(no subject)
After my annual check-up, I asked my OB/GYN if he had suggestions for someone I might talk to about all that's happened and why I'm avoiding a hysterectomy I rather desperately need. He had what I hope is a brilliant idea - therapy with the folks at Duke's Infertility Clinic. Folks that spend their careers dealing with folks' feelings about the ability or inability to have children - that just might work. I have my intro appointment this week and I am hopeful.
I cannot imagine where to begin and figure I'll follow their lead and see where things go. My short chats to ascertain the problem were encouraging, they went straight to the heart of the matter with few words. We'll see. I expect it will be excrutiating and healing.
Knowing both, I haven't thought of much else this week - and our albeit brief conversation in Va Beach. That helped, y'know, you acknowledging what happened and that you couldn't deal with it. And hurt, I have felt more and less alone - mostly less or I wouldn't be able to write now. I suppose it comes as no surprise your wounds around this topic are as deep as mine (she posits without knowing the story). We are so alike and so different, you and I. All I know is that you get the tenderest parts of me - which are sometimes the angriest - I suspect I get those of you. I'm trusting with a thousand hopes and prayers that we value this our ourselves as individuals and as two people so very much in love with one another.
When all the noise quiets, I trust this to be true. This moment, just now, is the first time in so many months I have felt almost like myself. I can hear music. I can feel my feelings. I am hopeful. I feel strong. My insides feel comfy where they belong. My fingers fly across the keyboard in a pace that almost matches my thoughts. I can feel my love for you without fear - my favorite place to be. It is okay we are not together right now, we will be... I always find my way back to you. I like to think you find your way to me. And that we always will.
Mind you, good sir, I've never felt this of another person...hell, I couldn't even imagnine wanting it, never understood what it meant to love like this. It's taken me three years to even begin to accept these feelings and they come with so much worry - some practical and valid, some echos of a life lived, so much mixed up with so many things... as I have come to think it should be, as I always do, with you.
I feel so safe, I might be able to write the terrible things - do you have any idea what it means to me to have found someone with whom I feel this safe? Thirty years... I don't want to waste what's left of life being scared of you and I. I hope you can find your way to feeling the same.
***
For the record, I don't know what happened last summer. I never will. I'll say it again and again.
Facts:
The ER doc thought I'd had a miscarriage. The very old nurse thought I'd had...the younger nurse thought I'd had. They all suggested it and backed away at the pain in my eyes... maybe? They said, gingerly, probably... let's focus on you being okay.
Nurses have this odd way of accessing the moment, focused on the goal - you will be okay. They all say... saying the truest thing of all, the things they say when they just don't know...hope in a dark night.
1 in 200 women get pregnant after a tubal ligation, the numbers are higher for folks (like me) who have them burnt. I don't know. I wish I did. I wish I'd been okay enough to ask for the tests.. but I wasn't. I was alone and cold and bleeding everywhere and I couldn't take another hard thing, I just couldn't. If I'd imagined you'd need that detail, maybe I would have... but I told you what was happening and you said...
Nothing.
I always imagined, when I had the ligation done, if anything bad happened, I could rationalize it. I didn't know about a you. I imagined that I'd apologize but I won't... it played out as my worst imagination...that I would... that it would suck... but it would be okay because not having more children was a choice I'd made.
I never wanted this. I did everything to make it so that it was never so. I'm sorry. And I am angry. You knew. I know you fucking knew. You decided to check out... just like every fucking one else has. How am I so small a person everyone checks out?
And what would possibly make me believe that I shouldn't check out, also? the jury is in and I have no place in this world.
I don't know how to be or if I want to be, in this world, after this loss again. How many losses are too much? I think we've answered that.
I am not worth love. My ability to bear children is not worth compassion, at the very fucking least. I shouldn't be here.
That's how I feel. I feel like the tenderest, most hopeful parts of me have been shat out...by every man that mattered and the ones that didn't. It doesn't matter...
I don't.
As my only real guest to the new place said... when I asked... there are women men love and women men wish they'd love... I'm the latter.
I'm great til I'm not. And then I'm alone....too much... looney tunes... Maybe I am.
I'm sorry you thought I'd cut you out. How the hell could you think that when I've spent the last year... ? Willing to make myself the ultimate fool?
I suppose it easier for you to see me as a fool. I can live with that. I foolishly almost died, alone and cold. Who fucking cares?
I've learned this year, that no one cares... except Angie. She can explain it all. She wasn't wrong... the EMT's weren't wrong. I don't want to be here anymore.
That isn't true. I am reminded of something I read when I was 15...
It isn't that I want to die
I just don't want to be here for a while
That's me. I have grandchildren I'll never see again. I have one I barely know, even though I think he'd give me a chance. I have one on the way. I try to find enthusiasm... You're probably right, my kid is fucked because of me and I should stop being here.
I need to check my life insurance to make sure he'd still get the money he needs to feel secure.
How could everyone leave me so alone?
I'm not sure any amount of therapy can fix this.Not only am I not good enough to be a mother, I am worth disdain and abandonment for my body even mistaking otherwise.
I have spent my whole life trying to beleive otherwise.