Here I am again, awake too early on the morning of a scheduled pregnancy test. This time, I have zero interest in self testing. Yay! I am kind of stumped though - whatever the outcome, how do I make myself believe it? I was explaining my thinking last time, that whatever that test revealed, I wouldn't believe it without self testing, when someone pointed out that no, I would believe it if it were negative. It's so much easier to believe the negative.

How very, very true. If I were to self-test right now and got a negative result, I would be devastated again and believe it right away. Except for a little niggling of doubt spurred by hope. A little hope can be a dangerous thing.

But if I got a positive result at home, no way would I be able to believe it! I would just be a million times more anxious to get to the appointment, and then waiting for the results to come in!

But the question remains, should I bring a pregnancy test with us? So that when the phone call does come, I can confirm it? What can they say to convince me it's really true if it's positive? I really don't know.

As I'm remembering more, I think it was Susan that I had this conversation with, who said it was easier to believe the negative. Because I remember telling her that I'm a pessimist, who tries to be a realist, but is a closet optimist.

I am usually intensely pessimistic: I stomp around with all my negative thoughts, telling myself "it will never happen". But most of the time, I have reason(s), ie: it's never worked right before. I try very hard to be realistic. But under it all, there is always this tiny, fantastical hope - because I want to believe in miracles.

I think I've mentioned before that it is impossible for me to believe anything 100%. I am 99.999999% sure that: the sky is blue, the earth is round, my cats can't talk, my husband loves me, etc...

So here I am with my extreme pessimism, and my fantastical hope. "It will never happen. This part won't work, that thing will go wrong, someone isn't good enough. But oh! What if I'm wrong? What if by some miracle, all those obstacles are overcome? What if it really happens?! No, never. Too much will go wrong..."

I'm tired just typing all that, and yet it cycles continuously through my mind when I'm anxious/worried about something.

Ridiculous optimisms I have actually thought of at least cursory contingency plans for: I might still get pregnant on my own, my cat will pull through this, she may forgive me, he may still love me, someday I may trim down to 125 lbs, someday I may be able to get off my antidepressants, it's possible to be up over $100 in craps, Jon Stewart might read my blog, someone might publish my blog, I will finish the novel I started when I was 11 years old, Simon le Bon will become infatuated with me...

There are so many variables out there, how can anyone believe in anything at all? How does that admonishment go... "and you might get hit by a bus tomorrow, but if you keep focusing on that, you'll go crazy!"

DingDingDing! I am absolutely bat-shit crazy! So that's where it all started....

I was hoping to have my 3rd and last post about Forgiveness/Bitterness out of me and up on the blog by now, to be cleansed of it. It's really just a collection of interesting things I found on the net about Forgiveness that I have a LOT to say in response. I've noted it all down, so we'll see whatever comes of that...

Today is huge. It is our 2nd attempt at an embryo transfer. I have been trying unsuccessfully to get into the headspace I want to be in when I go in for the appointment.

I will probably meditate later this morning. I think it's really what I need right now.

Nature is good too, especially the beach. I got some bad news on Tuesday and couldn't believe how yet again I was letting outside influences completely change my emotional state. I was desperate to get out of this funk caused by a simple phone call to set up an appointment! I decided to screw the tide tables and just head out to the beach @ Edmonds. Unfortunately, it was high tide.

One of these days, I intend to start a second blog where I just write about all of the mishaps, ironies, Murphy's Law type stuff I deal with on a daily basis. I seriously think I have reverse luck. That sounds kind of like a downer blog, so maybe I'll just make it a Tag. The thing is, I have reached a point in my life where it happens so often, it makes me laugh. Ever heard of someone put under so much stress/anxiety/danger that they go kind of hysterical, their voice gets higher, they start babbling quickly, and eventually start laughing in a panicky kind of way? Think of Aliens , when Hudson keeps repeating "Game over, man! Game over!" If not that moment, then at some other crucial point he starts to smile and almost laugh - laughing in disbelief.

That will be the title of my blog!

