or something.

Tomorrow is (just) another day.

To those I owe emails, words of thanks, congratulations, (re)connection, or condolence: I’m sorry. This will explain why, but not excuse.

I’m no longer naive enough (or hopeful enough?) to believe that a new year can be a new start. Tomorrow I will wake in pain. Today I woke in pain. Tomorrow my bills will still be overdue, my obligations will still weigh more than they should, and I will still feel guilty that I don’t feel guilty enough about not appreciating the many gifts I still have that others do not.

In 2012, I lost.

I spent my first year in a new city that I still don’t enjoy as much as I miss my old city, my old home, my old life. I don’t like the west coast yet. I certainly don’t like it enough to be so far away from my parents, my oldest friends, and all the places I’ve ever called home.

I spent the first half of 2012 away from my partner, my love, my rock, my other half. He spent that time crumbling under the weight of obligation and addiction and depression. When he finally made it to Oregon, he spent long enough in my home to remind me what I’d been missing before (briefly) making another woman more important than me. I watched myself pack his clothes that had only just arrived from New York a few months prior. After seven years, I lost him to her, I lost him to his addiction, I lost him to his depression, I lost the only thing— truly, the only thing—I couldn’t bear to lose. The person who connected me to the eternal, to the universal. The only thing in life about which I’d ever allowed myself the singular, terrifying vulnerability to say “as long as I have this.” Do you know what that means? One thing, one person, could break me. I willingly and knowingly let it happen, because that’s what you do when you find what I found; you give yourself to it as completely as you possibly can and then you look for ways you can give yourself over even more. Truly and unmistakably and undoubtedly, forever, The One. No, don’t go thinking that this is a breakup just like all; that I will live. Don’t let yourself imagine that everyone feels their breakup is uniquely and supremely unthinkable, and I’m in the throes. If you’re lucky enough to know the person who is a mirror to you, the person to whom you connected so deeply that you could allow yourselves to form a secret shared identity, that you carried your home like turtles wherever your shared consciousness was, you might see. I hope you never watch that person descend into darkness, alone.

I can’t say I wouldn’t Eternal Sunshine the whole damn thing. I can’t say it was all worth it to have had that indescribable bond. Most of me is gone. I can’t say anything at all.

Just after Thanksgiving I found out I was pregnant. 

All was already a twisted shambles. It wasn’t supposed to happen at all. I wasn’t ready to be a mother. I wasn’t ready to give up the opportunity, either. Whatever part of me remained was torn again in two. The child we’d always imagined, the beautiful promise of our union, the best of both of us. She was here, just when we could least afford her existence. Just when she couldn’t be allowed to be. I laid awake at night with my hand on my belly, wondering whether I could bear to kill her, or whether it would be better to fail her. I loved her. I loved that we made her. I seethed with rage at him, at circumstance, at myself, at every single thing that stole away the joy I should have felt. She came from an alternate universe where things had gone differently, and I loathed her for being the only thing to cross the line between that universe and mine. Every time I made a choice one way or another, I beat it out of my head with doubt and despair.

I expected him to fail me supremely; to disappoint me yet again. He’d fallen short in so many things, small and large, and this was by far the largest thing that could be. He came to every doctor appointment, though. He was there every time I thought I had chosen, he was there each time I needed an errand run or a detail taken care of. Our bone-deep, soul-deep connection had never been obliterated- it couldn’t be. I told him he had to come to all my ultrasounds— if I was going to have to see her face-to-face, he would too.

But we never saw her. The doctors never found her. (I can’t tell you why, I just knew it was a girl.) “It wasn’t meant to be”, the doctor said, somehow not knowing how maddeningly insulting that is. There was a small chance, but a chance, that we’d find her, that things could develop normally; far more likely, though, I’d be risking my life by waiting. The doctor suggested “a little suction” (I still can’t believe she put it like that). I floated away from myself as I agreed, and immediately my agency was removed, people swarmed around me, swallow these pills, sign here, here, and here, lift your shirt for this injection, pee here, lay here. All along that tiny possibility pounded and screamed at me, but as the drugs numbed my senses, my emotions shut down from overuse. We cried together. He said “I know you like this skirt but now-” “I’ll think of this as my abortion outfit”, I finished. Even then, we laughed a little. As always, our brains worked in unison. The procedure was indescribably traumatic; painful and sickening. He squeezed my hand and swabbed my forehead with a cloth; the doctors told me to breathe and that I was “doing so great”. I knew he felt it too; how disgustingly and offensively analogous to birth this felt. 

They confirmed pregnancy was ectopic, and everything tumbled uncontrollably into more ultrasounds, blood tests, injections, and confusion. My body was not mine; it was a vessel for needles and wands and drugs and theories. Nothing was normal, not even the abnormalities. I practically lived at the hospital. I tried to cut him off; it had been too much to bear that we’d gotten through the whole nightmare as an unstoppable, loving team. As we were unquestionably meant to until death. In the end though, couldn’t do it without him, and I hated myself and him. Due to complications with the pregnancy, I started having problems with my sciatic nerve again. Now I’m in constant pain, I can barely walk, and I have to start physical therapy again. I’m trapped in my body, and I’m not my body’s biggest fan right now.

I somehow still have a job. It’s about the only thing I sort of like about my life, to the extent that I can like anything. Even my garden is overgrown and dead. I couldn’t care about it anymore.

I think it’s important sometimes to write these things without the hopeful ending. I’m dead, I’m despairing, I lost more than I could have ever imagined. I probably won’t kill myself, because I’ve spent thirty years not killing myself so far. But I’ve thought about it more than ever. I’m bereft. There’s no bright side. There’s no “but”. I don’t care that others have it much worse. I don’t care that I live in a heated house and can afford food. I don’t care that my friends and family love me. I don’t even care that I should be ashamed of what I just wrote. It’s important to leave myself (and you, internet, if you read this far) notes from this place. Because here is where I am, here is where I don’t see a door or a window or even a lightswitch. This is a real place, and sometimes there’s no hope to be found. And you can’t care enough that you should try to find it. And as much as I hate it, I’ve got to plant a flag here, because I’m dimly aware that someday I won’t be here, and maybe someone I care about will be. There’s no comfort, but at least I’ll be able to say I know. Maybe, anyway. Now, I can’t see. I was once positive and unsinkable, and I’m thoroughly sunk. I never hated anyone, I never even knew how or why to hate; now I do. I hate someone who (maybe) doesn’t deserve it, someone who definitely does, and myself. I’m full of hate. And resentment. And anger. And despair. And, mostly, nothing. It’s all poison, because my body somehow remembers what it was like to be a sunny person. I can’t go back, I can’t go forward, I don’t want to be. I will wake up tomorrow. That’s all.

He’s gone. She’s gone. I’m gone.