Don't Leave Me This Way

I can't deny it anymore. People keep bringing it up. Anyway, no matter how far or fast I run, I can't escape it. It happened. And it still haunts me. Just like my grandmother's still haunted her and could reduce her to tears all the way up to the end. Mine can too.

I dream about holding chubby babies gurgling with happiness and outfitting them in onesies and dressing them in kisses and hugs. Six weeks is possible to change your life forever. Six weeks. That's all it was. I was 11 or 12 weeks pregnant but I only knew about it for six weeks. In those six weeks my world expanded and blossomed like a beautiful daffodil and nothing was ever going to be the same. Losing those babies jettisoned me back to where I started before I was pregnant. But where I started was no longer good enough after seeing what I saw and learning what I learned, after feeling that no-one deserves to be as happy as I was. Knowing that no matter how much I had been fighting my entire life for credibility, as a person, as a woman, as my father's daughter, trying to live up to his dreams and goals for me; I have never seen my parents so proud of me as when Illinois and I took them out to dinner to tell them our news, that I was pregnant. That was a turning point for me. Suddenly life was simple and made perfect sense. I was finally doing what I was born to do, what I was uniquely formed to do. All of the other crap was meaningless. Money is pretty green paper. My law degree, same thing. My marathons, cool but superfluous. Who cares about any of it. We've made this stuff more important than the real stuff. The real stuff is what keeps us going. If no one got married and had babies there would be no one running those marathons and getting those law degrees. These things are decoys invented to distract.

And distract they do.

Until you are richocheted into an epiphany about what life's all about when you see your boyfriend's face when you come out of the bathroom holding the pregnancy test and a slow smile spills across his face and his eyes light up and you've never seen anyone look that happy before. That's what's real. Or when he throws you a 28th birthday party when you are one week shy of your first trimester and he is bursting with the news that's how excited he is so we decide to hell with the week, we'll tell everyone tonight. Their reactions are tatooed in my memory.

Champagne was popped, tears exploded from smiling eyes. Their reactions said exactly what my parents reactions said; that beyond what we all do every day and what we've accomplished, this is what it's all about.

Feeling the company of someone else inside me was incredible. Knowing it one day would be a person, my person, and I would be responsible for adding another member to our family was an awe-inspiring honor and I wondered who it would look like and what traits I'd pass down and envisioned us bringing the baby to Illinois to show it off to Illinois' family and the fuss his mother would make. My brother got me a teeny tiny baby outfit for my birthday. A. bought me a pregnancy book. I never knew how complete I'd feel knowing that motherhood was imminent. It was always something I knew I wanted in an abstract kind of way, like the way I knew I wanted to get married but for the life of me could never picture my husband's face or attributes, my dress, the wedding, our apartment, any of the above. But there I was about to be married and about to have a baby. Who had it better than me. I quietly hid all the doubts about my relationship far in the back of the closet and allowed myself to get excited about baby.

Baby made me tired. Baby made me daydream for hours. Baby made me eat fried chicken and french toast. Baby had my emotions at the surface and I could cry and laugh in the same conversation, in the same five minute period. Meanwhile relations between Illinois and I were becoming strained. He was so happy, so happy and so excited; it was all he could talk about. I was working as a staff attorney at the big law firm on a huge case mandating me working until 11:00pm most nights leaving Illinois to his own devices. Unfortunately that didn't mean working, that didn't mean cleaning the house, that didn't even mean being there when I got home. It meant playing golf, playing video games, getting drunk and arriving home hours after I clumsily and sadly climbed into bed alone. I just wanted him to ask how I was. I wanted him to listen when I told him how tired I was. I still wanted us to do things together. I understood that just because my energy level had changed and suddenly I couldn't drink didn't mean his life had to mirror mine; I was pregnant, he wasn't. But it would have been nice to feel like we were a team and all of the responsibility didn't lay on my shoulders and none of the fun. When he was in the bar toasting to the baby and our future, I was either working or at home wondering how we were going to make it work. I carried not only the baby but the responsibility to make the money, the knowledge that I would have to put off following my dreams indefinitely and the realization that the only way for this to work out was for him to be a stay at home dad and although I believed he'd be an incredible dad; he wasn't taking care of me when I needed (or asking how I felt or how work was or who I'd told at work or what I needed from him etc) it so I didn't know how he'd be able to anticipate a newborn's needs.