Back to the beach, I found a solitary bench and sat down to watch the water. It did nothing. I almost got up to leave after only a minute, but then I told myself that I came here for a reason, and I should at least relax a little. So I closed my eyes to attempt to relax. Within moments, I could hear the waves on the shore, and I was taken back to other times when that sound has relaxed me and uplifted me. I began to meditate, only concentrating on the sound of the waves as I tried to relax my body section by section. Sometimes, I get the most amazing experience at the end. I get down to my feet, feel my feet on the ground, and something goes through me and into the ground and out into the world, golden tendrils of connectedness. Sometimes it is real, and the experience borders on the religious. Sometimes, I force the image in hopes to spur on the real thing. That's what I had to do, force it. Of course this never works! But instead of giving up, I just went back to focusing on only the waves.

Well, I may not have felt a joyful connectedness to the world around me, but in the back of my mind I was still thinking about the earth and nature and my/our connection to it. A single thought came to me: we are doing it wrong.

It started out as a general impression of humanity polluting the oceans, but quickly grew to other thoughts. They were just flashes, an impression with a vision and an emotion and then it was gone. The ferry, the cars, the ipods , the garbage... these are wrong for the beach, wrong for the planet, wrong for us. Money, television, technology, computers, grocery stores: it's all wrong.

And then the moment was over. But yesterday something Carmen talked about brought it back. The conversation moved from motherhood to parenting to social norms in parenting to cultural differences in parenting. She said in Western culture, it is so important for us to be independent. We live in these small, "nuclear" families with just parents and children. We tell out kids to grow up and be adult and take on responsibility and suck it up - we want them to be as independent and prepared for that cruel outside world when they're finally forced to leave home. Seriously, there are parents who think that because the world is going to be cruel to their child, they need to be mean in order to toughen them up. What?? Shouldn't home be a nurturing place? A place of love and safety? There are non-Western cultures, especially tribal cultures, where family are multi-generational. More people to work and support the home and expenses, more people to parent the children, more attention, more love, a banishment of isolationism.

We are using our cars and the internet and phones and television to reach all parts of the world - but somehow we are managing to increase our isolation at the same time.

More and more, I want to chuck it all and go live on a farm. Raise animals, grow my own food, make my own clothes, watch the sunset instead of television. I seriously believe that what we all need is a kick back into the past before electricity.

The thought is both appealing and horrifying at the same time. I'm addicted to the internet, I like my TV shows, I love listing to the music of any band in the world with the click of a mouse. I'm addicted to money, I like to shop, I want fancy furniture and carpets and a new deck. I love running water, toilets, water heaters, air conditioning. I love to travel, I need modern medicine, I'm germphobic.

I have no useful survival skills. I don't think I can ever slaughter an animal. Starting a vegetable garden would be next to pointless because I can't stand most vegetables. I don't know how to make my own clothes. After watching the sunset, my choices of entertainment will be reading by candlelight or learning to knit.

My body is so broken, I couldn't pull my own weight on a sustainable farm. I simply would not survive the first year after an apocalypse.

I think humanity and the earth could co-exist in a positive way even with technology. I think it would require the elimination of money though. And politics probably. Yah, riiiiight, that'll happen!

Still, I am worried about us. We're just not doing it right.

I had originally intended to write about Forgiveness in two parts, as I had two separate experiences/ideas to write about. But the universe did its thing, throwing all sorts of relevant conversations and stories at me this week. There has been so much to think about and digest, I can't keep up with it all! For now, I go back to my original plan and the topic I had meant to write about next. I imagine some things from this week will filter in. I'll have to see when I'm finished how much is left unsaid that still needs to be addressed later...

In my last post, I wrote about my need to learn how to forgive my mother. Today, I want to talk about my inability to forgive my father, something that may not just be impossible, but that can be argued may or may not be in my best interest to attempt. I don't want to talk about my father in specifics. There is too much there, and it is all very painful, which will make what I'm attempting to do here much more emotional than I'd like. I'm trying to examine myself, my feelings, the way I think, my opinions - to reconcile this with the outer world, the "normal" world. I don't want to dwell in the past, I want to deal with my present mindset.

