:: The S.I.C.L.E. Cell ::

:: Saturday, August 02, 2003 ::

I am in a bit if a funk here. When I manage to climb out of it I'll feature the mom and baby.

The beach was fun but it wasn't. Anytime I go out of town I have horrible flashbacks, thoughts, feelings. I once went out of town to destroy my 15-week-old child, and going out of town has become a big trigger for me.

Now when we enter a hotel room we have to do the towel thing (cover up the coffee pot and all the little packets of goodies so I can't see them). Lots of hotels set out all these goodies for you like coffee, tea, cookies, popcorn, candy, etc... just like the hotel we stayed at the night we brought our child to ruin.

Nearly 7 years ago, I sat in a hotel room bleeding all over myself and wolfing down anything they had to offer, as I had not eaten a meal in three months, and this was the first stuff I could put in my mouth and keep down.

No more IVs, ER visits, hospitals, crummy, offensive doctors who refused to help. No more starvation-induced hallucinations, dehydration, liver dysfunction, jaundice, fear of possibly dying.

They say women are relieved immediately after abortion. I was grateful I could eat. I was either going bleed to death relatively quickly or I was going to be "back to my old, normal self" in a few days, but no more months of hell and no more not knowing when it would end. The HG was over, and in that sense, I was relieved. Of course after my first true meal that night (cottage cheese and fruit), after my husband went to sleep, I was trying to figure out how to open the unopenable top-floor window so I could jump out and smash my newly non-pregnant brains all over the sidewalk.

I had complications. That's why I was in the hotel in the first place. I was hemorrhaging, and they sent me to a hotel where I had to call every hour until I stopped soaking a pad an hour. I was soaking several pads an hour so the calls continued for awhile. Finally, I just crawled in the tub and bled, but I lived confound it.

These days all of that comes rushing back on vacation. We check in, I'm freaking inside, I see the goodies, throw a towel over them, swallow a crying jag, and go down to the beach or the pool where I lie there watching my son have the time of his life. Meanwhile I'm totally preoccupied by my hell and wondering how I'm going to survive my "vacation".

Sometimes I just have to get away. But I can never get away.

That's rule number one in this game.

:: ashli 10:13 AM # ::
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