How Do You Move Forward When There's Nowhere To Go?

How do you move forward when there's nowhere else to go?  How do you tell your heart that the dream you've had your entire life has just been shattered?  What do you do when everything's gone?

This isn't going to be an optimistic post.  It's going to be raw, and honest, and painful.  I believe in honesty, and in letting my emotions go, and if it bugs you, I'm sorry, but this is my space and this is me right now.

I've been running the numbers in my head since I got to feeling better.  The average hospital stay in my area runs around $10,000/day.  I have insurance, but I have to pay $200 for the ER, $1500 for deductible, and I have this nifty Out-of-Pocket total of $2500.  I honestly don't understand the OOP, because I'm not going to be limited to a bill of $2500.

In fact, the other part of my insurance states that I'll owe 20% of the bill.  Since I was in the hospital for 5 days, that comes out to a minimum of $50,000, but probably closser to $100,000, especially when we figure in the cost of this next surgery.

This means I'll owe between $10,000-$20,000 when it's all said and done.  I MAKE 15,000 a year, but only take home $1,000 a month.  My husband doesn't have a full-time job, and right now we have an extra $400 a month that we use for food and gas and that tiny bit that goes into savings. 

If I set up payments at $200/month, it will take 5-10 years to pay off this bill.  That's assuming that I get to keep my job and that hubby gets to keep his.  We'll survive, but I'm not sure we'll do much more than that.

I don't get it.  I try to be the best person I can be.  I work hard, I volunteer, I bend over backwards to help others out.  I live a clean life--I try to serve others and live in a Christian manner.  So yeah, I'm at the point where I cry, "Why me?  How much more do I have to endure?  What have I done that's so wrong that I must constantly be ground into the dirt?  How come every.single.dream.I.have gets taken away--violently and suddenly?  How come I feel like I am being punished?  When do I get to experience the up side of life?"

I feel overly raw.  It's like there's this big cosmic battle going on and Satan and all his minions are going, "What else? What else?  Can we hurt her anymore? Huh, can we?"  There's apparently a giant neon sign in the sky that says "Ranae is not allowed to have any true happiness, ever.  She doesn't deserve it."

While I have experienced happiness, it comes in tiny spurts, and as soon as hope unfurls her leaves, she gets chopped back to the ground.  It's not pruning, it's annihalation.  Any time I start to think, "I think I'm gonna make it," I get bashed back into the ground.  Hard.

We will not be able to have a family.  Not now, and right now it looks like we never will.  I'm crying as I type, because this has been my dream since I was 8.  I've looked around all summer and kept my jealousy at bay as each IF friend I have has finally conceived and is holding her baby in her arms.  I kept thinking, "If it can happen to them, then there's hope for me, too."  Well, I'm all out of hope.  I think it got killed this time.  My dreams didn't just get put on the shelf, they got obliterated into tiny fragments of nothingness.  It's all gone.  Just like that.

In four years, I've lost my career, my baby, my fertility, my sense of worth.  This money issue means that I'm stuck here in our tiny trailer home for another 5-10 years, we won't be able to go through foster care, won't be able to adopt, won't be able to pay for any kind of fertility treatments, won't be able to do much more than just stay here and hope we can afford to repair what goes wrong with the house.  That's the 10-year plan, and by the point I've gotten everything paid off, I'm going to be too old to do foster care, or adoption, or fertility treatments.  So there, I'm done.  You've won, you've proven your point.  I get it.  I don't deserve any of those things, so you can quit breaking me into a million pieces.  

I've also lost my wedding ring since I got back from the hospital, and that has just done it for me.  I'm done.  Finished.  I will go through the motions, continue working hard because I have students who need me to work hard, continue helping others, continue participating in my family. But I'm done. 

I don't need a giant neon light to tell me that I obviously am not allowed more than fleeting happiness.  I'll do what needs to be done, but I'm keeping my heart out of it.  I'm not strong enough to go through this again.  I need to give up my childish dreams and start living in the "real world".  I need to become a cynic because being an optimist has gotten me nowhere.

I just don't know what I've done to tick off God, and I don't know how to return to a place of grace, and I feel like I deserve every.single.thing that has happened to me because somewhere along the way I have to have failed big-time. 

I've worn my heart on my sleeve my whole life.  Where do you put it when it's been broken so badly?  How do you convince your heart that dreams are for children and that reality doesn't like dreams?  How do I control the jealousy that threatens to overwhelm me---just shut off every emotion like you turn off a faucet?  How do you move forward when there's nowhere to go?