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

:: Sunday, February 07, 2010 ::

We're buying a new house. We were in our old house for 15 years. It's a weird feeling. I like where we're going, but our old home has seen a lot of drama and contains within its walls basically all of my adult history. Also...it's the only place where my first child and me were alive and together.

The surprising thing is that I feel the loss of this house in a way I wouldn't if I had not aborted my little one thirteen years ago. I suppose I still have myself, my womb that I carry with me everywhere, but it's no consolation. There's something awful attached to that "landmark:" it was a temporary home for my child, and then it was a crime scene. It's like the hotel room where 5-year-old Shaniya Davis was defiled and victimized within an inch of her life: not only do you not ever want to go there, you feel it should be firebombed off the face of the earth. So I take no comfort in my own biology; it's no kind of positive focal point for the two of us. Gentle sentimental winds do not blow within those walls.

The new house is nice and roomy. I think how one of our family will not be making the move with us, will not be there to enjoy it or the children across the street. These are unhappy thoughts that were not expected, so I find that I'm still living the abortion experience in different ways and always will. I'm like the 79-year-old Gloria Swanson who, three years before her death, began and ended her memoirs with the loss of her child via abortion. It was the mark-maker, the beginning and end, emotionally all-encompassing.

At the restaurant today my kids and husband went to get their food leaving me sitting alone at the table. Suddenly I was overwhelmed by thought and emotion surrounding our first wee one. Tears fell on the table in such a public place. I had to wipe them quickly up and repair before anyone saw, because how can I explain that I am simply moving and it has triggered something awful and refreshed the deepest agony I have ever known.

The debilitating maternal illness from which I suffered was for a time. Abortion is forever.

I traded diamonds for dirt. Nothing was worth this. Nothing upon nothing.

:: ashli 9:31 PM # ::
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