I had nightmares last night. I was running from something with Ed, and he ran into a tree and something punctured his eye. I went back to help him, and his hands were over his eyes, and there was blood and jelly oozing out, and it was just so so AWFUL...There was this rising feeling of horror and panic, and it was all so real. I woke up terrified, and it's stayed with me all day, this image of him laying on his back, bleeding, the remnants of his eye oozing between his fingers.
I feel like I have some disease. There's something terrible and alien lurking in my mind, producing these horrible images. I'm afraid sometimes to fall asleep, afraid of what I'll find there.
I had a dream once where my brother shot my mother, and then shot me. I've been afraid of him ever since. It was all so real, the terror and the horror, the hatred. I'll never be able to forget it, and it never happened. That scares me too. Something that never happened has irrevocably changed my life because I saw it in a dream.
I'm still not sure who I am. I think the true reason for living is to discover who you are. I don't think I'll find out until the day I die. I cry for my babies that died before I knew them. I cry about them all the time, and their absence eats away at my heart. But I'm not sure if I really want to be a mother. So I'm not sure what that means, really. They broke my heart. They took all my dreams with them when they died, I know that with a fierce surety.
Which brings me to the topic of things I know to be real, things I know for sure. I know my babies broke my heart in a way that will never be fixed. I know that I have loved many people, some of them at the same time, and nothing changes the fact that I loved them truly. I know that I am built to love, but sometimes I forget it. I know that death is one step away, at all times. I told my friend once that I should have died when I was 10. It's true; I would have died if not for a random decision my mother made at the last moment. I would have stayed, and died, if it wasn't for her. Anything that has happened after that is extra time. I'm flying under the radar for the rest of my life. And that gives me a freedom that other people lack, other people who haven't watched death miss them by inches. I have the ability to save people, and to kill myself, at any time. I saved my friend's life, and maybe she should have died as well. I think so, she wanted to. But I saved her anyway; I looked at death and refused him.
I'm in love with someone I shouldn't be. It's amazing, and I adore every tortuous moment of it. I look forward to every time I can be with him, be near him, speak to him. I look for him everywhere, and his presence makes me ache. I miss him terribly all the time. I love this feeling. And it makes me a bad person.
2 comments:
A bad person you are not. You are a great person in my eyes, but I have really thick glasses so take that as you will. You are one interesting and amazing person I have to say. It is wonderful to see you writing again.
Approaching the loss of unborn children is difficult if not impossible for me to do: not only have I never been pregnant, but being male I also lack the ability to become so. Given that, it’s something that I will only have a slight impression of and never an understanding. The best I can do is to pass on the stories of the women from my life and hope that you can find something in them to relate to. In this case, I’m referring to my mother and my father’s mother.
Shortly after birthing me, my mother became pregnant with another son. This was not my brother Michael: her term with him didn’t start until January of the following year. I don’t know how far through the pregnancy my mother made it, but it was far enough for her to know that she was indeed carrying a son. He was to be named Linus. This pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. She became pregnant again several months later, but this time with Michael: she would not use the name Linus for a second time.
My father’s mother had it worse. My father was supposed to have an older brother named Stephen. This was his mother’s first child, but his life ended before he left her womb. He was stillborn. She was beyond devastated: once a proud German-Catholic, she forever turned her back on a god that would take her son’s life away before she had the chance to hold him in her arms.
My mother talks little of Linus, and my grandmother never, ever talked about Stephen. In the case of the later, I only found out about him after my grandmother died. Both women learned early on what it was like to lose a child, and neither of them ever left that pain behind. However, that didn’t stop them from being mothers or from having more children: they would each go on to have a boy and a girl a piece.
In closing, there’s nothing I can say to make this better for you. You have a heavy burden to carry, and it’s not one I can claim to understand. All I can say is that your feelings are perfectly valid and that this is not an end. You are a mother, and that you still morn for your children shows that you deserve that distinction.
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