Thursday 20 October 2011

Grief is a very personal emotion, the manner in which it possesses its host is as unique as they are, yet it will follow a pattern, we each of us go through phases that can be labelled and identified. It is through knowing these points that we can lift the curtain that enshrouds us and connect for a whilst with others, who perhaps understand, or are kind enough to try.




2011 has been a peculiar year, it started on an absolute high, there was I, so sure of who I was, so painfully secure in my sense of self,confident and the vast majority of the time, Happy.

For a whilst I was in Love, and for a whilst it was all it should be... That as you'll know didn't last, I am incapable of being anything but myself, which is little use, when he whom claims to love you in fact wants a perfect other half, at times it was fairly volatile, and rather then walking away when the warning flags where first raised, no, I tried to help....

Looking back it was futile, and truly I am better for the absence of such a figure in my life, anyone who openly admits to manipulating you but cannot offer even a half arsed justification as to precisely what right they had in so doing, is well, not my kind of person.

And it has affected me, I have had cause to question and query my very way of being, facets of my personality were used against me as examples of precisely why I was the villain in that soap opera, equally things I cannot help where thrown in my face. I have long known I have a colourful streak of Aspergers running through me,and recently it was confirmed I have OCD - and throughout many a row, I have stood by what I remain to stand by: Sometimes I behave oddly because of how I am hardwired, I do not use that as a carte blanche excuse for my behaviour, simply that people may understand it.

Where is the grief coming in?

Well, I am not sat here, after a second sleepless night with eyes puffier then a bouncy castle over a lover cast aside some five months ago.

Merely the legacy he left me to deal with.



In February, despite many precautions being used I found out I was pregnant.



Known as I am for prevarication, every possible avenue forward was considered and the decision made was mine and mine alone, never really discussed with anyone until the point in time at which I was definite.



A process I went through alone, I carry the repercussions alone. I could not have predicted quite how profoundly I would be affected by the experience.

I will not detail the medical ins and outs, suffice to say it involves tablets and a variety of bodily orifices, after which you are left in a room , complete with its own toilet. Its a wholly clinical experience, not helped by the insistence you must be alone. Periodically someone comes in to check your collection of bed pans for the delightfully named 'products of conception'.

I to the annoyance of the medical profession held onto mine till I had been sent home many hours later.





I cannot think of what I saw as 'products of conception', it was a person. Tiny and not quite fully formed, exactly as I have seen twice in my life on ultrasound scans, floating in its amnion of crystal clear fluid. All translucent skin, and still, I can recall its face, its arms, legs the last visible bump of a tail and most strikingly the vivid scarlet patch which days previously had been a beating heart. I was advised by the Hospital to throw it in the bin or flush it down the toilet, I did not... whilst I had yes, decided that this being would never be, I could not thrust upon it the indignity of the sewerage network, or landfill. It was, wanted or not, a life.

I buried it up in the peaks, where the heather grows, and the grit stone juts out of the landscape, where the wind blows unencumbered by obstacles, and where I, and a great many others go, just to absorb that freedom of wilderness. Somewhere I find profoundly calming,and somewhere where it will never be alone.

Referring to that being as 'it' is an act of distance, for reasons I cannot explain I have always thought of it as a girl, perhaps because I have two sons and to have knowingly terminated another pushes my sanity too far. She, however would have been delivered within the next few days, and she was called Bethan.

And despite the decision to go through this act was mine, this decision was right for practical and emotional reasons, despite the fact I've had early miscarriages in the past and bounced back relatively quickly, those were natures choices not mine. I was not complicit in the act of ending a life in those instances. And when the vast majority of my time is spent raising two children, I cannot help but wonder how things might have turned out.



And so this grief, I will carry a whilst longer, possibly to my grave, I cannot predict the longevity of my emotions, it will in time become an easier grief, a sigh, a sad smile. Unlike that I have gone through this year for two friends, and my Great Grandma, I cannot find comfort in memories, I cannot celebrate the preceding life. I must then contend with the fact that I created this state of mind, and find a way out of it.

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