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

:: Friday, January 30, 2009 ::

It's January. There are all sorts of internal goings on. I never fail to marvel at it. It has been so long since I lost my first child in an abortion that I asked and paid for in January '97. Still a day is a lifetime to the mayfly, so it's all relative. Twelve years has and hasn't been a long time. We can agree on that.

I'm not NOT writing because of some myth that I don't care anymore. I'm not neglecting the Cell because I no longer exist here having myriad thoughts, emotions, perspectives each day. It's purely practical; I'm busy as all get out (southern for quite engaged).

When my children are raised and gone, you will find me blogging every day and old, wrinkled and limping along at the annual March. I missed it again this year, because I'm a mom (and because I don't fly). In the end it's worth it; motherhood is now. I'm grateful for it.

But I am and will always be torn, because my life has been polluted by abortion. Now I have "a past," and I want to do something about it. I won't remain silent. But for now I'm on a necessary intermission. I like to think that the next several years on the back burner is just me warming up. (D'har.)

I'm only stealing this moment this morning, in between mahogany sips of Nespresso, to observe that this month I:

*have had "unexplained" feelings of sadness
*am experiencing flashbacks
*am not sleeping well, specifically, waking in the middle of the night with panicky feelings, something very abnormal for me which otherwise coincides only with severe physical illness

I realize that my mother died this month in '96. I realize that I had a traumatic D&C in January '98 after miscarrying the second child at around Christmas and refusing to have him/her removed without a second and third opinion and futile time to figure out a way to reanimate the dead. But I know what's really eating me, because I awoke one night with vivid images of my broken child a moment after his/her end, wondering where they put his/her finished remains, and seeing the reality of the last bit of metabolism and insulation-related heat (life-warmth and mother-warmth) ebb hopelessly away. I saw the unseen infrared waves dancing away toward the heavens, adhering to the ceiling, warming the building, helping to keep the machine running. I turned to the tiny, sleeping form beside me, and I thought, "Your brother, your sister, my child..."

So I got up and quietly paced the hall until the reality sunk in again that it is done, that I can not call a mulligan, I can not break into the abortion clinic, rifle through the freezer, locate, repair and rescue my child. I realize how that sounds; I have this dream where the children in the freezer are clockwork, and all I need do is pull out my tin key and wind them. It's a sweet dream whose spell, when broken, causes me to pace the empty hall in wee small hours.

OK, so I admit I haven't really been terribly emotionally sound since I added my posterity to Pendy's prosperity.

I won't apologize for my reaction. I've been called immature and psychologically damaged because of it. But I never want to be so "mature" that killing my child and trodding upon his/her ruined body is freedom. I never want to be so psychologically "healthy" as to find complete satisfaction in a rationalization that my physical comfort is more important than another human being's life.

I am glad for what I am now, and hate what I was when I took my helpless child to a building in Orlando where I asked a man to slaughter him/her and paid for it twice (as a bigger filet costs more to devour, bigger babies cost more to kill, dear reader).

I have abortion to thank for opening my eyes about abortion and about the rotten, slithering hunk of wasted space I was. So if that is your definition of success, then abortion is smashing.

You know, this January has taken me by surprise. It really has. Because this year I'd determined to put on my big girl panties and "take it like a man." After all, it has been twelve years. Twelve years of coming to terms with abortion and the loss of my precious child. Like lead in my soul, it's always there, even when I smile. But I really was not going to succumb to all the emotional "nonsense" this month, this year. I was going to be cerebral. I was going to be wisened, hardened to it, cured (so to speak).

But today I find that I'm as sloppy as ever. Sloppier. And right now the thought of saying a word to my dead child is more than I can bear. If I at this moment I married my heart with words for him/her I would lose myself in a place I couldn't claw my way out of quickly enough to meet today's impending responsibilities.

So today, on the twelve-year anniversary, I will attempt to encapsulate the complicated contradiction of abortion-related grief. It will be a cancer I know I have, and in a moment tiny pink fingers gloved in wool will be the circus I run away to.