But I need to be clear about a few things. First, I believe my father to be the second most evil individual I have ever met. Two, during my childhood my father was violent, alcoholic, quick to anger, extremely volatile - I believe he was/is suffering from schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, or some other psychotic personality disorder. Three, my mother on the other hand was/is merely neurotic. Four, I believe my father should be rotting away in some prison right now for the crimes he has committed against me and my family, as well as others with the misfortune of having been in his life. Five, the most evil person I have ever met was my father's step-father, the biological father of my dad's brothers - but not genetically responsible for my father or his sister.

. . .

I had a full session with my therapist this week, knowing I had more to talk about than just the usual half-hour check-in appointment could allow for. I talked about my bitterness, how hard it is for me to forgive anyone for even the smallest infractions, about my negativity and pessimism. She wanted to know where my pessimism came from, if it was something my parents or others from my childhood might have instilled or modeled for me to learn. The answer to that is while my parents are likely hugely responsible for my negativity and pessimism, I believe the extent is merely through the self-defense mechanisms I developed in response to their actions. I don't recall my mother or father being pessimistic or optimistic. I remember my mother encouraging us to follow our dreams and telling us we could do whatever it is in life we wanted to try. I remember my father always chasing fantastical dreams of wealth.

My earliest memories of pessimism are from a volleyball game in the 7th grade. I was not horrifically bad at volleyball, unlike 99% of the other things inflicted on me in school during PE. On this occasion, my team was winning. Every time we made a point or thwarted the other team's attempts to score, all the boys would cheer and trash-talk the opposing team. This infuriated me. I saw no reason to celebrate a game that wasn't over, a game that we could still lose. We shouldn't count our chickens before they had hatched, because it would tempt fate.

Lessons learned through this memory: I was (irrationally?) superstitious from a young age, I am not or at least was not a complete failure at physical activity, and - drum roll please - school kids may be the root cause of my pessimism. Huh.

Today, I feel I am a total failure at anything physical, completely lacking any grace or delicacy of movement, a true "bull in a china shop". In the 7th grade playing volleyball, I already believed this. Why? Because of years of heckling from teammates in PE. It wasn't enough to be fat or white or shy or poor or lacking fashion sense - all the sources of school yard taunts. No, my level of unawesomeness carried over into the classroom, where it was a daily ritual for most of the boys and some of the girls to mock and ridicule my physical ineptitude during Physical Education period. Moving around, this was something that didn't change: co-ed PE was brutal for me in both Hawaii and Port Orchard. Thinking back, I should probably have been more thankful for middle-school PE in Port Orchard, where class was not co-ed, and team sports were rarely (if ever) played. There just isn't room for mocking when every last girl in the class is winded and hating the teacher for assigning yet another day of Cross Country running.

I have always believed I suck at sports. Completely and utterly. A belief in your own worthlessness is pessimism, right? This belief was indeed prompted by actual suckage on my part, but the point was truly hammered home by the voices of cruel little boys who hated losing games by having me on their team.

So my pessimism isn't from my parents. Who knew? But the bitterness, that is another story. As an adult, I have avoided all things physically demanding and voila, I don't suck all the time! But I seem to be incapable of avoiding childhood memories of the cruelty of my father. So pessimism I can work on. Actually, I personally believe I am a closet optimist, because no matter how bad things get, I always hold on to at least a smidgen of hope. This isn't very healthy either, clinging to the hope of miracles in the face of impending doom/failure.

I see my pessimism, my negativity, my bitterness, my difficulty giving forgiveness, as one thing. Maybe it's not? Maybe they're just related? But I definitely see my bitterness as caused not only by my past, but my current inability to forgive and/or let go of the past. I don't want to be a pessimist. I don't want to be bitter. I don't want to spend my entire life dwelling on past hurts to the extent of not being able to forgive. But how?

Actively working on forgiving my mother has been helpful. Time has helped partially heal the scars caused by childhood bullies. But time hasn't helped in the case of my father, and I cannot or will not forgive him. Leaving me to wonder, do I have to forgive my father to let go of my past and finally be happy with my present?

