Dear Thirty-Six-Year-Old Mette

Last year, your life ended when your daughter was stillborn. You are not and never will be the same. Some part of you thinks that you will stop grieving and that you will be the person you used to be. People around you keep telling you that if only you’re good enough, God will tell you the reason this happened and you can work on being a person worthy to see your daughter again. You have mostly stopped believing in God, but you don’t dare to say this out loud often. You have mostly stopped having a community because no one is willing to hear your truth.

You have five children ages three to twelve.

You are about to try to push yourself harder and harder into Mormonism. You push yourself into Ironman training, and you still feel like a failure at it. Your first race, which you still think of as embarrassing, will forever be your best Ironman time. But you hate yourself so desperately, you are always trying to escape who you are. So many of the things you do are about trying to escape.

Occasionally, you dare to write something that is true, but of course no one wants that, and so you hide it away. It is too dark. It is too sad. It is too terrible a confession of your weaknesses.

I wish so much I could do something for you, but I have no answers, broken Mette. I am still broken Mette, though I feel less bad about it and write about it openly more. I am angry more often, too. I point fingers at other people who helped in my destruction. You waited so long to give yourself permission to step forward and not look back. I want so much to tell you about your future, to let you know that there is no point in trying so hard. It will all fall away anyway.

But I can’t do it. When I look at your face, I see the ineffable sadness of someone who does not want to stay alive. You cannot hold anymore pain, and I remember that feeling of drowning in agony, all alone, silently screaming. It was too much. I cannot go back to you and I fear that telling you about your future would make you unable to reach me here. And so I leave you alone. I’m so sorry, my dear Mette. So sorry I cannot help you.