Saturday Night

It is Saturday night, and I've been online searching for post abortion information. 

My ex is probably out having drinks with some woman he met.  The one who looks like me.  I am actually fairly certain of this.  And it's driving me crazy. Why am I the only one who has to mourn and feel guilty and be alone?

I am feeling abandoned again even though I vowed to make peace with him.  So much for being friends.  Sometimes, I get this idea that I should get this blog address to him, anonymously.  He asked me how I was doing via email and I regaled him with stories of the last few months.  Simple things and silly things, some fun and some not.  Not a word about how I cry myself to sleep some nights.  

I don't even know if it's him that I miss or if this is about the abortion. Both, I suppose. I've admitted as much before.  

Today I went to the bookstore where I have started volunteering.  It's a good place for me to be -- friendly but aloof.  Friends sometimes make me feel bad. It's easier to be with strangers because you can pretend to be your best self even though you've got a little bug in your heart. 

Blogging is not fun.  But I keep doing it anyway.  I am at the point now where I don't feel entitled to blabber to my friends, as if enough time has gone by and I should be well on way to being fine.  That's not untrue, exactly.  I am so fine some days that I can almost believe everything is better. But then there are these nights.

Musical Evenings

And sometimes, it's hard to remember feeling despair when the day goes well. It's as if the stars align just so and I can forget how bad I felt the previous morning. There are small mercies to be found everywhere.

Last night I went to a free concert at Lincoln Center. The star of the show was Yo Yo Ma and his cello. There were many musicians playing instruments I'd never heard of before. Someone blew on a conch shell.

I have a friend who believes that art soothes. Sometimes I think she's full of shit and find myself searching for silence. Other times, like last night, I know exactly what she means.

K has stopped writing to me.

Writing to Strangers

On Sunday, I found myself trolling Craigslist for any posts about abortion. There was a post from a woman who was looking for someone to tell her what it was going to be like before and after an abortion. I wrote to her.

There were people who posted responses saying they were glad someone had an abortion so that their tax dollars would not go towards supporting someone's mistake (I'm paraphrasing here).  There were people who posted photos of Al Sharpton, labeling it an abortion that lived. I find that a bit funny even though it pisses me off. 

But back to the woman who had a question about what abortion is like...I will call her K.  I have no idea who/where/why K finds herself in this predicament.  I wonder how old she is, and if she decides to go through with it, will someone will be there to pick her up from the clinic afterwards. I don't want her to be alone. I badly want to help this total stranger I will never meet. I badly want to help myself (are my altruism credentials nullified by this admission?) . 

I hope she keeps writing to me.

She asked me if it would be better if she went to another town to have the abortion so she could leave the memory of it behind.  That had never occurred to me when I was going through the decision-making process.  When I think of it now, I wonder if it would matter.  It stays with you now matter where you go and what you do. 

If it's so awful, why should anyone do it? Again, I have no answer to that.  The reasons for doing doing something become less clear once the consequences have to be dealt with.  It's the same for any big decision be it leaving a job, having a baby or terminating a pregnancy, or ending a relationship.  

I have to tell remind myself the reasons why I did it and why I ended my relationship afterwards because sometimes I am so sad I don't know what to do. It usually happens on weekday mornings when I hear children playing in the schoolyard next door to me. Their voices rise and fill my head with noise I can hardly bear.  So I turn on the radio to drown them out. But the radio commentators -- NPR, usually -- sound hollow and somehow from another life. 

It's hard to look toward the future when you struggle to make it through the mornings.

My ex has a new friend and she looks like me

Yesterday I had fun.  Out on the streets all day with friends and friendly strangers.

My friend's boyfriend asked me on our way to dinner how I was doing.  He was feigning ignorance, as if he doesn't already know my tales of woe.  He was only being polite. You can't just go up to someone and say "I heard your life fell apart, how are you coping?"  

So I played along and repeated the basics.  And then I said that the funny thing about life falling apart is that you wake up one day and realize that it keeps going anyway.  Made me wonder how we can know that and keep on.  And I realized that my life, such as it is right now, has moved forward even though I was really just making small talk with this guy.  

I think I only enjoy blogging when feeling desperate.  I'm sitting here recalling nice things and don't feel like writing about them.  

I will say that yesterday was the first day when I felt happy and tired (in a good way).  When I got home, I was less happy. But it meant a lot to me to have a good day and made me think that I really be okay again someday.  Soon I hope.

My ex has a new Facebook friend and she looks like me.  Yes, I stalk him. 

Dinner with my ex's friends this week - I wonder if he knows?  I almost want to ask him if he is okay with that, but what would be the point?  If I were him, I'd be pretty mad.  But it's the friends who call me. And I don't want to disappear from ex's life.  I want him to know that I am fine.  Or that I am getting there.  

