We felt certain that God would be near us. I wrote about this in a whole series of deeply-felt posts (you don’t have to look too far back on my blog to find them). As the waves of sorrow rolled through me, I trusted that somehow, God was doing something beautiful. We just couldn’t see it yet. I clung to hope. I clung to Scripture. I clung to God and he clung right back.

Fast forward to now. The transplant Heidi was supposed to get in March of this year is nowhere closer to happening–is in fact, further away than at first. Heidi is exhausted. And not sure if the fight is worth it, or for how long it will be. She’s in pain, and nauseous, and anxious. As we’ve been facing a possible end to this story that we so desperately didn’t want, two weeks ago, I lost it. I started falling apart at work in a ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ situation and then kept right on falling apart.

It’s like all the stress and pain from nine months crashed down on my head and I was trapped in the cruel grip of a world that keeps grinding on. A life that won’t stop for me, no matter how bad it gets. I’m never off the hook–I have to keep going to work, making meals, dropping kids off at school, reading them stories, attending to their minuscule and seemingly never ending needs. Nothing stopped for me. And how dare I expect that? What made me so special? Nothing. I wasn’t special. Everyone lost people. Everyone suffered. How dare I lose it like this.

I cried the whole way home with my daughter in the back seat. And the first little whispers starting coming into my head–I should hurt myself. Maybe kill myself. At the very least start thinking about how to do such a thing.

The old-fashioned phrase of what I experienced that day, culminating with a horrific night after the kids were in bed, might be nervous breakdown. Uncontrollable weeping. Self-hatred. Shouting obscenities and hitting myself in my back yard. I hated myself. I hated life. It felt like plummeting down that first hill on a roller coaster. Once I started, I couldn’t stop. More than something I did, it felt like something that was happening to me. Of course I did it–I said those regrettable things and no one else–but from a place of such weakness that my self-control was utterly gone. There was nothing to hang onto. I was free-falling. I started threatening to cut myself–I wanted to, desperately.

Adam just listened. And listened. All night, he listened as I cried and raged and lashed out. I said terrible things to him, and to God. Ugliness spewed out of me. I had so much anger and disappointment and rage at God for leaving us here to suffer without him. And then he demanded praise anyway? No. He was not getting that from me. He was supposed to carry me through this, to shoulder my burdens, but he didn’t. He left. He left me.

Shattered.

Broken.

Those words are in the lyrics of so many songs. But I never knew what it really felt like to be broken until that night of madness.

Why was I so desperate to hurt myself? Because I wanted to brandish my physical wounds and say, See? THIS IS HOW MUCH I’M HURTING. You think I should be volunteering for school functions and committees. You think I should smile at you and make small talk because we’re polite, functional adults here. You think because I show up at the office dressed with my hair combed I’m coping. You think I should be fine. But I am not fine. I am breaking. I CAN’T. I’M DONE.

I’ve had overwhelming sorrow and doubt during this journey already. But nothing like this. God turned his back. How could he leave me in this state? How could he let me shatter to pieces in my back yard like that? Why won’t he make himself felt? Where is the comfort of the Spirit?

How could you, God?

That night, I lost my mind. I literally went crazy. I couldn’t bear that the same God we tell ourselves is always there and never leaves you, was gone. That night, I couldn’t bear myself either. Every bad word you can think of, I called myself. Because what was my problem that I couldn’t take the same pain that everyone else on planet earth has to taste? I was disgusting, and weak, and self-destruction seemed like the only possible relief for the fire in my soul.

I never understood self-loathing before. I never understood the desire to harm yourself. Now I get it. It’s what happens when God turns his back, and you stretch out your arms but all there is, is darkness.

To be continued. Which is my way of saying, God, if you care how this story turns out, you’ll have to step in and change the course of everything. Because right now, it feels like I’m hurtling into the darkness and crashing will be a relief.

Amen.

 

 

[Side note for anyone who might be very worried right now: this is not a “cry for help” post but an important chapter in a journey that, no matter how tired I am, will continue towards its conclusion, whatever that may be. Many of you have been a huge part of this story already, and I feel that it’s important to chronicle the darkness as well as the light. I am not considering self-harm or suicide. That was a one-night dance with insanity. Also, I’m seeking counseling and now have anti-anxiety medicine at my disposal. The help you can give now is to cry out to God on my behalf, because without him, it is all despair, and darkness, and horror.]