5w6d

D. hung up on me yesterday and, other than a couple of nasty e-mails, nothing for 24 hours. He’s been telling people about our situation, and I pointed out that I felt my privacy was being violated. I received I didn’t do anything wrong and how dare you tell me whom I can tell… then silence. I typed up an e-mail I didn’t send:

I don’t know what to say anymore. I’m tired of working hard to stay in love with you. I’m tired of fighting for our relationship. I’m not saying it’s over, because I don’t think that’s inevitably the case, but you’re on the verge of losing me. I have made mistakes, but I don’t deserve malevolence.

I’m at the point where I no longer know what the best thing to do is, both with the pregnancy and this relationship. I talked with my friend N. last night, whom I’d called to set up a lunch date. He called back almost immediately and said, without provocation, You sound really depressed…more than I’ve ever heard you. Are you okay? What can I do? The answer is that I don’t know what anyone can do, short of taking a two-by-four and whacking D. across the head to get him to wake up to the fact that he is completely fucking things up. From abandoning me when I’ve needed him most to a complete lack of empathy about his violation of my privacy, I don’t know how much longer I can hold on.

As I stave off both tears and episodes of vomiting, I both want D. to go far, far away and come rushing back to take me in his arms and apologize. But apologies only work for so long, and there have been too many of them for too long. Perhaps what I need is to learn how to do this alone.

5w5d

I suppose I thought I’d waltz in to D.’s place last night and everything would be okay, and we’d decide that we could see this pregnancy through to term. Instead, I’m left with all the reasons I don’t have to, feeling brow-beaten into something I already know is the best thing. What I’m left with is a sinking feeling that, come June 5, there won’t be any reason to stay with D. All the items on my reasons to have an abortion list seem to work equally well on a reasons to leave D. list.

5w0d

Today, the magical thinking begins. I am pondering the list of reasons I don’t have to and my (perhaps delusional) optimism is worrisome. In this state of mind, there are no (good) reasons I can’t have a baby: surely the financial, emotional, and physical factors (not to mention the shaky state of my relationship with D.) are incidental, irrelevant facts, fragments of information not necessary when weighing my options.

And, of course, when I mention to D. that perhaps we need to reconsider, he doesn’t argue. What does this all mean? I wonder. I’m notorious for accepting jobs, responsibilities, projects, that I then push aside because I’ve overestimated my ability to handle them (in addition to my regular work, children, etc.). But a baby isn’t a freelance job I can drop at the last minute. How, exactly, can I think about this at all rationally? I feel as though I am working through the stages of grief in my decision-making process: Denial? Check. Anger? Check. Bargaining? Well, wouldn’t you know it…I’m right there.

4w5 (evening)

Just as I am starting to feel as comforted this week as I felt abandoned last week, I realize I have shut down completely. I don’t feel most anything; even anger just sits there: stillborn, voiceless, disconnected from passion, in the pit of my soul. I have not laughed in 24 hours. I could cry if it didn’t feel fraudulent and hollow.

This is what I wanted, I tell myself, to feel nothing when I realized I was in this alone. Now that I am not alone, I recoil from embraces, hesitate on the precipice of kisses, screen my phone calls, ignore well wishers. Most of all D. seems a burden, someone I must tolerate because we had something I wanted before I stopped wanting anything. Today V. suggested I take another candlelit bath, force the tears, scream to Ani DiFranco at the top of my lungs. But my skin is parched from too much soaking in waters that bring no clarity, the tears refuse summoning, and I sold my Ani CDs some time ago to pay my rent.

I am reminded of Sharon Olds — “once you lose someone it is never exactly the same person who comes back” — and wonder how it is one we reconnect after loss. Even more: How can I return to the person I was ten days, two weeks, a month ago? After the pain, the abandonment, the quick and fearful realization — maybe I’ve lost him for good this time — how is it possible that a familiar embrace, the scent of our bodies, gentle kisses and hesitant touches, or anything intimate could possibly bring us back to a time when we couldn’t possibly imagine the point at which love would be painful?

I am reeling from the not-losing, wondering when I’ll recognize myself again.

4w2d

I don’t know how I can do this. It’s the right thing to do, the only thing that can be done, but at this point I can’t figure out how I will have the strength. If I had money, or energy, or fewer existing medical problems, it would all be so much easier. But I don’t have any of those things, and neither D. nor I are ready for this. Does that make me immoral? A coward? Emotionally weak? I don’t know. Right now, I just want a hug.