My baby boy turns 1 year in two months. It's crazy to me that so much time has passed and yet his scent is very much still real from those few precious days we spent in the hospital together. I've been thinking about him a lot lately. Part of me feels... like I'm on the transition of disconnecting and I am scared to death to do that. I can't explain why because it doesn't make sense and I know that I've probably talked about this in a recent post. When you are a birthmother, there is a very small piece of you that hides deep down inside your soul that lurks and brews and festers and you know that it's there but you ar afraid to acknowledge it's presence because what it whispers to your heart late at night is horrifying. Those whispers that keep you from sleeping... are a nightmare all their own. I don't mean to be dramatic. The whisper that I've never given room to grow and have kept hidden in the recesses of my being is that I've abandoned my son. I know what you're thinking, "Other Mother, that is not rational thought." And no one knows this more than I do. I didn't dumpster ditch my baby... I didn't abandon him, but I left him. I walked (rather, I was pushed in a wheel chair) away from my baby. I left him in the hospital. And, though I know that amazing people were waiting for him and I've got the pictures of them first meeting him... I still left him. How do I adjust to that knowledge? How am I supposed to live with that understanding? Well, for a long time, I've ignored the whispers.
When I think of my son now, it doesn't hurt the way it used to. It hurts differently. It's not this aching where every nerve is threatening to explode with his memory. Instead, it's like... the pain of memory itself. I miss him- desperately, I miss him- but, I am okay. Before, it hurt to breathe when I would think of him because his absence filled every aspect of my life. I would talk about him to people, but it was in a safe, ambiguous way. I can now talk openly about him with complete honesty and exposure of my soul and it hurts still, but I can talk about him... really talk about him. And, that's why I know the disconnect is close and in order to accept that disconnect into my life and fully move forward I need to allow the dark whispers to be heard by me. And that's what is scary, is by moving on and allowing the disconnect to occur... feels like a whole new form of abandonment. Does it ever end? I imagine that it does not. I imagine that with my next pregnancy, that I can be able to expect a lot of these same feelings, but I also imagine that with each new step the pain also changes. It really is like death. That's the only way I can explain this loss. When you lose someone you love deeply to death, you mourn their loss and the process of grieving has very specific "guidelines", so to speak. The thing about grief is it can hit you out of nowhere... you think you've graduated to the next step and a week later, or a month, or 10 years later, you find that you are right back where you started... accepting what has happened. Technically "acceptance" is the "final" stage, but I think that all acceptance really is, is the beginning of the cycle all over again... you learn to accept and you transition into your new stage in life and then something happens to bring back all the memories and before you know it you are right back where you started... denying that something is wrong and closing off to people, bargaining with something unknown to you for something bigger than you to occur, drowning in a sorrow that you feel will swallow you whole... or my personal favorite, raging- raging at anything and everything- just to finally "accept" that life as you know it, is what it is, and that it will continue to be what it will be.
I don't mean for this post to be so depressing. To be honest, as I sit here writing, I am in a very zen-like place. But, I know that I need to address the fears that I feel in order to move on to the next place in life and to become stronger and have more faith in myself. It's difficult, but it can be done, and as for my son... he will always be my son. He is the child of my heart, that is something that can't be replaced... it's just that his position in my life changes and becomes better and more sacred with time, like memory.