Trying to be...
2003-08-01 - 9:14 a.m.
Last night, on the phone.
"Honey, I think I'm getting my period tomorrow. I feel it coming on"
"Oh sweetie, I'm sorry. What are we going to do?"
You know, up until last night, D was the optimist. Every month, as the tears flowed along with the blood, he was my rock. He was the one hugging me and saying "It will happen honey. It just takes time". He's been the one that when I start spouting off concerns, finds that perfect balance between validating my fears, but providing hope. The one who stresses that it takes time, and that the "statistics show", and that we'll have our turn.
Last night it changed. I heard it in his voice too. The fear that it may not happen. "We may need to just have some help along the way", he sweetly offered.
I am angry. I am angry that my body isn't doing what it should be doing. For hundreds and thousands of years, women's bodies have been reproducing. Some with intention, some without. Some with intervention, most without. And here I remain, trying so hard to treat my body with the respect it deserves, and it just doesn't want to do it.
I try to remind myself. Three (or is it four, now? I think its four...my how the time flies) years ago, at exactly this time, I was so proud of my body. Not for its physical attributes, because certainly it was not anywhere near its peak - it was before I started to eat healthier, and my exercise was quite erratic. But I was proud.
I was a bone marrow donor. Well, technically, I hadn't donated yet. But the summer of 1999 was spent having test upon test, as my body passed through yet another level of "matching". And by August 1st, I knew that I was a 100% match to an 8 year old girl with leukemia. I had agreed to do the "harvest", and she was undergoing her few week preparation for the procedure. A brutal preparation where they zap out just about every drop of immunity from the person's body in anticipation of the foreign body they are about to implant.
Anyway, I was so proud. I felt like a woman. I remember talking to my mom about it, trying to not be too grandious but saying "THIS is what a woman's body is about. Creating life, sustaining life, nurturing life". Suddenly it wasn't about flabby thighs, or a protruding tummy, or heavy breasts. It wasn't about a big nose, menstrual cramps, unwanted facial hair to pluck,tweeze and wax.
It was about giving a part of myself, one that I wasn't fully using anyway, to another person so that they could live another day.
I remember saying to both D and my parents "This must be what its like to become a parent. Obviously, having a baby is so much more, but to know that your body is capable of doing such wonders....its mind blowing". I remember thinking that if I am so emotionally overwhelmed with this concept, I cannot imagine how intense a growing embryo would feel. The enormity of feeling a baby's kick for the first time. Gazing into eyes that I knew belonged to me. Nursing a child that I had created, and that I alone could sustain with what my body created.
And these same thoughts were the ones that were haunting me last night, as I lay in my big empty bed, cramping and tender.
