Wishes

(This entry contains content that may be difficult to read about trauma. Please use discretion and only continue past the warning below if you choose, as it can be very upsetting.)

In my head are pictures. Vague dreams I’ve had for years. Dreams and visions of children that I always thought I’d have.

When I began wanting children, I wanted seven. Over the years I began to call it a Weasley Brood. I pictured us pouring out of a car at a rest stop on the way to the cabin. I pictured them on the beach, playing the way I did.

I pictured ugly Christmas sweater photos posed around the tree. I pictured family candids at Thanksgiving of which my own mum has albums full, us caught in the 80s while family is in various state of talking and eating.

I saw family reunions. I saw moments that I hoped I’d get to live. I saw dreams and wishes in pictures and imagined my life would be so full.

But then time marched on. Trying yielded nothing. Instead of seven, I tailored to five. Then to three. Then desperately to even just one. Can’t I have redemption?

I never got to enjoy a single day of her. By the time I figured out what was happening, so had he, and he was not joyful. He saw in the swelling of my body the loss of his pretty toy bride, and the loss of his money to do with as he pleased. He saw the end of his own carefree youth. He ended it, but fate was still cruel. My body still changed and because it had been without his permission, he found no more joy in me unless it was in my pain. His pretty toy was damaged now.

I had expected so much more of my life by now. Another farm, a salt-of-the-earth husband and a brood of children. I had been raised to it. I had been bred for it. It was as if all my childhood and adolescence I had trained for a performance I would never give.

Adoption has been an choice we could make. We still haven’t ruled it out, but it is foreign. It’s something I’ve spent a lot of time considering. In fact, several times I’ve felt that the children I’m meant to love are already in this world, out there just waiting for the time to be right. For the last five years it’s been a call in my heart. I’ve known nothing else beyond that feeling.

But looking into adoption hasn’t panned out. We were moving, we were hitting a road block, we were just not in the right place. “You’re never ready for kids, they just happen.” Yes, but adoption changes the game. And I wasn’t moved to push hard. Whatever it is that drives me, that fuels me to chase the things I desire, it was not there when I tried to open those doors. I took that, too, as a feeling.

But this feeling remains. The feeling that the children meant for me, the ones I’m meant to love and care for and be in their lives already live in this world. It’s all just suspended. Waiting.

I’ve dated people with children but never met them. I’ve seen pictures, I’ve heard voices, and met the children of metamours, but there was no connection beyond vague appreciation of what someone I cared for was going through. They did not see me. They were not meant for me.

And then there was him. Open. Alive. The first two I met in the dark, huddled on the couch watching a glowing screen. The introduction was brief. The next day I was allowed to linger, to sit and watch them while I read a book and they played video games. It was just the smallest little sentence. “Do you like Minecraft?” Z asks me.

I have my own account. I played it years ago when a friend tried to get me into it. I spent maybe ten minutes with it before I let it go. I pretended I knew nothing of it, not as an act to fool, but because it was a chance for them to tell me. To instruct me. They spent two hours explaining the worlds, the characters, the settings.

“I don’t mean to upset you, but this level is based on hell.”

Z asks if I’m hungry, if I’m thirsty, if I want anything. He’s doing his best to be kind to the strange woman on his couch. He even lets me hold the controller when R needs help in the bathroom. Just in case I want to explore the world.

R is already comfortable. He’s been sitting on the couch beside me, chattering and repeating what Z says. It’s not weird for him, he’s completely unconcerned as long as Z is. He’s just excited to teach someone new about his favorite stuff. By the end of our morning and early afternoon, I’ve learned about their world from their eyes. They’ve learned that I’m almost alarmingly laid back.

I eventually meet K as she passes by on the stair case much later. “Hiiiiii. Byyyyyye.” No rush. By this point I’ve decided that I’ll let them choose. I’ll be here, And they can come closer as they want while I make it clear that any level, pace or closeness  they choose is warmly received.

And so time stretches on. There are high fives. Small brushes of arms. Sometimes R climbs over me or touches me. Sometimes he’s a little hard about it. I don’t take that personally, he’s trying to figure out in a three year old mind what’s allowed. He’s trying to figure out where I fit into his world. He doesn’t know how to be reserved, and so it all just comes out.

It is R who makes the first move, and, I suspect, it’s a sleepy accident. I’ve spent the night and he hs crawled into bed between us. He must have mistaken me for his mother, and in half sleep lays against me with his arm around my neck. Thank god I am already laying down. My legs may not have supported me.

He is small. Perfectly formed and his face is completely relaxed. He’s warm and solid and I can feel his little heartbeat against my arm. I think of him as this beautiful mixture of T and S. A creature created in love and housing all the chaos of life. And he’s laying against me in affection.

How many times had I dreamt of waking up in a bed next to the man I love with a small child between us? It’s not Matt beside me. It’s not a child I harbored in my body. Does that make this any less sweet? Can there be love here in a new form wearing the clothes of an old dream? How can I let myself want this? How could I think I might prevent it? I look at him in sleep and the last five years - the feeling of children in this world - crosses my mind. I wonder “Is that you? Is that all of you I’ve been feeling?”

He wakes after a few moments and looks at me, perhaps a little surprised at a different face than he expected, but he smiles and turns to his dad. It’s not strange to touch me now. From here on he’s quicker to it. He’s open to it.