This is my dilemma, and one I don't really have an answer for. Of course, blurting out this statement only came at the very end of my therapy session. Ha! But she didn't shut down the conversation before telling me that it didn't have to be necessary for me to forgive my father. That there are ways of letting go of the past without forgiveness. Now there is a solution I'd like to pay money for! Unfortunately, if it was something simple, it would have been dished out by now in therapy. Nope, I'm thinking it's going to be rather complicated.

This hasn't really been much about my father like I expected, so let me steer back in that direction. I am the only person in my family who does not have a relationship with my father. My mother, my sister, my brothers - they all allow him in their lives. Hell, not a single one of my mother's relatives have ever put a foot down and banned him from anything - it's always up to my mother to convince him that everyone would be more comfortable at Thanksgiving dinner if he didn't go with us over to Gramma's house. All of this passive acceptance of him has added more bitterness for me to deal with. Because I don't understand. I don't understand how he can do the things he's done, treat them just the same for years and years, and still be allowed in their lives. I just don't understand it. It's confusing to me. It hurts, actually. It's been more difficult than I feel it should have been to communicate just how serious I am about not being in the same room with him, ever, for any reason.

My step-grand-father, the most evil person in the world, was never disowned by anyone in his family. Not even by my father, who was an actual victim of physical abuse usually shared for non-family members. Usually. You would think that violence in the home would give weight to accusations by outsiders, but it didn't. You would think that the violence against his stepchildren would give weight to the accusations of his grandchildren, but it didn't. You would think that he would have eventually ended up in prison and then some state graveyard only to be identified by a number, when in fact he lived out his last days happily at home, then was buried right next to my grandmother with a name and honored remarks on his tombstone.

Have all these people forgiven? Just put it out of their mind? Lied to themselves? Denied and remained unbelieving against all evidence? I don't get it, not in the case of my father or his step-father.

The same day CNN carried a story about forgiveness and Casey Anthony, I followed a link to Why people stick by scandal-plagued pastors. The article touches on money scandals, infidelity, sexual coercion. In all cases, there are people who "jump ship", but there are others who "stand by their man". What. The. Fuck? Apparently, disbelief is a big part of it. Cases where there is just no evidence that could possibly come to light to change the favorable opinion of a few loyal followers. Some people are voyeurs actively interested in watching the scandal fallout first hand. Again, WTF? Some "view themselves as participants in a cosmic struggle." Uh, what now? This has got to be my favorite though:

None of this appeared to matter to Kirkpatrick. He said Long would have to answer to God, not him.
"I don't think Bishop Long can do anything worse than what Judas did, and God still loved him," Kirkpatrick said.
Kirkpatrick compared pastors to doctors.
"There are people who we trust with our lives every day, like doctors, who do all sorts of things, but we don't question them. This is our spiritual medicine. We come here to get what we need and then we leave."
When asked if there was anything that would cause him to stop attending New Birth, Kirkpatrick lowered his head and paused before he finally said:
"The church would have to close."

I thought that the article might shed some light on my family's (un)reaction to the crimes of my father and his step-father. The closest that any of it came was the concept that a parishioner (child) can't leave a paster (parent) to whom they attribute a positive action in their life like help with drug addiction or a failing marriage (or... giving birth???).

"There is a suspension of common sense, a refusal to put two and two together," Thompson said. "For a lot of people, this is the man who gave them the keys to a whole new way of living. They can't separate the good they received from the man himself, so they feel it would be a betrayal to turn on him now."
When outsiders ratchet up criticism against an embattled pastor, members often go into battle mode, said Thompson, author of "The Prodigal Brother: Making Peace with Your Parents, Your Past, and the Wayward One in Your Family."
"They circle the wagons to protect their guy," Thompson said. "They don't want to see, and they don't want to be made to see what 'the world' sees. They believe the world's view is false, so they form the firewall."

In the end, I am no less confused. I'm just more in awe at some people's capacity for stupidity and/or ability to self-delude. Some things are just unknowable, unexplainable, to someone not experiencing it for themselves. Even when we're talking about two people having two completely different reactions to the same event.

