Countdown: two weeks

I've really fallen apart recently. One of my favorite movies is Donnie Darko (morbid I know) but I've just felt like what happened to him is happening to me. The past, present, and future, are all unrealized alternate realities due to some weird blip in the space time continuum, and yet there is this countdown, to the second, that will lead to self destruction. But for the better?

I was describing how I felt at Thanksgiving last year to my therapist. Oh, how I longed for my Turkey, Myles. I would make jokes about him as a turkey in the oven keeping him in there to get good and cooked (he wanted to come early), and how he was going to be an 8 pound holiday turkey, and I'd sing him the Adam Sandler thanksgiving song and my daughter would laugh with glee and Myles would kick at the rucus.

I remember being so thankful and happy. I had made it through many weeks of bedrest, and on the Friday after Thanksgiving, I would be 37 weeks. TERM!!! A term pregnancy. My daughter was born at 35 weeks, so making it even further, that was such an accomplishment. I thought the worse had come and past. I was counting my chickens before they hatched (a really sad platitude if you think about it). As Elizabeth mcCracken put it, i thought he was a sure thing. I tempted fate, not aloud, but i was certainly cavalier.

Could I wait for 40 weeks?! NO! I wanted him then, that suited me. That friday, November 23rd. I couldn't wait. So I did everything I could to make the contractions that had accompanied me for those long weeks of bedrest work to finally get him HERE, in my arms, my holiday baby that I imagined falling in love with so many times.

It sounds so silly, and romantic isn't the word for it, but I had the weeks after his birth planned like you would have a romantic vacation planned. I didn't want to leave the bed for the first week (YES, AFTER 9 weeks of bed rest!!!). We were going to nurse and sleep and play and bond, attachment parenting heaven.

I was so thankful that week, but for the wrong things. I was thankful that bed rest was over. I was thankful to get up and cook and clean and impress, my first thanksgiving in my own home. I was thankful that my son would be here soon. I was not thankful that he was still in my womb. I wanted him out of my body. I was not thankful (never was thankful) for being pregnant. I was not thankful for that wonderful Thanksgiving day with him inside me, myself completely oblivious to the fact he had likely already passed. That night we watched the movie 'Knocked up' eerily when I first began to wonder when i last felt him.

Life in the fast lane, taking everything and everyone for granted. Thinking I deserved my son. Feeling so entitled and bitter for those weeks of bed rest, broken down into seconds ticking in my mind each day of worry and frustration and of complete vulnerability. It was, nevertheless, hopeful worry as in my mind it was completely assured he'd arrive safe and healthy. He was my light at the end of a long dark tunnel, my reward for what I perceived to be my own self sacrifice, when really it feels like I was punished for caprice and ungratefulness.

That clock ticking away then is as loud and clear today as it was this exact day last november. But everything is the opposite. There is no hope this time, only a deep sense of loss, shame, and failure. But the ticking is there, in the back of my mind, like the crocodile searching for Captain Hook.