The Starting Point

Not so long ago I got kicked off a train, this train was speeding me along towards my future – and then I got kicked off and that very future I had packed for, was planning for, dreamed about, was suddenly gone. I’ve been running alongside trains ever since, desperate to jump back on board and be on my way again, maybe a little later than planned but as soon as possible. But I keep missing the sodding train at every station, I wind up collapsed on the tracks, exhausted and desperate before picking myself up and setting off running again.

In non-psychobabble, I had a miscarriage and I’ve been trying to get pregnant again ever since. I was only two months gone, it was early days, but just long enough to fall in love and change my whole image of what my future would be. Only by then the “baby” had already died, had in fact only made it to week 5. I say “baby” because it was little more than a bundle of cells at that point, (yes I’ve tried – and failed - to lessen the heartbreak by thinking of this scientifically; my baby didn’t die, something that might have gone on to become my baby didn’t develop. I’ve barely even had a miscarriage at all really – not compared to what some poor women go through when it happens later on. In fact if nature had behaved the way it’s supposed to behave I might have never known, I might have just thought it was a late period!) But my body for some reason didn’t “flush the chain and abort” when things went wrong – that was how my doctor told me these things happen, I don’t know how much longer it would have gone on if I hadn’t harassed my doctor over the tiniest amount of brown discharge weeks later and found out.

So this wonderful “future” I dreamed up in those few short weeks is on hold and I’m living in limbo trying to get pregnant again as quickly as possible so I can get back on that train, get back to where I’m supposed to be going. It’s been four months now – just writing that confirms to me that it really is still early days, it doesn’t feel like it. I get more desperate every month, the depression hits harder each time I’m not pregnant. This month I started feeling that if it never happened for me (and it may not), then the future was so empty and bleak and lonely I couldn’t even bare thinking about it. And it was that hint of an almost suicidal thought that made me decide I’ve got to let the dream go. That’s not to say I want to stop trying, I don’t. But I want to stop chasing that train so hard, I want to stop and enjoy what I have here and now, I want to realise that it’s not now or never and it doesn’t matter even if it takes a few years! And if it doesn’t happen at all, well, having a baby isn’t the be all and end all – I’ve forced myself to envision a childless future and filled it with all manner of wonderful things to prove to myself life is still worth living (as well as telling myself off for being so pathetic, I have friends who can’t have children, am I suggesting they top themselves right now because their lives are pointless and meaningless?)

Which is why I want to start writing this; to keep my thoughts in check, to give myself a good talking to when needed, to encourage me to make the most of what I have. Just maybe it might make me see how ludicrous some of my thoughts and actions actually are and help me look at myself more objectively.

So anyway, here’s to living in the now – somewhere you’re not supposed to be, never thought you be, but you’re here now so deal with it!