Needs are strange things. When the bomb exploded in my world and I lost everything inside two weeks, all that was left of me were my needs but I was a walking zombie and I didn't know what they were and nobody could get through to me. The one person who should have understood didn't even make the effort. Illinois. He was crestfallen and mute in our relationship but business as usual as far as the rest of his life was concerned.

When I started seeing K and shared all of this with her, how I lost two babies and Illinois broke up with me soon after and I moved out but sometimes I sleepwalked into bed with him in the old apartment and sometimes he sleepwalked into bed with me in the new apartment. And how he'd get drunk and talk about killing himself, all this in the middle of the night, and I didn't know what to do and I was so scared. She asked me about my needs. Were they being met and what were they. I just stared at her like she was crazy. My needs? They were so big that I was overwhelmed. No one had given them any concern in so long. I was the caretaker. I had to keep up with Illinois and make sure he was okay even though the babies were in my body and I was working my ass off and then my body broke under the pressure when I noticed blood somberly snaking down my leg like a death march and then Illinois broke up with me. Things got too serious he said. He needed to be alone. He had all the needs. I couldn't tell K what my needs were because I didn't know what they were and felt like thinking about them was selfish and self indulgent and I had no time for that.

Other people's reactions were similar to K's. They were shocked at how nonchalant I seemed. Illinois made me feel like I was overreacting and, "it's life Briana," and "it's like the song, breaking up is hard to do." His mantra was appalling to others when I recounted it but I internalized his words and didn't resonate with anyone's anger at him or their sympathy for me. On New Year's Eve 2004 AC and I had a party and ML was there. He was raging angry at the mere thought that Illinois might stop by or call me. I didn't understand why. When my sister found out she left me a message that was chilling and reduced me to tears everytime I heard it. Someone cared about me enough to cry over my loss. She had all the emotion I couldn't muster. In thinking back to that time she explains, "The babies being lost were harder on me than anything Illinois ever did. I don't think I would've reacted as strongly to everything if it was just Illinois. But I REALLY REALLY REALLY wanted those babies. In a way they were already mine (obsessive Aunt here) and I was already holding them and naming them and loving them and dressing them and showing them off and babysitting and watching Daddy with them. So when you miscarried it was like something inside me died and then, it wasn't me, it was you. It was all very strange and weird in a very bad way." And that, " When you lost them I collapsed at work. Or, when you lost the first one. This is all blurry but I remember you after they induced the second one and I came over to watch a movie and sleep over and you were literally the walking dead. Illinois was non-existent. But with him, it wasn't sad walking dead. It was more like he was going about his business. You were the walking dead. None of us knew what to say I guess." L.A. said at the time that what Illinois did to me was the worst thing a man could do to a woman. A male friend of mine, Maguire, brought it up yesterday online, "and about your pregnancy, I am truly sorry--now that must be trauma---and look, you seem really confident now. As a man to act that way, that would be with me for my lifetime. If anything, his guilt should have taken over." Well it didn't then and still hasn't.

But I am left with the yearning. The baby yearning. Those six weeks did a number on me. The questions about my body remain. They keep me up at night. Will my body work when I want it to? I have had the litany of tests and the results regarding fertility are perfectly normal but I am scared nevertheless. Where does this leave me, single and curious and not willing to settle for a random one night stand to act as a sperm donor so I can find out if my body works. I dutifully take my birth control pills every night and when I have sex always use condoms while I hope for an accident.