Words can not express...

I heard that phrase this week.  When my third friend this year had her first child.  "Words can not express the happiness I felt when I held my baby.  Today was the happiest day of my life."  Now,  I am all about words.  I love them, I like learning new ones, I have favorites, and I choose them carefully.  So when there are no words - I am at a loss.  Now, there's a phrase.

I am at a loss.  I feel like I have lost out.  I don't know the feeling of having my baby laid in my arms.  I try to imagine what it must feel like.  I try to comprehend the feeling that you are holding a life that you created.  That sprung forth from you.  I try to relate something in my life to the kind of love one must feel.  Complete love.  Unconditional love.  I can not.  I try to relate to the feeling of total and utter responsibility for the care of an infant.  Literally, you are EVERYTHING for them.  Even a pet can forage for food.  They have the instinct to survive.  But a baby, they need you for everything.  I find that scary.  But apparently it is actually a form of intense, unequaled love.

I am at a loss.  Because I can not understand why I have been denied something that seems so normal a part of everyone else's life.  I am at a loss as to why, even though  I am smart, and I am decent, and I try very hard to "do" life the right way, I am excluded from this huge party that almost everyone else will be invited to.  And even when I get passed my own self-pity, I feel at a loss to celebrate my friends' good fortune.  I know it is huge, their new additions.  It's life changing, and yet I don't know what that feels like.  It is frustrating, and makes me feel, somehow, less.

When John speaks of his children, I can see his pride sparkling in his eyes.  I want to feel that for his children, but I know I will never completely feel what he does.  I know I will never be able to connect with him on that level, and I hate that someone else, their mother, has that privilege, and, in my mind, she doesn't deserve it.

It's just funny - something that happens to so many people, and yet, the emotion involved is so personal that words can not express it.  And, unfortunately, my heart will not ever know it.  A little self pity here tonight.  Not sure what brought that on.

Along the same lines, every single person has or will experience death in their lives.  All parents will die.  We will all lose friends and beloved relatives and husbands and wives along the way.  This, unfortunately, is a part of life that can't be avoided, and lord only knows I have certainly become familiar with this particular emotion.  And as much as I love words, there really ARE no words to express how each loss effects me.  Even if there were, the words would not be received by others with the same feeling.   Other people can imagine, but they can not really understand.  We each live in our own grief.  I presume that we each live in our own joy as well.  Both of those thoughts sadden me a bit. It would be so much better the actually, rather than figuratively, be able to double our joy and divide our sorrows by being able to truly share these emotions.  Alas, I didn't make the rules I guess.

In the mean time, I try to dig deeper into my emotional experience to get as close as I can to what Natalie, Tiffany and Wendy must be feeling.  I want to understand my friends.  I want to walk their walks with them.  I want to understand John's simple joys and over-protective fears.  I want to share that with him because I want to belong.  I am getting closer.  It is just a source of sadness that I can never immerse myself completely in the moments that are the common building blocks of life.

Just my ponderings.