:: ashli 6:48 AM # ::
...

OK, so wait. This person was fragile and unable to care for himself, which is precisely why it is particularly shameful that no one took measures to protect his life. But a gestating child who is fragile and unable to care for himself is not even a human being precisely because he is fragile and unable to care for himself.

Hmm...I guess I'm pretty bad at math, because things like this just don't add up.

:: ashli 6:38 PM # ::
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Made to love...

"Riley Ann Sawyers tried to stop her mother and stepfather from beating her to death by reaching out to her mother and saying, 'I love you.'"

:: ashli 12:09 PM # ::
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God bless Omerica!

Bless Omerica!

This post approved by the ACLU:

Omerica!

HT: RT

:: ashli 9:02 AM # ::
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A note to a friend:

"E had her ears pierced today. It's something I said she could do if she ever wanted to, but I talked it up really grisly-like to try and keep her a baby for as long as possible. She asked me this morning if she could get her ears pierced and said, "I know it will hurt." I knew she was ready. We took her after harp lessons, and she sat in silence while the lady pierced both of her ears. When it was all over she reached up for me to hold her. When I picked her up she buried her face in my neck and wept silently.

I cannot tell you how much I cherish this little girl.

She was always who she is, the same as you and me. She was only smaller and weaker before, but she was herself; she was alive and growing. She's so little even now, but she's getting bigger every day. One day she'll be a woman, God willing, and one day she'll be old.

She can breathe on her own but needs me now for mostly everything else. There will come a day when she won't. She isn't less of a person now and more of a person then. She's still E, always was, always will be.

I'm so disappointed in myself. How could I ever not have known this? Or worse--how could I ever not have cared?

In the history of the world, no people have ever been more disenfranchised than the weakest of us, the least of us, our littlest children. Our people think that killing them is evolved, while it is in fact barbaric. Light is dark, dark is light, bitter, sweet, sweet, bitter. Of us the 'choicers' think: 'They mean well but they're misguided.'

However, we have the benefit of being absolutely right.

We also have the daily sorrow as we think of all the Es and Ts, Ds and As, etc., who are being led away to slaughter by those for whom they were created (made to trust, made to love...). It's madness.

I was part of the machine and became even more than that to my own.

I'll never go back.

Out of the dark and into the Light. I'm thankful at least for that."

:: ashli 8:43 AM # ::
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"They do draw the line at the old Mayan practice of throwing infants into volcanoes, although I don't see why, under their theory, that wouldn't be a protected exercise of religion as well."

An oldie but a goody!

HT: a

:: ashli 8:38 AM # ::
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"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Ca.) will bring her 'Kill the Children' economic stimulus plan to the floor of the House this week for a likely vote on Thursday. On ABC’s 'This Week' last Sunday, Pelosi justified the inclusion of expanded federal funding for abortions as part of an economic stimulus plan on the grounds that reducing the number of children being born would help stimulate the economy."

Pelosi ought to spend the money on a big ol' atomic bomb. Then we could drop it on ourselves and reduce a whole lotta debt!

You gotta love those bleeding heart dems. They just care and care and care about the people.

Kinda makes you cry, doesn't it.

:: ashli 3:33 PM # ::
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"How do pro-choicers who argue that women should be free to make reproductive decisions according to their consciences reconcile that belief with legislation that would force health care providers to violate theirs?"

:: ashli 8:07 PM # ::
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After my nightmare woes, this literally made me laugh out loud:

"Instead, the President signed the measure in a darkened room late Friday afternoon after the close of the week’s news cycle, quickly scurrying away like a filthy, disease-ridden cockroach."

:: ashli 9:53 AM # ::
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Normally I go to bed HORRIBLY LATE. I don't know why. It has never made sense to me; you'd think that every time a cloud passed over the sun I'd hop into its protective shadow and attempt unconsciousness, but no. I usually go to bed between 2 and 3 in the morning, and sometimes not at all. And I pay for that. So does everyone around me. Yet I still persist.

