Major Baby Funk

I am in major baby funk today. Like my heart is ringing a bell and wearing a "Hope is for Sissies" sandwich board and marching up and down the street. Mocking me. Protesting all the hippie-dippie feel-good mumbo-jumbo I've been spewing forth in this space lately. On strike, walking the picket line, demanding more babies and less personal growth. I think it's Halloween - all the cute kids in costumes - and the remnants of the stomach flu and the domestic chaos two sick people can cause during two hurricane days stuck inside. Nothing permanent. Nothing irrevocable. Nothing disqualifying.

But when I feel this way - hopeless, sad, pathetic, and self-pitying - I smear salt into the wounds like some sort of deranged psychopath bent on torture and starting naming myself:

Failure.
Liar.
Hypocrite.
Wuss.
Unaccomplished.
Unworthy.
Not Enough.
Too Much.

I tell myself all my words of hope are thin and transparent, blowing away like all these leaves under my feet, fragile as cotton-ball spider webs decorating office hallways today.

Maybe this is hope: it takes less time before I realize I'm lying to myself again. I stop scrunching up my face to hold back the tears and I breathe in and out again and I find courage somewhere to stop the self-inflicted assault.

I've committed to walking through this pain, but it'll be honest pain, you bet your sweet self. None of that deceitful, name-calling bullshit. I confess truth. I'll stand up real tall and declare it with authority and conviction when I can, but I will speak it, even when my voice shakes. I am sad today, oh yes, but I am not failing. My emotions today are neither too much nor not enough. They are true and they are real, but they are not the most real or the most true. Hope doesn't feel true today. But it isn't any less so.

So I think I'll go home here soon and I'll open the door to little hands asking for candy and I'll make soup and I'll pick a few things up off the floor and I'll light a couple of candles and I'll wrap myself in something warm and cozy and I'll speak my real names, like confession, like prayer, like an incantation:

Brave.
Strong.
Beautiful.
Grateful.
Human.
Hopeful.
Beloved.
Enough.