Samuel

I do wish. I had wished different outcomes. Things felt so awful. Maybe it was an easy decision. The way that I led by your call, allowed you to be the anchor. What a debilitating role when you cannot fill it. You didn’t want to be the anchor. You didn’t want to be the tether point. Why would anyone want to be the grounding force? For j, you were the grounding force. Her emotional circuit board and you often tried to be that for me. Though you could not. I asked, stop. Do not attempt to soothe me. Do not center my mind on a resolution when I wish to connect in conflict. I didn’t understand. I reacted. It is a day past mother’s day. I know I am not well. I know I am holding grief for the child that wished to arrive at a later hour, year, or moment. I am holding grief for the life I walked away from. The life I said “mom, come save me” from. The terror of my own decisions. I am guilty that I picked my selfishness. I feel selfish. I feel selfish for every reason. That none of them were good enough. That I should have used my body as a vessel of life no matter what. Who taught me that? Is it innate? Can I ever thank myself? When you did not behave as my partner but rather as my enemy, I felt relief that we did not co-parent but still not absolute gratitude. I at times feel like I could’ve put up with all of it. Almost like I can’t remember pain endured. I never handed J’s pain back to her. And she hadn’t known the power of her voice, noooo I think she did. She said, “I feel robbed of the opportunity to have my husband’s first child”. He said “if you’re not going to give me a place in the child’s life, and you’re going to go back with your family, then I want you to have an abortion” and I am influenced. I am fickle. I am fierce. I take into account the power of word. I wanted their support. I needed to feel loved and honored throughout my pregnancy. I told her, there is more to be upset about here than there is to be happy and she claimed that wasn’t the case. It was about them in the most way, and how I didn’t want to deal with them. I knew different versions of them, or maybe I deluded myself, before the pregnancy. I kept feeling like I just had a little bit more with them, maybe it hadn’t been convenient to leave yet. My heart hurts badly for what could have been. I feared all the worst things. I don’t know how to put this down. I do know how to put this down. This is a start. To speak. To write. To work it through my body.  To know that it is irreversible. To know that timeline is dead. To feed the present. To do my best.