I think I've a clue as to why.

Lately, I've been trying to go to bed at a decent hour (between 9-10PM), and I've noticed that I have nightmares all night long. When I kept late hours I didn't dream much. Oh, I had the occasional vision, and occasionally it was nasty-wasty, but my brain was mostly too-fried to conjure up any dreams much less a nice vivid gut-wrencher. Now when I go to bed at a decent hour it's like my brain isn't completely exhausted and so it has the energy to cook up all these horrible scenarios.

Ever since I killed my first child in a second-trimester abortion I have had the recurring dream that I have decapitated my dad (see: paternal grandfather who, along with my grandmother, had custody of me). Always in the dream someone is on the verge of finding out. Last night my mother (see grandmother) was thinking of moving back to Tennessee. In these dreams my dad is usually buried nearby. Last night he was in the back yard. She was thinking of disinterring him and reinterring him in Tennessee. Of course I flipped. I assumed she was going to open the casket at some point and find that while his head would be there, it wouldn't be in its usual location. So I spent the whole dream feeling sick to my stomach at the grisly thing I'd done, wondering why in heaven's name I hacked my beloved dad's head off in the first place, and trying like mad to prevent anyone from discovering what I'd done.

I know I have unresolved issues. My parents were both dead before I even got married. My mom died right before I married. We discussed what she would wear at the wedding, but she didn't make it. Three months after the wedding scarlet hell came knocking in the form of a severe, debilitating pregnancy-related maternal illness that was neglected by just the right group of ignorant, uninterested physicians. Our precious, much-anticipated baby was due on our first wedding anniversary. It was very sweet, but everything was transformed by the illness, and you know the rest of the story. But perhaps my parents don't.

Get ready to send emails:
I'm not exactly sure what happens when we die.

The Bible speaks often of death in terms of sleep. Re: Christ's comment in Luke 23:43: "Jesus answered him, 'I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in paradise.'" The argument is made that the original differs with the modern punctuation and should be read: "Jesus answered him, 'I tell you the truth today, you will be with me in paradise.'"

Also consider that the dead shall rise from their graves at the second coming of Jesus. What are they rising from if they haven't been there all along? Apparently, they are rising to spiritual bodies.

If we rise to spiritual bodies at the moment of death, why then are we told that we will rise from the dead at the time of the Second Coming? (Read all of 1 Corinthians 15 for more on sleeping and Christ being the FIRST to rise to the new body. Also, you'll find the interesting Mormon thing in there; you'll know what I'm talking about when you read it. Ooo, mystery!)

OK, so "Bible corner with Ashli" is only to say that I do think it's possible that right at this moment my (grand)parents are just...dead. I didn't say this was the popular Christian concept, but I've never been one to follow a crowd.

If my folks are, for the moment, kaput, then they don't know the ghastly thing that I've done, which could account for the recurring paternal Pop nightmare! Yes, yes, I've finally gotten back around to that, and it only took me about ten thousand words! WOOHOO!!!

I wonder, "Why my (grand)dad? Why always him?" I loved them both very much; there's no reason for me to mentally lop off his head and not hers. There are no hidden secrets, no abuse, nothing but good vibrations. Why always him?

And I think back to some guy who wrote a crazy paper that, in my mind, immediately discredited pretty much anything he ever had to say. But in my search, I find myself wondering...could any aspect of that be true? Is this symbolic? I.e., somewhere in my biology do I know that my baby was a boy? Because for the life of me, intellectually, I have NO CLUE. Other mothers say they "just know" the sex of their aborted children (although they have zero evidence). I say it's not possible, but what's the point in taking that away from them? And anyway, I'm just trying to find an answer for this freaking dream, so I'm reaching, reaching.

BTW, spare me the reincarnation-related emails. I reject that idea outright, so go spew your Bible hokey pokey somewhere else. (The older I get, the more apt I am to just come right out and say things, coarse as they may be.)