And I'm no closer in my quest to understand and grant forgiveness.

And dammit if now there has to be a Part 3 in this series.

Forgiveness has been on my mind lately. I think it started when I was inspired by My Life List to make a life Goal to "forgive my mother". (It's an interesting concept, a website to declare and track your goals in life, combined with social media if you'd like to get public support in your endeavors.)

In case you haven't noticed, I'm a very bitter person. I am alternatively snarky or silent on many topics based on the emotional echoes from my past. I've only recently realized the extent that bitterness has infected my life, and it's become important to me to try to reverse. How does one reverse bitterness? Let go of the past, stop living your life there, and keep your past in your past. And forgive. Forgive yourself and others. Unfortunately, forgiveness does not come easily to me.

But the day after declaring to the world that I intend to forgive my mother, I stumble upon some thought-provoking pieces on CNN. The first was the most relevant, Casey Anthony and the challenge of forgiveness. For those living under a rock, Casey Anthony was found not-guilty of murdering her own daughter last week, after a very public trial, to the outrage of the American public. I personally think that trial-by-media is a horrific form of yellow journalism that is both detrimental to those involved in the case, as well as those who get sucked in by the media coverage - the first group doesn't get a proper trial (and in return receive unwanted attention at the worst possible moments of their lives), and the second group is whipped into a riotous feeding frenzy by news agencies. A "trial of peers" is not a trial by every person who has access to a television, it's by a 12 member jury picked to represent the public at large. There are rules about this sort of thing, and those rules are in place for everyone's sake. It is not healthy to become obsessed with media coverage of anything, especially not a murder trial that has nothing to do with you. But after an acquittal, the resulting public outcry is... ferocious, monstrous, and really fucking scary. An entire nation on the verge of rioting is frightening, but when it's caused by something that has nothing to do with them except to feed an obsession... can I just say, holy shit?

So Patrick Wanis wrote this piece for CNN about forgiveness, with Casey Anthony as the focus, but only as a greater lesson.

staying stuck in anger, bitterness, vindictiveness or a desire for revenge does not bring about positive results. As a human behavior expert and therapist, the most common denominator of the pain, mental and emotional affliction that I see people suffer is the lack of forgiveness - the anger and pursuit of revenge against mom, dad, brother, sister, aunt, uncle or self for something that someone did or didn’t do.

Without forgiveness, there is only pain, recurring memories that hurt again and again and again. There is a line between seeking justice and revenge, and holding out for revenge just destroys us from the inside out. Wanis gets all spiritual in his article, but even as an atheist I can understand and take to heart the examples in scripture and real life of forgiveness. He talks of Jesus, he talks of a Holocaust survivor, he steers back to Casey Anthony.

Look in your heart and ask yourself what effect the poison of anger and revenge have on you and your life. We have all wronged and we are all imperfect. Of course, murder is not the same as the wrongs that most of us commit.

But if Jesus could ask God to forgive the people that were about to murder him and if a Holocaust survivor could forgive the people that poisoned her and tried to exterminate her family, then what holds you and I back from forgiving anyone? The next time you commit a wrongdoing, won’t you be saying “Please forgive me?”

This is very powerful stuff. And relevant to my personal struggle with my relationship with my mother. I don't want to talk about what my mother did or didn't do, what was justified or not, whether I'm in the right or not. I love my mother, I know I hold the past against her, and I know that our relationship can't be healthy until I let that go. I have to forgive her.

But how? How does one forgive? There are obviously varying degrees of slights, and varying degrees of forgiveness we must find within ourselves to move forward. I am cut from the cloth that finds forgiveness of almost any level hard to grant. This is so shameful for me. So often, I know I'm being unreasonable, but I don't know how to stop myself. In the past, I have told people I forgive them without actually meaning it. Or meaning it at the time, only to realize later that I'm still holding bitterness against them. Neither is true forgiveness, neither is healthy for me or the other person.

