This took me months to write. It is the first thing I have done since before I got pregnant. It hurt a lot. But the more times I read it through, the stronger I feel to have let it go.
I should have known from the minute that the window flashed
the word and my world felt like it was melting.
Because the books said that I would be tired and hungry but nothing
about wanting to veer sharply into the nearest tree. No one told me I would fantasize about a
possible miscarry. And as the others
glow next to me I am a black spot on the family tree. My mother said she would be happy enough for
the both of us, as if her joy could infect me.
She didn’t see that I was already infected with this slithering little
thing. I called It Nugget to keep from
saying creature or beast. I couldn’t say
baby.
No one told me. They said I would get swelling in my feet
but it would not come close to the swell of my heart when I heard Its first
tiny heart beats. Instead of excitement
when we found out It was a He, I cried for weeks. How could I turn a baby boy into a man of
integrity when the world around us told him to look down on me and anyone else
with my anatomy? I waved away the looks
of disdainful concern and explained; it was the vomiting. As soon as the fetus stopped poisoning me I
would be happy. I promise.
No one told me that in the weeks leading up to the day my
mind would begin to fissure in places integral to its safety. That by the time He arrived, screaming, there
would be weak spots in my skull you could see, if you looked close enough.
Thank god there was a tiny thing next to me that took all the eyes from my
crumbling shell and let me break peacefully. Two weeks before, they said He was killing me.
That the incubator inside had started to release new venom and soon my veins
would tighten and my brain would seize.
I was put on bed rest. As if lying on my side with nothing to do but
think would somehow save me.
No one told me that when they cut him out, my brain would
lose the ability to connect him with me and I would stare at his face wondering
when he would be retrieved. The beautiful little alien. It wasn’t just my mind that was broken. He screamed. Because my body would not create
the sustenance he needed. And to drown
out the feelings of guilt and disgust with the fact that I couldn’t find the
mother in me, I became obsessed. I spent
every day with this tiny little human being clinging to my breast. I wanted so
badly for us to succeed. Because the only time I felt connected was when he
would feed.
No one told me that when your chest refuses to fulfill the
only god damned purpose it has, your insides begin to bleed. Not with the blood running through your veins
but with every oozing ounce of self-hatred and pain. That your abdominal cavity will be filled
with a slushing mixture of sickness and anger so strong that you can’t even
look him in the face. And when, after
hours of pumping and praying, despite the fact that you lost your religion long
before you gained this burden, you can do nothing but cry quietly while a
bottle is made. I failed. In a long line of failures this one was too great.
No one told me that the months would get darker and deeper
and the very thought of leaving my home would begin to terrify me. They said I
would get the blues like it would be something that made me sing. Something
soulful and sad. As if I would have a
voice to use for anything but weeping.
So I kept clinging to this idea that it was normal and I wasn’t broken.
That no one talked about this part as a reality because if they did the human
race would cease. And then one day I
looked in the mirror and saw a sickness in me.
I remembered telling anyone who would listen that mental illness is just
as much a disease and would you just suck it up and get some sunshine for a
fractured knee? Why would you see a
doctor for a heart attack but not a broken heart. The day I told my husband I
needed help he looked relieved. He said
he knew it was serious if I admitted it was too big for me.
No one told me that making the phone call to my OB and
telling her that I needed something would be so heart wrenching. Or that she would seem so familiar with the
grayness of my face as if she had seen a thousand of me. Because she had.
Maybe. I got two bottles, one for my
mind and one to help my milk ducts refill. But after two weeks the sticky haze
was coming away from my brain and I could see how much stronger He was in spite
of me. I had missed the moment that the
screaming stopped and when His little limbs turned from spindles to trees. It hurt me to let Him wean. Not the same
thick sickening but a bitter pain I knew I would feel a thousand times again
when He stopped needing me.
They said the moment I looked into His eyes I would know a
kind of love that had until now escaped me. But it took me 19 weeks. It took until I found a sort of healing, a
strength that had so much to do with knowing it was not just for me. No one
told me that I would care enough about helping myself, only once someone else
lived because of me. And when I find him
in the morning jumping on his bed gleefully, I realize I am smiling to myself
and I am so relieved. Thankful that I
didn’t let the capacity for joy die in me.
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