CHAPTER 1
I CALLED OUT TO GOD
DOWN AT MY LOWEST
“Baby, your uterus had to be removed, and you won’t be able to conceive on your own anymore,” were the brutal words from my husband’s lips after I woke up from surgery. Let me take you to where it began…
At this point in my life, I was completely despondent, and I didn’t know what to do. Everything that could possibly go wrong, I felt as though it had. I didn’t believe I could be any lower than this besides death, because at the age of merely twenty-seven, I felt as though I had experienced a fair share of tragedies. I felt like there was nothing else in life for me to face—being down at your lowest, there’s nowhere else to go besides your grave. So, how did I get to this point in my life, where six feet below in a wooden box was so close to me, I could practically feel it’s shadow? During the infamous year of 2020, at the peak of COVID-19, while many were facing the devastating pandemic that took over our entire planet, I was facing that as well as my own personal crises.
A few weeks prior to the pandemic lockdown, I found out I was pregnant, when my husband and I came back from our mini vacay while celebrating Valentine’s Day in New Jersey. I wasn’t feeling like my usual self, especially with my body, so I decided randomly one day to take a pregnancy test. I was on my way to work and decided to stop by the store and pick up a few tests. When I got to work, I video called my younger sister for some moral support before going into the bathroom to take the test. There was an unspoken yet spoken string of emotions from both of us, especially during the wait for the results, which seemed to drag on with the suspense. I finally went and looked at the results. Then I whisperingly shouted to my sister, “I AM PREGNANT!!” and we both just stared at each other with our jaws to the ground. We were both so excited, yet in disbelief. I literally felt every emotion, one after the other, and then I realized, Hello!! You are at work girl, so let’s hold it together. More importantly, GO CLOCK IN; your shift is about to start!
I got home that night after work and, of course, while in the bathroom getting ready to shower, I decided to take another test, but this time it was the more expensive, digital one, which for whatever reason I thought would be the most accurate result due to society’s programming of “anything that costs you more money is better” mindset, but every clock delivers the same time, so yes, I was definitely pregnant.
I decided to go to the clinic and get my checkup and everything I needed to commence this new journey; I was putting a surprise together on how I was going to deliver this exciting news to my husband. Before I was able to give the news to my husband, I began having some abdominal pain. I went to the ER, and I had to call my husband in, and that’s how my sweet husband found out I was indeed pregnant with our very first baby; but unfortunately, we were not going to have this precious baby. I was eventually faced with a total hysterectomy at twenty-seven years old with no prior children. This news was delivered to me by my husband after I woke up under anesthesia from having gone through emergency surgery. That was the absolute worst thing my husband has ever uttered to me from his lips, and it was not even his fault.
At that point, that was the straw that broke the camel’s back for me, at least I thought. But God had control over that straw. I was hospitalized for about five days, and due to COVID-19 guidelines, my husband, nor anyone else, could be in the room with me. So, night after night, I would be awake in pain, alone, trying to understand this pivotal moment in my life. After being discharged, I got home, and everything hit me all at once. The first night back in my own house felt so strange to me. I felt as though I didn’t belong there, even though my husband and the people around me were trying their best to make it as comfortable as possible for me. I was down and so lost in life—oh, did I mention that I eventually also got laid off from my job because the pandemic was clearly in charge of the unemployment rate at the time?
DESPONDENCY
noun
a state of low spirits caused by loss of hope or courage.
Have you ever had a nightmare of being chased, but it seems as though everything is moving very slow, and you can’t run fast enough to escape the unknown thing that is chasing you? That’s how I felt every single day after my surgery. I felt like I was outside of my body, watching myself run from everything I’ve ever been through in life. My spirit had left my body and it was as if I was just existing and not living. Depending on the day, I would hear familiar voices—my husband’s, my sister’s, my friend’s, the doctor’s, the nurse’s, the television’s, the cashier’s, my neighbor’s—but I wasn’t present to what was actually being said. My life had become a constant out of body experience, and I didn’t care about a single thing in this world. I was bedridden for a very long time; the first half was physically, and the second half was mentally, but the latter part of it was certainly the longest of it.
The first week of being back home, I would just lie there rubbing my cold fingers over the long strip of staples going across my lower abdomen. I had exactly fourteen staples, and the eighth one, starting from left to right, was crooked; it was the staple right in the very center. I would do that at least more than a hundred times a day. I couldn’t fall asleep at all; I would go days without sleep. For every staple I counted, I would think of something awful in life I did to justify why this happened to me. I would lie there and try to make sense of it, and the only thing that made sense is that I must be a horrible human being. I was not only in pain physically, but I was depleted spiritually as well. I was afraid to cough, sneeze, turn over, or get up to use the bathroom, because doing any of those activities required the use of the muscle of my lower abdomen, which was in severe pain due to all the stitching inside and outside of my stomach.
My very first shower after the surgery was so difficult, my husband had to shower me at the hospital, and I was terrified. I didn’t even like the sound of the water running as I was practically pacing to get to the bathroom. I kept thinking, what if he hits my wound; or worse, what if the washcloth gets snagged on the staples—my mind was restless. I had completely lost my appetite; I wouldn’t eat for days, and sometimes it was because I was afraid to have a bowel movement because of the excruciating pain. One night the pain was so unbearable, I was literally screaming and crying for hours. I lost all hope of what my life would be. I was filled to the brim with so much despair and confusion, nothing made me happy. There wasn’t a single day that went by for months that I didn’t shed a tear; sometimes it would be multiple times a day to the point of dizziness. My heart was hallowed and empty.
TRUST ISSUES
As more time went by, I didn’t care to be around anyone, nor even talk to anyone. I began feeling like nobody cared enough to understand everything I was going through. I felt as if I was just wasting away, watching everyone else come and go by living their lives. I didn’t trust that the people around me cared enough, or at least if they did, I wasn’t feeling it from them. My trust in the world was shot, and nobody could convince me otherwise. I told myself that everyone had a motive for every action they took, every word they uttered, and every kind act they did. I was to the point I couldn’t even trust my own judgement, and I knew that was a big issue, because I have always trusted my own intuition and the decisions I would make. The main thing I didn’t trust for a while was the fact that my husband still wanted to be with me, and that he still saw me the way he always has. I was so distorted with my thinking; it caused me to almost lose my husband and push him out of my life. I would tell him, time and time again, that he could go find love with someone else and have a baby and live his life. A part of me didn’t trust that he would stick around as we grew older, and that he would ultimately go find another woman that was not barren.
My husband has never once in our entire relationship made me feel like he would leave me and go spend the rest of his life elsewhere, no matter how tough our marriage got—and trust me, we’ve had some fighting times we had to go through to maintain this unity. I was projecting my thoughts and feelings onto him, not even realizing he was grieving the loss of his baby as well. I just felt like being the first to let him off the hook, before he did it later. The first couple of weeks after my release from the hospital, I was so angry with my husband, because I felt like he wasn’t showing any emotion at all. I even picked a fight with him because I hadn’t seen him cry even once since starting this battle we were faced with. I told him that I didn’t feel like he cared at all about what had taken place. I just couldn’t figure out how he wasn’t broken like I was. So, my mind would start to wander, with the serpent whispering in my ears, telling me it was because he is still capable of having a child if he wants to. It was all in my head,
I couldn’t trust anything that...