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

:: Tuesday, January 30, 2007 ::

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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