Just Killing Time

Chris

You left as you came. Like fire and passion and caution thrown to the wind. You fooled me with perfection and I fell for you the way a horse runs too quickly and plunges to it’s death off a cliff. You took every doubt and made me believe that the world was made for us to conquer and we could indeed conquer it all. That together we would fight and love and succeed and annihilate everything that ever stood in our paths. Every injustice and every hurt, every wrong doing and every lie would be vanquished.

I didn’t know you were more scared than me. I didn’t know that you hid more than you were ever free and I didn’t know that when you saw me you were afraid. That excitement we both had, that was ebbed for you by a lingering sense doom and it ate away at every fiber we had started to weave. I could sense it, the way my cat senses my return, I could feel it creeping into the intimacy and I could see it in your eyes the way you spoke about your mom and every woman that had ever hurt you. That brilliant mind of yours rationalized every action anyone ever made, any word anyone ever said and you put it through this rigorous test of truth or false and risk of danger. I just never thought you played that game with me. Maybe I should have been paying more attention. Maybe I should have had more caution and maybe I shouldn’t have jumped in. But I did. And I probably still would. You unlocked every dream I had ever tried to hide away and you looked at me and gave me they key and said go. And I looked up at you, because I always thought you were bigger and higher and better than anything I could create and I hoped one day to be as big as you. Maybe that’s why I started to feel so small.

But your fears and your hurt began biting you in ways that made it hard to look and every word I said, every comfort, every touch, it all was lost in something you saw as wrong. You refused to go any deeper than we were even though in my mind it was as deep as I could ever go and the natural progression was somehow halted. Jolted to a stop. I tried to set you free thinking it was in your better interest and I wanted you to be happy. I gave you a door and opened it for you, waiting for you to walk through, it or waiting for you to slam it shut. WAITING. You didn’t move, you didn’t speak and with every passing minute my heart sank deeper to the floor. With the idea of you absent I started looking to myself, I started searching for everything I had been neglecting and I found that drawer that I had recently locked. That drawer that everyone has when with another. That drawer of those happy little compromises. And I opened it. And it felt like a hard, crusted scab being torn off the most tender surface of skin, but I knew it would heal over again so I just kept ripping – then you spoke.

The softest voice I ever heard. I had never seen you so scared. I had never seen you so small. It was hidden in absolute darkness but I saw you plain as day. Maybe I should have asked it to be brought into light but I was so eager to put the scab back that I listened to you and a wrapped it up.

The intimacy returned the way we began and I had never been happier. I had never felt more safe and I had never seen you more at peace.

Then the bombshell came.

I lost something I didn’t even know existed and it was something that both of us had made. And even though it felt like it couldn’t have ever existed it did and I tried to cope with the loss that I felt about losing something I didn’t know that I could.

You watched the light go from my eyes as I was drowning in a void of numb. You held me tight as salt and water poured from my eyes in desperation for understanding and peace. We felt together, we coped together and we came through together. We picked up our life and we continued and we mended what needed mending in the physical realm of my uterus.

But it fell apart at an utterance of the doctor saying “good news”.  At the fact that nothing could be proven or disproven at the sheer mention that we could never be sure but that the Doctor said it could have been something else. “Could have, may have been, it is possible” all words that a lawyer such as yourself knows holds no definitive property that even though I left out her lack of definitive vocabulary that to you that meant it was a lie. A lie - and if there was one small lie then perhaps it all was a lie. A fabrication woven out of deception and malicious intent and idiocy. And you turned to marble. Beautiful and hard and cold. I tried to break through explaining how the emptiness wasn’t something I could have made up that the intangible feeling of my whole body being hollow wasn’t something I was conniving enough to fabricate. But you had decided. All you could see was your own terror mixed in with all the malice and pain of those who came before me and before your eyes I turned into everything you feared most; everything you fought to annihilate every injustice you had ever felt.

Everything was gone after that. All the kindness all the trust all the hope. Cold behind a marble stare as you asked me to leave. As you called me a liar and as you retracted all affection with that one sentence…

So I left. Afraid I would fall to my knees and try to reason with you, beg you, afraid I would lose all dignity that I had once earned. I ran and tried to breathe as everything inside me felt the weight of how you kicked me down. Kicked me out.

After sobbing and trying to understand what I had done, I knew nothing would ever be the same again. I found whatever strength I had in the heat of anger and I removed every trace of my life from yours. All that I could carry. Everything that was solely mine. I wanted you to know that I didn’t need you that everything we had done together was something we had agreed on together that I didn’t need your home, your money, your sperm, your love…

I was waiting. Again. Waiting for you to open the door you threw me out of, to break at the marble you had incased yourself in. Waiting for answers, explanations, a change to reconcile. A couple days turned into a couple more. But you never called. You never said a word.

Two years of love, but you never said a word.

I still listen outside, waiting to hear your car pull up the driveway. I still look at my phone every five minutes wondering when the couple days will be over. I keep going out o distract myself from the loneliness of my empty bed.