Once again, I'm going to blame my crazy brain and its obsessiveness. I can't really speak for other people's brains I guess, but I've been given the impression that it's not normal to be constantly reliving a moment or emotion or event or series of events. I can be distracted - my mind is constantly going and going and going like a hamster on a wheel, and I'm constantly interrupted by all sorts of stray thoughts. But there is always something that my mind is holding on to like some rabid dog, and the only thing that relieves it is when the thought is replaced by a different obsessive thought. I am seriously exhausted just by what's going on in my head all the time, every minute of every hour of every day.

I'm thinking... Post Traumatic Stress Disorder coupled with Obessive Compulsive Disorder. Somehow, the OCD magnifies the PTSD, so that every negative event gets seared into my brain for reliving in Full Living Color and Smell-o-Vision over and over forever. My memories don't fade. The pain doesn't fade.

This is not really true, not in the long term. I do eventually "get over" most hurts. Most. Eventually. But the constant marathon reliving of the pain in the short term makes the process so maddening, so hard to live through, so hard to come out on the other side at all. Sometimes, I don't. For the most part, the things I can't forgive ever are from my childhood. My brain may find other distractions over time, other things to worry or obsess about over the years. But the smallest thing can set off a memory and suddenly it's as if it just happened. How does a person defeat that?

The answer is therapy of course - it has taught me how to actually notice that my mind is stuck in a rut. Noticing helps you actively distract yourself so you can get out. But... unfortunately, that's about it. I notice I'm doing it and I actively try to stop it. This isn't really all that much more pleasant than not noticing. At least there is some relief more often though.

So, let's see... Bitterness and revenge are bad, forgiveness is good, forgiveness is difficult to achieve, forgiveness of childhood hurts is more than difficult. Guess where my bitterness against my mother stems from? Childhood.

Time is helping. Talking is helping. Life is helping - you hear from other people about their similar experiences, you watch it unfold in movies, you read about it on CNN. It can be chipped away at over time. It just can't be forced.

There are some things that I'm convinced that I'm never going to forgive. But none of them involve my mother. I love her, I need her in my life again, I have done so much more harm through this bitterness - to her, to my siblings, to myself. Can actively trying to put those memories away actually help? I really, really hope so.

Aging has been almost constantly on my mind for the past year, and I've been meaning to write about it for just about that long. But there are so many facets to the topic, so many thoughts in my head. Why is it so hard to write them down as they come to me, instead of trying to recapture them days or months later?

I watched the Uma Thurman movie "Motherhood" on cable the other day. It's about motherhood, yes, but it's also about aging, and facing the life you've created for yourself when you weren't paying attention. Her character was a writer who never published anything other than music reviews, and she tries to blog regularly to compensate. This spoke to me more than anything else in the movie somehow.

I want to write. I want to write! All the time! I want to say every little thing that pops into my head! I want to be heard, I want to be understood, I want to see the page fill up, I want to play with words, I want to fight with my SpellCheck over words I thought I knew how to spell properly, I want to debate how many sentences I can start with "and" before moving on from rebellion to idiocy.

Realizing there was something you were supposed to do with your life that you never got around to... now that's a kick in the ass. I don't care if I never publish (ok, maybe a little), but I need to write! I need to finish my novel, I need to start the new one, I need to actually write all the short stories in my head. There is no "want", this is all about "need". I need to get these words out of me, on to the page, out into the world.

Back to the movie, Uma Thurman's character is trying to write a 500 word piece for a chance to win a dream job - blogging for money. She asks her husband to go over it and to "be honest." She flips out when he does just that. He uses the word "banal" for part of it. At the end, he writes in big letters (red ink of course!) "WHAT DO YOU WANT TO SAY?" Later, he tells her he was only trying to get her to stop being ironic and snarky (he says something about how that comes to her as easily as breathing), and to write something real.

How can dialogue like that not resonate with me? Every time I open my mouth or post to Facebook or manage to blog, I am snarky. I allude to the truth, without quite saying it. I do post and blog reality from time to time. Spill my bloody entrails for the entire world to see type stuff. But I tend to repeat myself: snarky, bitter, snarky, moan, snarky, moan, moan, snarky, bitch, moan, snarky, moan, moan, moan, moan, moan...