There has GOT to be a reason I keep having this dad-decapitating dream, but I confess I don't know what it is. Perhaps the answer is to let go of the answer and focus on the cure.

My (grand)dad was not maimed. The only person I ever maimed was my child. I know how the dreaded D&E is performed during the 2nd trimester of pregnancy. I know that my child very likey was decapitated, perhaps while already dead from previous abortion-related injuries.

I know David set circumstances so that an innocent man (Uriah) would be killed. I also know that God was neither fooled nor swayed by technicalities; He pointed His almighty finger at David saying, "YOU killed him..." I am guilty. That does not take away the guilt of contributors (such as the abortionist, without whom I never would have killed my child), but I AM GUILTY.

This cannot be "worked out" as the "dream experts" suggest I do. The only One Who can resolve it is Christ Himself. So henceforth I determine to remember to, through the fog of my dreams, call on His name.

The next time I have this dream, I will cry out like a wounded child. I will call the name of Christ, upon whose scarred body my sins rest. It is all I can do. In moments like these I realize that all I really have is Christ.

And He is enough.

:: ashli 7:53 AM # ::
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"In fact, there are 115,000 abortions daily worldwide..."

:: ashli 9:25 PM # ::
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With permission, excerpts from the email of a wounded dad:

"Today I am obsessed with the damage that abortion brought into my life. I don't think I was so obsessed for many years, but it came to the forefront of my mind a few years ago and has not left.

I've often wondered what it would be like to talk to someone who had their closest family members brutally murdered to see if they also struggled with the obsession. Or maybe to talk to parents who have lost all of their children born to them prematurely due to a terrible tragedy. I, too, have been to some Christian based post abortion healing programs and got a lot out of them, but not the seeming 'cure' that some think I should have. I know how well meaning some of the ladies are about their ministry, and I can never take away the good works they really do.

My abortion story:
I was 26 at the time and had a pretty severe problem with drugs and alcohol. I was also quite promiscuous and not the kind of gentlemen I thought I should be because I was of a split mind (spiritually not mentally). Even though I had a girlfriend in another town I had been seeing publicly for over a year I met and fell in love with this young girl at the college I attended. I had cheated on my girlfriend before but it was always the meaningless hookups found in bars that, at the time, I could dismiss inwardly. I didn't expect to fall in love with someone other than the dutiful girlfriend I thought I should marry. But I did.

I couldn't very easily dismiss such an affair. After many weeks of really sweet talks, walks, and simple exchanges of affection we both found ourselves willing to completely consummate the relationship after a night of drinking. Romantic, eh? It only took one night.

Weeks later she calls me up and says she needs to see me and talk. I did have a little apprehension, but not about what I would soon hear. Nothing I had ever thought of could have prepared me for the news that she was pregnant. If you had asked me what my reaction would be just hours before, as a hypothetical question, of course, I doubt I would have told you I wanted to be a father.

After she spoke for a while, and I sat in stunned silence, the only thing I could say was that I would support her and the child no matter what. Abortion wasn't really in my sphere of reality then. I wanted to do the honorable thing in that instant--that was a shock to me as well as to her. She quickly realized that I didn't 'get' that she was scared and was asking me to help her with an abortion. I didn't know what to say, so she said I could have a day or so to think about it.

My next move after leaving her was to go to a bar and have several beers while I pondered the reality breaking over the top of my head. I was a father, and I got that from those words: 'I'm pregnant.' The question before me in that moment was 'Do I want this child?' to which I unhesitatingly was saying yes.

I had plenty of experiences that had shaped that reality and desire, even if I had been reckless and careless with it. I had an older sister who had miscarried several times before giving up and choosing to adopt just the year before. I had heard many stories of other young couples who were trying to have kids and couldn't; I knew the ability to conceive is not a sure thing.

That night, and the next day I expressed my desire to be a father to her child, our child, if she would only consider it. But I also, for some strange reason, told her I would support her decision whatever it was--even abortion. She let me know that she didn't like the idea but she was going through with it, and she couldn't let me talk her out of it; she didn't want to hesitate any longer.

