Curled up, tightly, on my bed, one dark and empty night, I wrote. I did not know I had a story. ‘Childlessness’ was not in my vocabulary. But suddenly, my phone was in my hands, and I started to type. I wrote my feelings and those feelings intensified. I wrote unforgivingly, unsparingly, and held something raw and real in my hands.
I wrote:
* * *
Sometimes it’s a physical ache in my womb. It makes me uncomfortable. It makes me notice. Or there’s a throb in my chest where my heart feels like it’s growing impossibly big and heavy. A deep sadness, but a familiar one, that leads to wobbly lips and tears spilt. And then there’s the radiating pain in my solar plexus – that gap where my curling ribs meet, just above my belly – a hollow place reserved for a feeling, a physical and mental feeling, so explosive, so breath-catching, so unbearably sad it stops me. It stops me breathing, moving, thinking, reacting, it stops me as it slowly doubles me over. Like the weight of pain, the weight of the grief, folds me in half and holds me in its firm, claustrophobic grip. Sometimes sobs bubble up, fighting their way to the surface, as a thought – a lone, lonely thought – breaks through. These thoughts are the unbearable. I will never be a mother. I will never hold my own baby. I will never adopt a child. They are always simple, these thoughts. Plain-speaking in a mind constantly babbling nonsense just to avoid them. And then it’s over, my body releases a juddery exhale. I feel exhausted, empty, but know that a truth has passed through me. A truth that will one day be as part of me as my weak wrists, my high-pitched voice, my wonky eyes. Not quite right but who I am. But for now, the truth is all pain, all panic, all desperation. I just need time. To feel and acknowledge the ache. To feel and confront the truth. To mourn the baby, the child that my mind holds so dear.
* * *
I wrote until it hurt so badly that I thought I would break. I wrote until my tears blurred the words into nothingness. I wrote until I could write no more.
My story is still new to me. I am too ill to have children. A decision, of sorts. An unavoidable choice. My illness has robbed me of many things. Now it has taken away my motherhood. It is beyond belief, a reality my mind fights. Until it fights no longer and the truth, the truth floods into being in the form of words, feelings, physical and mental grief.
And now, a year or so on, curled up in bed, I write again and think maybe, just maybe, I can share a tiny piece of my story. For someone else might feel these things. And if they do, I hope they know, that in all our grief, loss, hopelessness, none of us need to feel truly – achingly – alone.
Anonymous