I feel so wearied by this day. It started out well enough. Church, people letting me know that they are praying for Ryan, then off to visit my boy. But somewhere into the first hour of my visit I decided I'd just had enough. I was done. Crying out to God wasn't enough. I needed to yell. Scream. Beat on something. Somebody. And there was no answer. There was nothing to hit, no body that miraculously appeared to take the punches I desperately wanted to deliver. Instead, my tears fell silently onto my boy. He slept, completely unaware that his mother was falling apart. How can I be charged with caring for this child, when I cannot get myself together long enough to merely rock him. Perhaps the tenderness this day started back while during a worship song, I could feel my dad tensing, emotional, and then in an instant reaching his arm around me, and through tears, telling me he is proud of me. That somehow in my life I have done even one thing to make this man proud is too much for me. That he remembered that the one thing I regretted about my relationship with my mom was that she was not one for emotional displays with her girls and words of encouragement/affirmation were difficult for her. She could write them sometimes, but it never occurred to her that children long to know that they have made their parents proud - especially a prodigal child like myself. In her defense, she truly assumed that we knew how much she loved and was proud of us - if her friends are any indication, we and her grandchildren were pretty much all she talked about. So, from that moment in church, to knowing that the woman who just wanted to reassure me when she said, "everything will be fine," was only being kind and in her own way, wanting to reassure herself that surely this baby would be coming home soon, to watching in desperation as Ryan refused to latch on to my breast after having only nursed on the other side for 10 minutes, then refusing the bottle, preferring the feeding tube as a means of eating, and finally, watching his respiration jump again, out of the "normal" range...it's just too much. I gutted it out for 4 hours and then failed my child. I fled that damn hospital. I got in the car, cried again, and then sped all the way home. Just wanted normal. No stupid beeps and chirps of machines reminding me that my son cannot breathe the way he's supposed to. No nurses "just checking in." No overheard conversations of other babies who are going home tomorrow. I. Am. Done. And yet, I will go back in 4 hours. Hopefully after spending some time with the other kiddos and eating dinner with them (although right now I don't know where they are - somewhere with Poppy I guess). Will that be enough to carry me through the next visit. I hope so, because right now my faith ain't cuttin' it.