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

:: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 ::

An email I sent to my bestest buddy (who is wishing s/he didn't know me right about now) this P.M.:

"i would have been coming out of the abortion just now. mebbe sitting in the big white leather chair asking for meds for the woman next to me, caring for her so i don't have to think about myself. besides, i felt nothing but physically better. cheezits and tea. first food in forever. forever.

i'm listening to cocteau twins while cleaning the kitchen. been a long time since. makes me think of who i was before. i get angry. and terribly sad. if i wasn't who i am now moments like these might be the end collectively.

i'm glad (dh) is out of town. i would go to him about it maybe and he wouldn't want to hear so i'd get mad and feel even more alone. or maybe i wouldn't go to him about it...i wouldn't. but i'd be angry about the whole thing. forgiveness is a strange and difficult thing. i'll forgive him tomorrow. but not today.

i don't understand any of this really. it has been ten years. i don't know. how do you kill your child and just go on with your life?

mebbe my old music is burrowing a special little hole for me to fall farther into.



i just want to be who i was. this is pathetic... a 35-year-old-woman crying like a baby, swimming through visions of an oversized black sweater i'd like to stuff myself back into... be my ignorant me again with life stretched out ahead and dreams that i'm better that i am, that life will be better than it is.

i can't unknow what i know. i can't undo what i've done.

inappropriate; i'm dumping on you cuz i can. i'll send you pretty pictures from the mountains and make it up to you."

:: ashli 8:31 PM # ::
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An email I sent to my bestest buddy this A.M.:

"waking up early, before the sun comes up, really bothers me. it's one thing to be up all night from one sun to the next, but to sleep and then wake in darkness... the morning has a different feel to it, a cool solitude. i despise it because it is a memory trigger. it's one of the reasons i wonder if i could ever keep normal work hours again.

unfortunately, i couldn't sleep last night and woke up early in the a.m. today, before the sun. so i feel very much a "reinactor" of that most unfortunate day ten years ago. it isn't to be helped. my small tortures come along and will for the remainder. i have come to terms with that but i don't necessarily like it and i certainly can't ignore it.

no one is awake. i made a midcentury cup of joe, trodded off to the other end of the house, lit an oil lamp, and talked a little with God before cracking open His bestseller for more secrets. the person who wrote the companion study dug up a poem somewhere and today it just happened to be:

don't waste the pain--
let it prove thee.
don't stop the tears--
let them cleanse thee.
rest, cease the striving--
soon you'll be arriving
in His arms.
don't waste the pain--
let it drive thee
deeper into God.
He's waiting.
and you should have
come sooner."

at first i want to laugh or get angry at the little zinger at the end... but then i realize it's true... that life has been wasted, in more ways than one, by not coming sooner. nothing to do but take the advice. nothing to do but raise my children with much imploring that they come sooner than i did, that they not waste life.

nothing to do but be proven by the pain.

i don't think i'll answer the phone today."

I aborted my first child in the second trimester ten years ago today. I don't mean to sound dramatic, but if you had told me then that I would still be around ten years later, I wouldn't have believed you at all. I didn't think I would make it. I didn't think I would survive abortion. But here I am. I suppose that's something of a triumph... although... "Here I am," is kind of a pathetic celebration. But it's better than having covered the wall with a head full of pink Jello. Nothing would have come from that but a macabre mess someone would have had the displeasure of cleaning up.

I'm still here. We'll see where that goes.

:: ashli 7:45 AM # ::
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We'd better stop messing around with the subject of the song (genetic engineering) or we're going to be forced to listen to more synth-heavy music just like it.



If that isn't a reason to ban human cloning, I don't know what is.

(Friends don't let friends play the Casio while drinking Zima.)

:: ashli 12:21 AM # ::
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I'm trying not to think of it. But I'm in the "holding pattern"; I snapped on the 25th and made the appointment. I'm counting down the days. I don't mean to. I don't want to. I'm in the grips of it anyway. It owns me. Ten years on Tuesday. Counting, counting.

I'm not alone. Tina understands. She slid into stirrups twice. Into the stirrups, into the dark abyss...

:: ashli 1:36 PM # ::
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Yes, Amanda, it IS "sperm magic"!

HT: TRA

:: ashli 7:12 PM # ::
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"Life happens," she told the Inquirer. "Initially, I was a tiny bit disappointed, I wouldn't be competing. But there was no comparing the two: Miss USA or a baby, a baby that had been sent to me by God."

Go, Ash!

:: ashli 6:01 PM # ::
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If you pray, please do so for this mom diagnosed with advanced cancer during her 4th pregnancy.

Reminds me of the Most Beautiful Picture In the World.

Fight, Gigi, FIGHT.

HT: Christina

:: ashli 1:56 PM # ::
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ABC's "miracles" (referred to as "babies" and not "fetuses"). Interesting video.

:: ashli 10:33 PM # ::
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