a chance to help

My cousin lost her 5 year old daughter to cancer a couple weeks ago. I imagine there isn't worse emotional pain than the loss of a child. I can understand the feeling to an extent, but I feel inadequate in my attempts to relate. I want to relate because I want to be there to help my cousin through what will be years of hell. This leaves me with a strange pressure to do and say the right things and an unreasonable and mostly selfish worry about what she and her family think of my response.

I know they don't dwell on me, there's obviously a much more pressing issue consuming them. Yet that pressure continues. I want to be able to pull everything I've learned from pain and depression and hand it to them, subsequently making everything be fine. I find it upsetting that that will not be the case with them for years. I know how it works. I know time is the only answer, and I hate it. I'm desperate to find another solution. I want to write a 12 step program. I want to build a time accelerator. I want to wave a magic wand and fix things.

I'm feeling helpless. I have only words that may relate, and only if she wants to hear them. I could pray. And maybe that was the answer years ago, but I don't think God is listening. They might think that. Or they might be just as confused about that as me.

Currently, the truth behind prayer and God and life is irrelevant. All I'm concerned about is relief and peace. That seems sacrilegious. I want them to turn to whatever helps, even if it's not steeped in reality.

That speaks more to my unbelief than anything. Otherwise, truth would trump all. It would be more important than healing. Holding to truth would be a test of faith - an absurdly hard test of faith.

That's what I used to believe. If I still believe that, I failed the test. The lack of any reassurance that God was watching did me in. It was a deafening silence. The silence continues.

I don't care now. That isn't a pressing enough issue to matter. It may never be again. In the midst of depression, escape trumps all. The rest of the universe pails in comparison.

I have looked back at my own life and walk through depression and I can see the progress I made. But if the depression started 6 years ago, most of the progress was in the last 2 years. That's 4 years in limbo, left hanging onto the hope for progress and not much else.

4 years doesn't seem horrid from this end, but when your in the middle of it and you don't know how long it will be or if it will ever end, it eats you away. The longer it goes, the more you consider options for ending it yourself. That is a terrifying internal debate to have.

Mentally and emotional you are all over the map. Things are completely fine some of the time, and utterly dreadful at other times, all seemingly without reason.

I guess you figure out cues to the darkness eventually, and you can start to avoid them. But the darkness will adjust and arrive in new ways. It's particularly daunting when something that was once an escape from the darkness becomes a cause of it. Now you find yourself changing who you are simply to survive.

It worked for me. I am not who I was a couple years ago. I mostly treat people the same as always, so it may not be too noticeable, but my beliefs and motivations are a far cry from what they were. In many ways, this is freeing. I've killed a slew of internal pressures that used to govern my life. But it's also confusing. I don't really know who I am, if I'm better or worse, or if I'll be completely different in 5 years.

However, like the potential end to the spiritual silence I have had, it just doesn't matter who I am in 5 years. Being alive matters. Helping others be alive matters.

The issue here is the stakes. I know what is on the line. I know lives are made or shattered in these circumstances. I am terrified of seeing a life shattered. I want to put up a protective barrier to make failure impossible. I don't want there to even be a chance.

I don't know my cousin's family well. How do I help? I know her better than the rest of them. She is open and honest. I can be a help. It's sort of my life's purpose to be a help. And there is that pressure again. I know this the one area where I actually feel significant. This is where I think I matter. So I can't blow it. Do I feel like I blew it with Aaron? I'd have to say 'yes' to an extent. Though I choose to blame God. It's easier.

Am I going to fail this? Am I really the only one who can bring my cousin through? No way. She's surrounded by support. This is not Aaron. I was all he had.

I feel so desperate about this that I feel worthless. It's like I'm running around in a panic on the front lines and being a hindrance, not a help.

I'm going to relax and I am going to offer a hand. It'll be there if she ever needs it.