I came by to stay with her that evening after the procedure. I remember earlier in the day staring at the clock when it was supposed to happen and wondering what it would feel like when my child died, if it would feel like anything at all. Due to my drug and alcohol soaked brain such a wonder was a novelty since I had been trying to avoid and escape such inward glances and emotions for years.

No, no spooky winds blew or bells rang. Nothing really happened that I could tell when my child disappeared from life on earth. But I knew. I knew. My conscience had been pricked in the most severe way. The drugs and booze didn't have a chance at covering up the facts for me to face over the coming days, weeks and months.

Tragedy didn't stop with this one child of mine in the years that immediately followed. I went on to father a child, lost to miscarriage, with the first girlfriend after reconnecting with her briefly. Sadly, I was driven to reconnect with the girl who aborted my first child about 18 months after that, and despite my best attempts to avoid the situation she became pregnant and aborted again. By the time these additional two losses had happened I was sober and working a recovery program. I remember just how much I prayed to God to not let me go through the anguish again. I certainly didn't blame myself for the miscarriage, and the second abortion I made clear that I opposed and would not support such a choice.

God is graceful, I suppose, for over a decade I didn't have to deal with that anguish and loss. My life was very narrow, and I didn't date to speak of. I daydreamed about a future where all would be all right and thought it would just happen. I thought in time I would marry and have kids and I could finally be rid of this stone tied to my heart. But that never happened. I wondered why.

Up until 'the great implosion of 2005' [when I found out that the woman who had aborted two of my children was pregnant with her 'first' child] I still clung to the notion that I genuinely supported 'her choice' which is code for her right to abortion. I don't today.

I don't think she had a right to kill our children, and I know she was wrong for doing it. I also know what part I played in making the deaths of those two children possible, right down to not being able to keep my you know what in my pants! The latter part I recognized way back when it happened and have dealt with it in both good and not so good ways. I did quit screwing around. It's only recently that I can see I was literally protecting my sperm from the awful fate of reproduction turned tragic. It was the only power that I had.

I've struggled in the last few years with the burden thinking it isn't supposed to be there, but slowly I've realized that it is. My thorn, my stone to roll, my cross to bear. Back when it first all happened I became extremely suicidal and that did have the benefit of creating an early and low bottom for me as an addict.

It is one thing to look forward to life's end when so many mysteries will be worked out, but it is another to simply want to stop life to stop the questions. In 2005 it all burst so suddenly into my consciousness that it was unbearable. But in striving to understand and to seek out others it has become more manageable.

Maybe giving it to God is something like working out with weights and God only helps assist in the lift but still expects us to use as much of our own strength as possible. I know I can't simply wish it away, say some magical prayer, or take some series of steps and find the pain and struggle simply dissolves, it doesn't. If I could have gotten 'over it,' whatever that means, I am sure I would have.

Like you I have had to fight hard to find answers that I can live with and accept. I had to confront the silly ideas I had planted in me by magazines and radio, television, the kid down the block, the world at large. It isn't natural for me to agree with conservative religious folk but on the issue of abortion I certainly do, and quite a few other things as time has rolled along.

There are bad events in a person's past that can seem trivial after working through them, but the loss of a child in circumstances like abortion is in a different league. It changes people, or at least it changed me. I do know what part I played and having accepted my responsibility for that has helped. But my spirit is deeply broken. I can never have those children or that family, it is gone.

I have fought being present to my own feelings this past year. Partly because of my anger at her and feeling like it is her turn to grieve. I know I need to forgive, and it is something that I work on each day. Sometimes I feel glimpses of it, but many days I retreat into anger.

Always the obsession with what happened long ago hangs over me. I try to cover it with my jacket and hat when I go out each day. Most people don't know about it. But I know. I know."