If I wrote regularly, I would have more to say in between bitchfests and pity parties. Duh!

"CBGB's" by Syd Straw

Hey remember me, we met ten years ago
at CBGB's, on New Year's Eve
back when you were tending bar
you had a band of your own called The Revlons
and I liked your songs, I don't know how
I must have lost my head an abandonment like that,
was easier then and I don't know why we never met again
but I still think of you sometimes every now and then,
Hey remember when you took me to the movies
to see Soylent Green
I can't believe it was such a long time ago,
So much has happened, I hear you had twins,
Are you doing what you wanna do,
Did you follow your intentions, all the dreams you had,
Has even a single one of them come true?
I ask myself as I'm asking you, hey, I'm just asking
You were the one most likely to succeed without
ever really trying, You had so much to live up to
I was married for awhile, it ended in tragedy,
oh well, enough about me,
Are you doing what you wanted to,
Did you follow those intentions through, and
All the dreams you had, Have any or all of them come true,
If they haven't yet I hope they do

Blatant rip-off by me:

Hey remember me? We met twenty-four years ago.
We had our first date on New Year's Eve.
You gave me my first kiss, then ran off because your sister was watching from the car.
Three years later and you ran off again,
you made me so happy, I couldn't believe.
I lost my head, your abandonment like that.
But it was easier than admitting the truth, and I forgive, but I don't know why we never met again.
I still think of you sometimes, every now and then.
Hey remember when you asked me to sit on your skateboard
but I was too shy to sit next to you?
I can't believe it was such a long time ago,
So much has happened, I hear you're in Europe and in love.
Did you follow your intentions, all the dreams you had,
has even a single one of them come true?
I ask myself as I'm asking you.

Hey remember me? We met twenty-two years ago
at a birthday party for the boy who would be my husband.
You had a girlfriend, but still we looked
only to shy away again.
I don't know how we were all so naive.
I lost my mind, the way we hurt each other like that.
Still it got easier, and I don't know why we never met again,
but I still think of you sometimes now and then.
Hey remember when we went to Denny's so I could teach you Magic,
but they stopped us before we got very far?
We should have known it would always be like that.
I can't believe it was such a long time ago,
So much has happened, I hear you're a father, married, and happily too.
Did you follow your intentions, all the dreams you had,
has even a single one of them come true?
I ask myself as I'm asking you.

Hey remember me? We met 10 years ago
at first online and then that kiss in your bathroom,
back when you were married and unhappy.
You pushed me away, we were both angry and mean.
I don't know what happened, how we let things repeat.
I lost my heart, with your silence like that.
Was it easier? I still don't know why we never met again.
Hey remember when we tried on those cat ears?
It was Halloween time.
I can't believe it was such a long time ago,
So much has happened, I hear you're truly in love.
Did you follow your intentions, all the dreams you had,
has even a single one of them come true?
I ask myself as I'm asking you.

Hey remember me? We met seven years ago
at the Metro theater, for an animation festival.
You liked my shoes, I liked your skirt,
we cried together later, upstairs in the ladies.
I don't know how I lost my morals like that,
broke everyones hearts, stabbed you in the back.
Still I wonder, why we never met again,
but I still think of you sometimes now and then.
Hey remember when I called home for permission,
and then we giggled and kissed and you smelled like amber?
I can't believe it was such a long time ago,
So much has happened, I hear you're still around, somewhere in the city.
Did you follow your intentions, all the dreams you had,
has even a single one of them come true?
I ask myself as I'm asking you.

Hey remember me? We met twenty-two years ago,
in the backseat of your mother's car,
you had big blue eyes and bigger gold glasses.
While you planned your party, our feet played under the table,
and then after the cake, there was a little palm tree,
dancing and singing to me.
I did lose my mind, my heart, my morals,
all in less than a week, that's the effect you had.
And then I lost my head, an abandonment like that,
Was it easier? Not until we met again
and fell in love,
so now I think of you always, now, and then.
Hey remember when the raft flipped over
and underneath we shared our first kiss?
Or how about Jamaica or Hawaii or Florence?
Do you remember the beaches, the movies, the drives, the games?
Did we follow our intentions, all the dreams we had?
I know at least a few have come true.
I ask myself as I'm asking you,
so we don't forget anything
when everything is changing.
Babies just take their own time.

