*Trigger Warning: This post discusses pregnancy loss & miscarriage.*

My body has become a vessel for death.

An earthly burial ground for, now, three souls unable to find life on this side of heaven because my body failed.

I am blank. The world around me is simultaneously stopped and spinning.

I understand that for some people life doesn’t begin until birth and that the beating hearts I saw, that stopped for no known reason and will never draw breath, will never be recognized as a valid root for my grief. It’s fine, I don’t need their pity or validation.

I have, however, reached a point of paralysis and fear. I am afraid of everything; I am haunted by my waking life because my nightmares are more bearable.

People tell me that I’m strong. I’m not. I’m propped up only by the gracious mercy of God and will surely crumble into an abyss of hopelessness should He ever let me go.

Maybe one day I will wake up on the other side of this, perhaps with art, or words, or answers that make this a tolerable part of my life story.

Today is not quite that day.

What I do have is a shrinking in number, but mighty in faith support system, many of whom check on me daily. And others whose kind words and thoughts have sustained me though time and space separate us.

[Life tragedies have a funny way of catalyzing the gross realization that many of your friendships were circumstantial and the circumstances that sustained said friendships have ceased. You will often be the last to know.]

I am not alone, though it feels that way sometimes. My husband is my anchor.

Perhaps I can leverage “blank” for good as I learn who I am now, notwithstanding who I once was. That girl is gone to heaven with the souls of her children, never to be the same again.

Loss is an appalling teacher. Her lessons, born of gruesome detail, will often lead to an awakening you don’t want, but didn’t know you needed. It is disgusting and cathartic and transformational. And so we change, leaving behind things that no longer serve us, marching onward towards new things that do.

I have a new anxiety and hypersensitivity to life — its brevity, its power, and its propensity to end before you are ready. Time is a seductive illusion and you are running out of it.

There is no time to waste on people and things that drain life from you — you don’t have enough of it to lose in that way.

So do that thing, hug that person, go on that trip, and eat the damn cake. You have all the time you are going to get. Stop wasting it. Get busy living and loving.

I’d rather die empty, than live empty.