Yes, I know I've been woefully absent lately. I can hardly deal with myself, much less this blog. I've been riding the bitter pony hard and puttin' her away wet, and I can't see that that feeling is going to go away anytime soon, as I can't crawl down a hole, which is about the only place I don't feel like crying. I'd rather die than let someone see me with a wet face, and yet lately it seems like that's all I do.
Here's what happened: I went to Pella, which is about two hours away from the house, to do an author visit to a reading club, and to talk to the high school journalism class. Later that night I had a reading scheduled at the local library. I had lunch with a former student and the owner of a local bookstore, very pleasant all around, then the book talk, and then we went to the high school. I spoke to one class, then the other one came in. The second class was a little less interested in my talk than the first one, and even as I could feel them slipping away from me, I felt something warm and wet, and a distinctly unpleasant and persistent trickling sensation. A massive wave of cramping overtook me, but I didn't know quite how to stop what I was doing and excuse myself to the bathroom, so there I stood, bleeding and wanting to die, while I answered questions about novel-writing and plagiarism and other things that suddenly seemed incredibly stupid and pointless.
After they left, I nearly ran to the bathroom. Too late. The bleeding was massive. At least I was wearing black.
To top it off, I had to drive the two hours back home before I could get in bed and have a nervous breakdown.
Since then, I've been dealing with some pretty ugly emotions, ones that I'm better off keeping to myself. I've been hiding in the house when I don't have to work to avoid kids, people who have kids, and people about to have kids, which is just about everyone I know. I don't think I can bear to hear anyone complain about anything having to do with their children, having them or raising them. It's not their fault, of course--everyone experiences their own pain in their own way--and I feel like a terrible person for even admitting it. But I'd give anything, everything I have, to be in their shoes.
I'm thinking now should have gotten knocked up at nineteen, like everyone I went to high school with. It would have been hard, but it couldn't have been as hard as this. I fear I will never get over my anger and disappointment, that I will scream at the next woman with birth children who tells me how fabulous adoption is, that I will break irrevocably from the pain and dissapointment, and worst of all, that I will always wonder if we'd just had a little more money, if I'd written that second book already, if we'd had better jobs, if we'd gone to Ivy League schools or not had student loans to pay off, if we were richer or smarter or luckier, if we were the kind of people who could afford to spend just a little more, just a little more to have one more IVF, that it all might have turned out all right in the end.