:: ashli 10:06 AM # ::
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The Inauguration

There is much to say, but I won't. I will quiet my own rational and emotional perspective, for the presidency has arrived. It is here.

I would like to remind you that "although the wicked flourish like weeds, and evildoers blossom with success, there is only eternal destruction ahead of them." (Pslam 92:7) I ask you, "Can unjust leaders claim that God is on their side--leaders who permit injustice by their laws? They attack the righteous and condemn the innocent to death. But the LORD is my fortress; my God is a mighty rock where I can hide. God will make the sins of evil people fall back upon them. He will destroy them for their sins. The LORD our God will destroy them." (Psalm 94:20-3) "O LORD, the God to whom vengeance belongs, O God of vengeance, let your glorious justice be seen!" (Psalm 94: 1-2)

Ohhhh, don't you love it when some Christian lifer immediately "invalidates" herself by spewing out Bible scriptures! Don't forget, I've never NOT thumped out wild cadences across the gleaming leather surface of my Bible (the same kind that Lincoln and other presidents swore in on, a-thump a-thump thump)! The difference is that now I actually pay attention to what's inside and I no longer make erasures or additions.

Thought of the day, btw:
Re: "Christian" abortion supporters:
What is the power of one's faith when one doesn't even believe in what CAN be proven?

I know that we are being asked to respect those who believe in the slaughter of over 3,500 people daily here in our country, and yet how much do any of them respect those who advocate a war that has killed far less people? It's interesting to ponder. However, our job is to dissent where we may, where it is most effective, and then wait on the LORD.

So, re: the current administration, be calm. If our nation appears to be out of control it is only an appearance. He's got the whole world in His hands (and I'm not referring to the current president)!

:: ashli 9:44 AM # ::
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Get ready for the March!

:: ashli 4:21 PM # ::
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Just a note to follow up on the Disney trip.

I drove, because I have terrible motion sickness. If I'm the passenger, I'm literally nauseous by the time I reach the end of the driveway. If I drive I hardly notice a thing. Being the driver this time prevented a reenactment. I find that helps.

I saw no oranges. I wasn't particularly looking for them. If they were there, they were green; I didn't see them. Two points for me.

I was listening to the Story of the World: Ancient Times, and that proved a distraction. Three points.

We stopped for a long lunch. It broke the trip up and provided more distraction. Four.

I was on complete guard due to the company I was keeping (in-laws). More distraction. Five.

For the first time since I lost my child in a second trimester abortion in Orlando, Florida, a trip to Orlando didn't seem like a trip to the gallows. Nothing short of miraculous. Twelve years out of the experience this month, and I can finally drive south without palpitations and sweating.

The hotel room was something I really worried about. Staying in a hotel in Orlando is not a good combination for me. Thankfully, the room that was booked was different. It had two rooms, a kitchen and a living room, so it was more like a little bungalow than a hotel room. Had it been a Holiday Inn, I don't know what I would have done. Probably refused and caused a huge family drama that my in-laws would have added to their gargantuan cache of Reasons to Strongly Dislike Ashli. Thankfully, serendipitously, the hotel room chosen did not allow a reenactment. Score again.

We spent each day with my in-laws, so I was fully mentally/emotionally engaged. Things are so utterly strained there, that it takes all effort to navigate through each moment while outwardly looking like I'm appreciative, relaxed and having fun. And all the deviations lent themselves to the success of that.

I can't say that I had fun on the trip, but I can say that it was bearable and not at all what I'd feared it could be. Everyone else seemed to have a wonderful time, and for that I am most grateful. For me it was merely a speed bump that did not cast me into a headlong tumble down the vortex of a depression that would take an extended period of time to claw my way out of.

And I thank you for praying for me.

:: ashli 11:35 AM # ::
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Union Station/DC Theatre info for 22 Weeks premiere

Phoenix Threatres Union Station

50 Massachusetts Ave NE
Washington, DC 20002


Showing Date/Times:
January 21, 2009
5:00p
6:30p
8:00p

:: ashli 10:50 AM # ::
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