***

I’m having coffee in the kitchen, and there’s a large anatomy book on the bar. I pull it open, interested in what it might show. The images are colorful. There’s a lot here. The pages are glossy and feel good against my fingers. I flip back further, through systems of the body. I should have been paying more attention than I was. The systems move closer and close to reproduction and my mind is already vulnerable there after this morning.

I turn the page.

The stage of pregnancy spill across in brilliant color. Here, so clinical, are the images of basic human biology. What so many women can do without trying. The only way I have failed in being a basic human. My eyes float to the bottom of the page. The stages. I can’t keep them from rising. The memories. Her.

*** [TRIGGER WARNING. TRAUMA RECALL BEYOND THIS POINT. VIOLENT AND UPSETTING CONTENT BELOW]***

I’m 20. Newly wed. The first sign had been my wedding dress not fitting well despite tailoring and careful weight management for the week. It was a perfect size 8. I’ve been unwell for a couple of weeks now, but that’s nerves. I’m excited, this is a huge event. My father has splurged and bought the gown I tried in the shop that he thought made me look like his little princess. The six hundred dollar tag never makes him blink. He thinks he’s giving me away to a man like him.

I’ve been a good girl. Jason was my first, and so I don’t feel bad wearing white. I am the first of my siblings to have a big wedding. My parents go overboard. But my body is upset and it’s threatening to ruin the day. My best friend Laura rescues me with a civil war replica corset. As she’s lacing me in, she sees the week old bruise above my kidney. I tell her I slipped and fell into the kitchen counter.

She doesn’t ask questions. The corset pushes on the bruise all day. I should have listened to it.

I’m exhausted by the reception, but he’s having a good time drinking. I stay, I hide my tiredness behind a smile. I should have listened.

More time has gone by now. My clothes don’t fit right and my breasts have changed. I’m standing naked in our bedroom before the mirror when he stalks in and sees me. He’s already upset, someone he made a deal with backed out. He’s not getting his vintage Camaro  project car.

He can see the changes clearly in the light of day before I can throw on a robe. His face becomes all malice. “What is that? What’s wrong with you.” But he knows. He can count. His second question isn’t a question.

I try to tell him we should be happy, that I’m happy. It’s here my memory phases out and things become blurry. Disassociation. There are only clips that play when I try to recall. Brief moments, disjointed and painful.

I’m clothed perhaps minutes later, his hand on my arm, marching me out of our apartment and down the hall. I don’t know where we’re going. I don’t know what is happening.

We’re at the top of the stairs. He’s saying we won’t be able to pay our rent with a mouth to feed. He’s upset and yelling. I’m pushed.

The fall feels like an eternity in my memory. Each slam into a step like a blow from a bat. At the bottom I can’t breathe. I’m gasping from the wind knocked out of me.

I’m in the car. I feel like my body is on fire in pain. I can’t breathe and my jeans have started to feel damp. I cough and sputter, and when I look down, there’s blood between my legs. A lot of blood. So much red.

He’s not angry anymore, he’s panicked. I can register that in my head even while my own raises. He’s changed to the nice one, he’s holding my hand and telling me we’ll get it fixed. He’ll fix everything, just be a good wife. Be good and this will all be ok. Do I want to lose him too? If I don’t, I had better play along.

I’m in the E.R. My body shakes uncontrollably. I can barely speak for the way my body is tortured in pain. “She’s fallen down the stairs. She tripped. Please save the baby!”

I’m horrified. I can hear the nurses, the doctor, I can feel them moving my body, telling me what to do. Where to go. I don’t know how much time passes, only that my brain gets sweet relief of disappearing at times.

I’ve lost her. I can feel her slide from me, can hear them trying to explain why the drugs they’re giving me will assist in finishing this. They try to be soothing.

How long has it been? I’m woozy and I can’t hold my head up well. Is that the drugs? There’s a woman holding a bundle walking across the room to me. She’s got a pitiful look on her face like she’s trying to help me. She sets the bundle on my chest and pulls the blanket back.

There’s crying, someone is wailing. My eyes are locked on the tiny face. I can’t move in my own body. I’ve heard her say “It was a girl.”

It’s me wailing. I’ve become so distressed they take the bundle away and give me a sedative. They ask him what to do. He tells them it’s too painful. We don’t want a funeral. No one else knew, we didn’t want them to learn this way. I learn years later she was taken away, cremated, and buried in a markerless grave with a number.  I’m never again able to speak when my panic rises past a certain point. There is only the deep well inside that swallows my voice.

She was around twenty weeks. I would have named her Morgan. Years later to find peace, I bury a box with her name on it. It only works sometimes.

He’s taking me to the Upper Peninsula where his grandmother has a cabin. It’s empty and cold, but it serves his purpose. He keeps me there a week, and it’s easy. We don’t have cell phones and they wouldn’t work up here. He’s told everyone it’s a surprise honeymoon to see the falls.

He keeps me a week until he’s sure I won’t reveal the truth. I keep it locked away for years.

***

There on the glossy page are the stages. There is what I had seen. Already so formed but so far away from viable. Stolen before I could even think. Did what I feel cross my face? He’s looking at me, and then he’s holding me. There’s so much comfort in that one little action that I don’t speak. I don’t need to. Whatever he’s seen he doesn’t need me to speak of, he can read it enough.

Am I allowed to have this? Am I allowed to keep them? All of them? Am I allowed to let them into these places of me, these parts that are empty and damaged and closed and let life in?