And it does my ego a lot of good to know that even if my ex didn't value me as much as I would have liked, his friends see in me something worth keeping.  

That makes me happy and feel guilty at the same time.

Check out this link -- I love the t-shirt.

http://www.stumbleupon.com/s/#1mKaPX/www.redbubble.com/people/vandal/t-shirts/3060239-7-i-miss-you/

My Funny Friend Larry

I recently met up with my friend Larry. He invited a mutual friend along. 

 

Soon after we sat down, Mutual Friend leaned in close to me and said, "I had prostate cancer last year."

What do you say to that? Mutual Friend excused himself to go to the bathroom and as soon as he was out of earshot, I asked Larry why he didn't tell me that Mutual Friend had cancer.

"The guy has a radioactive pellet up his ass--how was I supposed to work that into a conversation?"

Larry is the patron saint of the suffering.  I love him.

Donuts

The activity of blogging is not nearly as satisfying or therapeutic as I imagined it would be.  I don't know what I was expecting exactly.  Perhaps one should always rethink ideas born out of desperation.

Another soggy day in New York City.  

I saw my therapist the other day.  She fussed about at first, irritated that she'd run out of Kleenex in her office.  I said to her, "Maybe I won't need any today." Of course, I was wrong. 

I do wonder why it is that I get to the heart of the matter towards the last 15 minutes of each session. What the hell were the first 30 minutes about? Wasted money? Warm-up?

My therapist's name is Laura.  She is a lovely woman though sometimes I think that she is the wrong therapist for me.  She's soft.  Sometimes she is behind on retouching the gray hair at her temples and I find myself fixating on that quarter inch of white hair. She offers me so much sympathy that I sometimes hate her.  

Sometimes I underestimate my desire and need for kindness.  I like to pretend that I am tougher than I actually am.

After our session, I was walking to Union Square to meet two friends.  I started remembering walking out of the abortion clinic.  Ah, the relief of it all. And the first stirrings of this unnameable feeling. Then the nausea.  Perhaps it was just a reaction to the big dose of antibiotics they give you right after the procedure.  Or maybe the beginnings of grief.  But I think I started grieving the minute I began to suspect I was pregnant. When I found out I was pregnant,  I grieved/fantasized about all the possibilities.  

It was a gray day and the cab driver drove erratically and the road was pot-holed.  I was scared I would start bleeding.  I was waiting for it to hurt.  But nothing.  A little cramping, maybe.  My ex and I went to the drugstore before heading to my apartment. I picked up sanitary pads--the diaper-like sort because I think I was expecting to hemorrhage.  We picked up donuts.  He paid for everything.  

It's stupid to say, but now donuts make me unaccountably sad.  What the fuck, you're probably thinking.  That's what I think too. 

Where do I go from here?

It’s lovely out today – from my north-facing windows in my apartment, I can see the sun.  If you lived in New York City, you would know that most apartments face other buildings, that sometimes all you get is a shaft of light falling between buildings. I haven’t gone out yet and it’s nearly six in the evening.  

After a pretty good, though uneventful day, I started thinking about my abortion a few minutes ago.  I am shocked that I have nowhere to turn now.  There seems to be no support groups, no other friends who can say that they know what I’m talking about.  There are a few online organizations, but I hesitate to contact them because what I want right now is a face to look at when I say that I don’t know what to do with myself now.

If it’s going to be an online communication with total strangers, I may as well write here, write to no one.  Or maybe to someone who will stumble upon this blog and know what I’m talking about. If you're out there, say something. 

Soon after I had the abortion, my boyfriend and I broke up.  Sometimes I think I was too hasty in ending the relationship – maybe he needed more time to process what happened, maybe he would soon tell me how he felt, maybe everything someday. Or maybe nothing.

Something has changed in me that I can’t name. 

I felt more alone when he was in the same room as me.  And I knew that he was happy for me to keep my thoughts to myself. I love him still and wonder why that wasn't enough. Then I think of that pregnancy -- I loved that thing too.  But it wasn't enough because I couldn't give it a willing father. I couldn't risk ruining three lives. 

So two losses – a fetus/baby/lump of cells and a man I had hoped I could share my life with.  Perhaps it's three losses.  What have I done to my future? Will I ever forgive myself for this? Will I ever have the chance to have a child?

When the boyfriend and I came to the end of our relationship, he didn’t argue with me.  He said he was sorry.  Maybe that is the greatest sorrow to me.  That neither I nor that baby was worth enough to fight for.  Maybe I am horrified at myself for not fighting harder.