Breathe. There has been a lot. Of everything. Of those moments you’re so, so busy thinking about something that you’re not breathing. And a panic you don’t even notice or feel builds up but it’s numbness, you don’t seem to need to breathe. Only think.

Tomorrow I will breathe, and I will do my job well, enjoy myself. Because I do, I do love it. And that’s important, isn’t it?

I’m so tempted to let it all spill out on here, every little detail, every little thing that’s been dancing around my head, happening around me, happening to me, inside me, – all of it. I want to talk about it all to everybody and nobody. I want that honesty without having to talk about it, really, just write it. Can I do that?

My plants are dead. I spend so much money on plants I get anxiety about watering (?????why). The only one that lives is the orchid Ben got me for my birthday. It’s in bloom now and it has been ever since we broke up. More and more beautiful every day. And there’s the cactus I got at the campaign’s meeting yesterday. The meeting I was excited and terrified for, and distracted by, but not really because even though amazing things happened I can’t process them and I feel scared and indifferent (yes both I don’t know) of it all, instead of excited.

I’m alone tonight because Ben is in London – I often look around the room and imagine it without his things, without him. Lonely, tidy, mine, transient, impermanent, cluttered. I keep feeling these mild cramps, and horribly horribly so horribly hoping I’ll lose the baby. Yesterday I even wore all red. Was that a subconscious decision? I’ve cried. I feel confused. My body had been feeling something for a few weeks, something off, something different. I’m pregnant. On Wednesday morning I cried on the floor in work’s little hand-washing room. I even took a picture, I don’t know why because I never thought I’d blog about it but fuck it I don’t want to talk but I also need to, but on here. If you know me and you’re reading this, don’t talk to me about it.

There are all the usual things that paralyze me, those ‘everything I do is subpar and I’m again again again again again again realising I’m nothing and I’m indifferent to everything but also terrified that everything is all it’s going to be. That I’ve got wonderful things, experiences, opportunities, people, around me but I’m not appreciating or enjoying or loving any of it enough’ thoughts’.

I also left my favourite jumper on the train yesterday, and I’m taking it harder than I ought to.

Now it’s more than that. Ben moves out in three weeks after so many fights, intense sex, sleeping in an empty bed, tension, movie nights, grumpiness, laughing, jealousy, sofa cuddling, and very, very, couple-y living, since we broke up three months ago. Ben moves out and a failed try at starting a life in the UK comes to a weird, kindly not bitter, but awfully sad and regrettable end. An end that comes with a decision I don’t want to make because I don’t want a baby, I can’t consider adoption, and I think about my own experience through life, all the beautiful things I’ve been able to see, and do, and people I’ve met, and how horrendously beautiful the human experience, well, the whole experience of life, can be. How can I willingly and knowingly prevent a little somebody who’s part of me from having all that?

I’m pro-choice, so, so, pro-choice. My words are not fuel to anti-choice belief, because I know the reality, I do know my body is mine and that they’re only a tiny, tiny, tiny, nothingness of tissue that can’t feel pain or hear or understand or all of that. But I can’t process this. I can’t think straight. I’m just trying to understand my choice in all of this.

Tomorrow I will publish this.

Today.

I did not publish this. I worked and pushed it all out of my mind. I’m alone again tonight.

Today.

I felt nauseous and panicked. I slept and woke up, and slept, woke up, stayed awake for hours until Ben came home, drunk, at 6am. I called in sick to work, and cried in bed all day. Ben slept all day. I crept around the kitchen like a ghost. His never caring came spilling from my lips. My mouth was full of poison and still I hope he will be different for whoever is next. I did not publish this.

Today.

I worked. And love the paperwork, getting immersed in the keyboard rhythm and smiling at co-workers and just typing typing typing typing away. Ben not understanding that his absence wasn’t okay. That friends/ ex-partners/ fathers of babies shouldn’t just have weekend benders after finding something like this out. I just kept typing. Getting anything else done except a decision. I cried in the toilet the minute my shift finished. I decided I shouldn’t have to go through one break-up several times, that I shouldn’t have gotten roped into a ghost of a relationship because it had to end, and with ends come the snapping of emotional ties and trust, and connections. I have been snapped so many times when it should have only been once. I did not publish this.

Today.

Is my appointment. I tidied and cleaned the flat for hours. Jasmine offered to come, and I was grateful. As Ben’s “I’ll be there if you want me to” rang strange within me I told him no. It seems he does, and has done the entire relationship, what is just expected of him. Come to the appointment, but not really be there. Come over to mine the day after a breakdown. All the times I’ve been burning he’s watched the fire die down, from afar, and then only when I’m cool enough for him to touch does he hold my hand.

He told me he is not invested in the baby. I told him it’s best that he doesn’t have anything to do with any of this from now. I can’t process a broken heart and the decision I have to make at the same time. I choose to forget there was ever a relationship, friendship, anything. I was wrong, this does feel bitter, and it does feel really sad, and I am so angry. I choose to not care.

He made pasta. I made pancakes.

I will publish this.