I was so sure I was pregnant. At my Wellness group, someone asked how I could stand the wait, how could I keep from home testing? I explained that my brain is so untrusting, such a thing would send me to Crazytown - no matter what the test said, I wouldn't believe it until the official blood test, leaving me to suffer through days of worry or false joy. But, I had a plan. I tested myself at home the morning I was scheduled to go in for my blood draw. I guess I really had this urge to pee on a stick...

It was about 5am, most of the world is still asleep, and I'm watching my pee activate a pregnancy test strip. Not once, but twice - negative both times. I somehow got myself dressed and went out to buy another test - surely my tests had been hanging around too long and had gone bad. I had my hoodie up, sunglasses on, tear streaks on my face, and still the checker cheerfully asked me about my day. I couldn't believe how chatty he was. I couldn't believe he wouldn't shut up and wither and die before my eyes. I still can't believe I didn't reach over and cause him physical harm.

Home again, and another failed test. I cried and cried and cried and cried. I somehow lived through the hours until it was time to wake up Eric to take me to the "real" test. He did his best to console me and keep hope alive. At the clinic, they kept us in the waiting room for an eternity. Seriously, it was the longest wait we've ever had there, and all we were there for was to give some blood. Did I mention there was another couple waiting, and I was spontaneously breaking into tears every other minute?

The lab tech did her best to console me. And she seemed genuinely surprised that no one had told me not to self-test because those tests were so unreliable. I kept to myself about the fact that it was 3 tests, and all those commercials they make about how home tests are "just as reliable" as blood tests these days.

I went home and straight into bed. Eric was the one who took the call. He was miserable coming to tell me, but I already knew. I wasn't pregnant. It didn't take.

"It didn't take."

This is the official phrase used by the clinic, my husband, the notifications we emailed.

It is not the phrase used in my head. If I allow myself to be honest, I had a miscarriage.

I was pregnant. An egg was fertilized by my husband, the embryo was implanted inside of me. Even if the loss occurred that very day, the fact remains that I had an embryo in my uterus. I had a baby in my womb. But the embryo was gone. The baby was dead.

The first 48 hours were the worst. I called my mother to ask her to tell me that I was wrong, trying again wouldn't be murder. Because all I could think about was the idea that now I knew my body couldn't support a pregnancy, wouldn't introducing a baby into that body constitute knowingly putting it to harm? Or, in my mind, a death trap. She told me no, that wasn't true. We talked about all the babies still in some lab, waiting to be born. They were already there, waiting for me. I couldn't walk away from them.

In the end, that was what made my decision. 17 embryos sitting in a frozen vat somewhere, waiting to come to life. I had made the decision to have them created, and it was up to me to do right by them. 17 possible babies.

The past few months have been unimaginably hard. Not only because of the sadness and loss and grief, or the gravity of the decision on what to do next, or the feeling of limbo as if my life is pointless until the next implantation, but the realization that my definition of life has shifted. This is big. Like realizing I didn't think god really existed big.

Because I didn't just have a procedure that didn't take. I had a baby in my womb. I had a baby that went away.

When did this happen? How did this happen? Such an extraordinary change in mindset. I had no idea it was possible, that this was in me waiting to happen. How on earth did I go from the belief that an embryo is just a packet of cells to eliminate when necessary, to the belief that on day one I had a real live baby inside of me?

There is a certain politician on the presidential campaign trail who is using her story of miscarriage to explain the evils of abortion. I understand her in a way that I couldn't have before. And yet now she and those that share her belief are even more alien to me. Because knowing there is a baby inside you and deciding to have it aborted is officially the hardest decision a woman can make. And yet, these people still think I'm incapable of making that decision on my own.

I have changed so much, but I am still the same.