I’m ready to talk:

This past year has been like almost drowning. Treading water clumsily; slowly feeling like I’m sinking, staying so still, yet unprogressively thrashing so furiously in unfamiliar waters. I’m cautiously here, still. Maybe ready to share.

I wrote a little at the time, a few words, sometimes even a sentence. But at the true worst I couldn’t write a thing, I don’t understand how people can write when they can’t even stop staring at the wall to eat, or go to bed, or do anything other than stare at the wall. Most of these blog posts have been put together from pieces of memories, scattered words, and recovery time writing.

This breakup-promotion-pregnancy-failed abortion-breakdown-suicide-surgery-recovery-falling in love again is weird and heartbreaking but I’m screaming to just say it all.  This is all an entwining of poetry and prose, tumbled thoughts and longer reflections. It’s all a bit of a mess really.

Part 1.
Abortion by candlelight.

A taxi went past me, as I cycled up the hill.

My mum was in it. I saw her wave out of the back window. I laughed as my legs hurt and my breath caught, but, I made it I made it to the top without stopping.

I can’t sleep. Each noise a reason to jolt a thought, stir a wash of memory. Sickness, shaking, and pretending it all wasn’t happening. It wasn’t happening to me. It wasn’t. Everything was normal. Mum was just visiting. Sharing my bed, and Ben slept as usual on the sofa. I couldn’t sleep.

The right thing to do. I know I know I know I’m not ready for a child and everything that comes with it, and sharing that life with Ben, I can’t bear the thought of it I can’t.

Ben’s absences were crashing, loud.

I thought your appetite grew, blossomed, when you were pregnant but I can’t eat. It’s not an important part of my life anymore.

I know it should worry me

but the sickness it bubbles up and not eating isn’t the most important thing, right now. I don’t care, I don’t care.

Desperate for sleep, with a dancing mind. Flinging itself

into each and every corner of my skull. Just to say

“hey,

i’m here, and I’m not quite done. I’m not quite ready to rest. I still have some dancing to do.”

I separate -I guess, apparently that’s what I do-,  and eat Chinese, sit colouring in my colouring book with True Blood in the background and mum just there, Ben just there. None of it really has an order, just a refilling of my hot water bottle (“don’t use boiling water!”- I still use the kettle when nobody is looking). Holding the bottle to my chest, my tummy, is comforting.

I barely cry, I almost cry at the clinic when I see mum cry. As they inject my leg – rhesus negative something something I don’t really care I know,  I do.

There’s no order to this.

Snacks and the bus back. Planning to go back to work in a few days. The light in the bathroom broke this morning, it’s been about to break for days, and we set candles up everywhere, spending ages lighting them each time we have to go. Showering is fun by flickering light. But I can’t see the blood. I see some, I feel it.

They say it is different for everybody.

I bleed by candlelight and I can’t see what’s happening.

Dullness. A few days, saying goodbye to mum hurts, Ben’s last night is taken up by a night out, I cry, we don’t really say goodbye and the apartment of four is an apartment of one.