The 17th of February

This is how it felt on the day I gave my son up for adoption. I have since been re-united with him, so there was a happy ending, but this is how it felt at the time. I wrote this quite some years ago now and finally feel brave enough to share this with the world.

Every year on the 17th of  February.

 Once again, your birthday comes up on the horizon, and once again the empty space in my damaged heart is filled with deep searing agony and loss. Once again, I cannot breathe for the lump of tear-sodden lead that yanks my heart to the ground. My breath is strangled by the barbed-wire mesh that scrapes and sears my throat. Has it been so long? It feels like yesterday…

You may know by now that I did not keep you for my own. You may hate me for it, and you may be hurt by it, yet I cannot speak with you to tell you why or how I felt. I stand judged with no trial, and you pay the penalty for my actions, actions that I had intended would give you everything and cause you no harm. I know you pay, for I have met others like you, and their confusion and misery reverberate through me with condemnation.

Time has not allowed me to forget you. On the contrary, it has burned me with tormented thoughts and allowed me no peace. I will not say here and now what happened to me, and why I did this. I will save that for another time. Here I will tell you that you are not the only one who has been wounded, and if you hate me for what I did, know that I have paid and paid, and will continue to do so for as long as I shall live.

I knew you from the day I first felt you move within me, a soft ripple of a butterfly’s kiss in the center of my stomach that reverberated into the center of my soul. I loved you. And I was afraid.

I knew that I could not keep you for my own. The reasons...? There were many… another time, another time. I had to shut down my heart to save you. I believed then, and now, that to have kept you would have been the supreme act of selfishness and irresponsibility towards you. I could not do that to you. I loved you. I still love you.

I slammed shut the doors to my affections and barricaded them with cast iron bolts and locks and smothered them in darkness, the same darkness that has seeped through me and poisoned me slowly over the years with its insidious presence. I drew in the coldness from the deepest bleakest place I could find and used it to shield you from my love .

Oh, if only I could have kept you and allowed the love to blossom…

If only…

I cry now, and the tears are blistering with the torments of Hades that ferment in my mind. What a price to pay to try and secure your happiness and your future. I thought I could give you the rest of your life.

You may ask what price it was that I paid…? Well, I shall tell you.

You.

It cost me more than that, of course. My family, my job, my happiness… but most of all, it cost me you.

It cost me you.

My link to you was severed forever. A part of me was rent from me and sent to the farthest reaches. I feel the loss quicken inside of me with its usual icy anguish.

Many a night and day have tears spilled from me; timeless tears that burn acid tracks into my cheeks. Ceaseless tears, for although at times, they dry on my face, they continue to raze their way through my innards.

Did I forget you? Never! I saw you once, as I birthed you, and that will stay with me forever. The only sight I had of my little love.

When you came from within and burst into the world my chest expanded with the feelings I felt for you. It grew so fast that it gave me physical pain trying to contain its magnitude within the tiny little physical heart I have. My eyes filled with tears of wonder, and I wanted to crush you to my chest and kiss you and hold you… but then... you were gone.

Just like that!

A brief moment, then nothing… . Nothing but a deathly silence.

It had to be so. I knew it then, and I know it now. But… when they carried you from the room, the quiet that took your place slammed me into the bed with a ruthless disregard for me.

I went berserk…. I screamed with a torment that can only be heard from an animal that is wounded beyond all bearing. I tore the IV out of my arm and was forcibly restrained so that the needle in my spine did not paralyse me. As if I cared about that! I struggled to go after you and fought them off me, but as I tried to stand, I dropped to the floor in a pool of blood as my legs refused to carry me.

My screaming echoed through the years and stays with me now, as does the sound of your first cry that trickled up the corridor to add its seal to my doom. Sobbing, I was placed back on the empty empty, empty bed.

With no you.

And I caught my first sight of forever, with no you.