You left as you came. Like fire and passion and caution thrown to the wind

The worst thing probably to ever happen to me happened. I miscarried a fertilized egg. i can’t bring myself to call it anything other than that because it wasn’t an anything. It was a bag of DNA and cells that had not yet turned into anything. And it was only apart of me for four weeks, all of which I had no comprehension of it’s existence. Till it was gone. What seemed to be a terrible period and a mere month of discomfort, body aches and bloatedness and cracked nipples was, all the while though, I ignored or denied or was merely unaware, it was there. It was something. And that’s the hardest part. Because to lose something there has to have been something to lose and the fact that I still don’t feel like there was anything is making this whole process muddy and confusing and infuriating. I am not one to allow emotions to get in the way of anything. I am always in control. I am an actor. It’s my job. But I’ve never felt loss. Much less a loss I refuse to accept as viable or tangible.

I keep telling myself it’s not real. I can talk about it with every person I know. It’s as if my subconscious is trying to get me to come to terms and get out of a denial that is assuredly there. People keep asking me how I feel and the answer is usually nothing. Apathy mixed with a healthy dose of anger. Somehow I keep telling the same story even here the same thing I have told to others. Maybe that will help but I don’t feel any better.

I didn’t want a kid. Or to be pregnant. Not for a long time. I was even toying with the idea of never having kids. I’m glad I have birth control and that it works. I guess I just never anticipated seeing the results of that device. I wasn’t surprised when it happened. My long term partner and I are fertile people, and I know that as a fact based on our genes and history. I wasn’t, or am not surprised. Sex is our mode of reproduction. Whether used recreationally or not. I don’t delude myself and take responsibility for that fact. That’s why I had a very  strong birth control method. Again, I just didn’t expect to see the evidence of it’s strength.

I had expectations. I had thought about miscarrying before and I would tell myself it was my worst fear. I also expected that if it were to ever happen it would be in twenty years when my partner and I were trying to procreate. I would be devastated and I would mourn the loss of life we created. I would have known I was pregnant. I would have known and I would have wanted it. My partner would hold me as we both cried, but we would try again. It would be healthy and beautiful and I know it would have taken over the world with it’s brilliance and charm and it would do everything that our previous generations of humanity had failed so far.

But I didn’t know it was there. I didn’t want to be pregnant and I didn’t want to have a kid and I wasn’t even emotionally connected. I felt nothing but relief. Physically because I was no longer in pain, emotionally because a child would have fucked up all of my plans. I am a woman that loves and tends to my plans as if they were flowers in a very important garden. I thanked the powers that be that I still had those plans firmly planted, that nothing changed that I was still me and nothing in my life would change. I was surprised that I had no other feelings. But that was the shock I suppose. I was fine. My partner was relieved but to be honest, I started not even thinking about how he felt whatsoever. The next day confusion set in, and the physical grief. Grief that I had never felt. I could feel it, it was tangible and I could see and feel the emptiness. My whole body felt hollow. I didn’t even know hollow could be a physical feeling. I had lost three pounds. Which didn’t seem like a big deal but the next day I lost three more. I told myself that’s what I wanted. I wanted to be skinnier and lighter and I was. I had everything I wanted. What was there to mourn. But then the depression set in. Getting out of bed felt impossible. I stopped eating. Chewing lettuce felt like too much work. I jumped into netflix and lost myself as much as I could. My life went on, the classes, shifts at work, and it was easy to pretend. It was easy to perform. I smiled and listened and paid attention and took notes. I laughed and joked and I was absolutely fine. Then when I got home, it was as if i jumped into an ocean and I no longer had control of my body. I felt like an outsider looking in at a woman sitting curled up inside a fuzzy blanket because the cold hadn’t left her since it had happened - a symptom of the loss of blood no doubt. She sat there, completely numb, her body falling into the cushions and melting away. She didn’t leave bed the rest of the day.

My partner came home later. He saw me sleeping and let me be. He had no idea what to do and I assured him there wasn’t anything to be done. There wasn’t. I tried to get up and sit with him but it felt too hard. He kept asking me how I was and I had no answer. I didn’t want to talk. It took too much effort. But I told him. I felt like I was underwater and that I was looking in on my own body. He nodded. He didn’t know what to say. He asked if it was getting worse and I was annoyed but too apathetic to show it. I said it wasn’t getting better. I went to work, and that was that. I was fine again for two hours, then when I went home it hit me again like a wave. I had to come to terms with being pregnant. I had to accept it. I did. But I didn’t. I still haven’t. I give myself time limits. After a week I will feel fine again. I will feel normal. I’m going out more and seeing friends more often now. I’m singing more and it makes me feel good.

But I can’t eat. It’s like I’m punishing myself. You didn’t allow life and so now you should slowly be taken of yours. I know I will be fine. I will get through it because I’m too stubborn not too and I’ve seen it destroy other women and I refuse to let it destroy me. What’s the point. I didn’t want it anyway. It wasn’t even formed much less alive. I get everything I want.

Don’t try to end abortions, end the situations that lead women there.

for-nothing-ends:

I think I’ve summed things up pretty well.

We listen to the voice that makes us feel validated, comforted and affirmed. It is our greatest weakness.