Thursday, July 19, 2012

Full Circle

Sometimes life throws curveballs at you. And other times it throws a whole crap load of curveballs at you and makes you want to hide behind the umpire until Tom Hanks yells at you about how there's no crying in baseball. Lately life has been more like the latter.

Two and a half months ago I became the happiest and most terrified guy in the world when I found out that I was going to be a dad. Everything changed. Plans I had for the future rewrote themselves as I began to wrap them around this new little life that my girlfirend and I were preparing to bring into the world. I looked forward to sonograms, and little baby hands, and taking naps on the couch with this little person curled up on my chest. I felt my world shifting underneath me and I was completely okay with it. 

Two weeks ago those plans changed again. After two sonograms the doctor told us this was not a viable pregnancy and it would end in a miscarriage. We were devestated. The plans we'd made were gone. The future we'd daydreamed about and smiled over, all the strollers, and first steps, and those adorable baby hands, and naps on the couch were gone. The doctor said that in all likelihood the baby never really started to develop. I imagine that's supposed to help us feel better. Sometimes it does.

When tragedy happens my gut reaction is to ask "Why?" "Why did this happen?" "Why me?", and the answers to those questions are usually terrible. On the one hand there's really well meaning folks that tell you that God has a plan and I just have to trust him. If that's the case, and all this is part of some divine plan, then that divine planner is a jerk. I'm not sure someone or something who would plan tragedies should be sung to on Sunday mornings. On the other hand you've got folks who say there's no real reason why these things happen; sometimes they just do and that's how life is. It's still a less than fulfilling answer, but this is the one I'm leaning towards.

Since both answers are less than helpful, the real question I've had to ask myself is "what next?" What happens now? Where do we go from here? And I think the answer to that question is to go back to school and finish my degree. Plans have circled back to what they were orginally. I go back to homework, parttime jobs, ramen, and rugby. I look forward to spending time with my girlfriend; enjoying the time that's just ours now. I'm going to work to secure our future so when we're ready and tired of it being just us, we can do this again. Only hopefully it won't be a surprise the next go around. 

I don't really know what to make of this summer. Life is lived forward, but only understood backwards. Maybe in the future I'll be able to look back on this and be able to ascribe some meaning to it all. Until then, I guess I'm making it up as I go.

Peace