In the Beginning

I've always been good at denial, gifted at convincing myself of the voracity of wild untruths, but as the cliche goes - I just knew. Fear, suspicion, worry. For thirteen weeks my life ceased. For two weeks my stomach twisted itself around a nausea that lasted all day long.

Most people have a choice. There are issues to be weighed and measured, opinions sought, all-nighters wracking over the decision. For me there was no choice. I can stand for ten minutes. I can sit upright for an hour. I am on eight different medications, the mildest of which still can not be taken during pregnancy. My disease made the choice for me: I could not bear a child, let alone raise one.

What hurts more must be the fact that if I were healthy I would have given birth. From there I don't know what I would have done, but I could have at least brought it into the world healthy and strong. I started planning that choice the day I started having sex, that way I could avoid agonizing over a the decision during a high-stress situation. One choice when I was 16, another choice when I was a working adult. Except that by the time I was an adult my body was breaking.

There were no more options. The dictates of my body sent a directive loud and clear: you will never bear children. Add to that my own fears: you will never raise children, you will never have a truly 'long-term' relationship, you will never be loved for yourself.

A year and half later I still think about that little poppy-seed of a child. Before they take it from you an ultra sound is given, to make sure you are pregnant and to see how far along you are. The nurse asks if I want to see. Can you imagine? Do I want to see the spark of life that I already love and already miss?

Yet now I wish I'd been brave enough to look, brave enough to ask for one of those printed out pictures - a speck of proof to look at and turn to when depressed. I know it would make my melancholy worse to have that blurry, blotchy, picture, but as it is there is nothing to hold on to, nothing to prove that at least a small part of my body functions normally.