Parallel

It's Thanksgiving.  I am full, still digesting the news from two months ago.  I can't get pregnant.  I am absorbing the alone time silently wishing for a fast forward button to January.  My boyfriend has left for the day to spend the holiday with his family.  Our worlds have become parallel.  He is living and I am just existing in my own silent path next to him.  Exhausted, I barely can keep up.  We our worlds apart.  He has moved forward as if the last few years had never happened.  And I am still grieving.

I told him last night I had wished for 2 more months before the holidays began.  I needed time to mend my broken heart.  He is silent.  He has moved on and we no longer are walking on the same path together.  Craving the touch of his hand in mine just as he does when we cross the street.  Maybe it was the security I needed that he wasn't abandoning me, at least not this time.  He forgot to be my friend in the beginning of all this.  At times I felt like I was Sisyphus carrying the weight of our work and him up the hill only to have everything crash down on me month after month.  And now I am left with this giant stone.

I used to relish in my alone time, especially during the holidays.  Truth is, I have spent many Thanksgiving's alone.  My family of birth shattered years ago.  I had hoped to have a family to call my own.  It was the dream.  And now I feel uncomfortable in my skin trying to find a sense of gratitude for all that I have, desperately wanting to stop dwelling in all that I don't.  The picture around me is peaceful with the fur family gathered around prepared to catch my tears.  And me, I tap away on the keyboard as if to create a peaceful lullaby that will comfort me. 


And while I continue to search for words and thoughts to keep my mind from wandering to those dark places, I keep reminding myself that it can't rain forever, even though at the moment I am wishing for an ark.

Pause Button

It's like a time out, but I call it a pause. I have been doing them a lot lately I have noticed. It's my own personal way of stopping all that is happening around me. I turn off the news, I put down the phone and then there are too many pet videos to count. I just need things to stop and this is the only way I know how. I am not delusional, really. I know the earth still spins and life continues while I am paused, but I choose to press the pause button. Why shouldn't I have a moment in time that is just mine? I want the quiet and the calm. I waited 40 years for the chaos to end. It continues, but I can still press pause. 

Too many events. Too much sadness. And yes, too much death. On the heels of my sparkly friend who now shines from a different place and the news reminding me of how scary the world can be; it's time to press pause. And while I sat on the couch yesterday across from the woman who is supposed to help me breath through the storm, I want to pause her too. I don't want to hold on to her words. I want to let them go. This session is brought to me by the letter "T". Every single leather couch owning, note writer with several initials after their names says the same thing. Isn't this the thing I am supposed to let go? All those memories, all those events, and yes, the bad people. Aren't I supposed to let them go? Why is it necessary I have to talk about this... again? I feel like I am indulging someone else's sick fantasy. "My patient is so sick." "How sick is she?" I watch as she furiously scribbles in her note pad. And they all look at me as if they are telling me something new. As if I have never heard the word "trauma" before. Don't they understand the illness in my head? Don't they recognize the shame? Seriously, do they think I need the affirmation or that the "empathic" look is supposed to make me feel better?

I feel no better than the mouse in the lab. I am someone's experiment as they try to fill me with words just to see how my body reacts. The worst being the eastern practitioner who told me that each and every story was my fault, even the ones in my crib. I somehow asked the universe for it all and apparently my subconscious continues to crave more. I am Oliver Twisted now, "Please sir, might I have another?" I wished I walked away thinking she was wrong. But the experiment continued and the illness inside just grew. She was my Milgram.

Perhaps the pause is my antidote, my cancer fighting pill that keeps the shame from taking over. Tonight, I am popping the pill. I am putting my past trauma's on hold today and while I am at it, I am pausing all that is happening around me too. I am typing and while the words don't come out quite the way I see them in my head, the clickety clack of my typing soothes me just the same. It's the lullaby for the depressed. And of course, the sound of the button as I push pause.

Infertility

The words have been swimming in my brain and I knew to write my story would be to acknowledge the hurt. I am drowning. The tears just flow and I can't help myself. Small fits of rage punctuated by tears that appear as little dots on a page. And still I can't help myself. I let the tears flow. Everything is at the surface and raw. I used to live for moments like this, where the facade was removed and I was real. Now I gasp for breath at my reality. I don't know how to live with this and I think the harder part is I don't want to. I suppose I shouldn't be shocked. I am 42 years old. I just don't feel it. I thought I could do anything I set out to do. I believed my body wouldn't betray me. I believed in my own will. I wanted to believe that all the decisions I have made my entire life would not lead to regret. There are no "do-overs" and I see myself now as having truly fucked up my opportunity to have the one thing I have always wanted, family. I have been diagnosed as being too old. The words sting. I waited and I waited and I waited for the "right" time and now the time is gone. I thought I got to choose. How did this choice get taken away from me. Why didn't I get my notice before expiration? Wasn't someone supposed to warn me that in this case if you don't use it, you really do lose it. And now it's gone. All my fantasies of family gone. Sure, I still have the one I was born into that rejected me from day one. The one that reminded me of all their regret. And even more now, I don't understand. And in my head, they have never counted. I wanted a family of my own. I wanted that love to give. And it's just gone. This is my diary I tell myself. Where else can I go with all this? Years and years of trying only to be reminded of chronology. I feel so broken and the reality is I am. Dreams of family gone with one diagnosis. And there is nothing I can do to fix this. The girl with the perfect grades, the straight teeth, the clean home with everything in place and this. This tarnish on my record, this black mark next to my name, this blemish. Fuck that, it's more than a blemish. A blemish goes away. I still can't breath. I have been crying for days. And the letter from the doctor sits here reminding me that the purpose I believed I had does not exist.