The Screaming Soul

I should have learn from experience

I read a story earlier today. A little tale that reminded me of the horror that is myself. I knew I had to read this story, no matter how much it hurt. No matter how much it dredged up my own memories...

Even before the conclusive results to the test jumped up and smacked me in the face, I knew. I felt it inside me. For a couple of weeks, the uneasy uncertainty had chewed away at the back of my mind. As much as I tried to ignore it, the feeling of dread refused to dislodge itself from my throat.

His mum rang to ask how was doing. Her words of comfort were, "maybe one day when you're in a more secure relationship..." I asked, "you mean with Jarrod right?" "Yeah." She replied hesitantly, "or with someone else..."

He told me that I could talk to him about it, that he didn't want me to hide my feelings and block him out. He thoughtfully pointed out that this problem was his responsibility too. I would wrap my arms around my stomach, and feel as if an immense stone wall rested between us.

"It's so hard to pretend everything's alright when there is something living inside me. Even so young, it has a beating heart and all its fingers and toes. Do you have any idea how that feels?"
He replied firmly. "Look, as I said before, maybe in a few years it would be really neat to have a child but now is not the right time."

At these words, I would seeth inside with resentment and anger. I knew this I didn't need him to convince me, I just needed him to understand how it felt.    He needed me to act as if it didn't even

exist.

No excuses we tried to make, served to lessen the guilt. I couldn't blame this on my age.   We made a decision. There was no justification for the decision we made. Excuses are hard to make when you have a six year old daughter. Especially when said daughter would often ask, "When can I have a little brother mum?"

I would look at my daughter and the guilt would nail me that much harder.

I was seventeen when I was pregnant with her. And I came so close to having an abortion back then. This fact being yet another sharpened spear of self-accusation to drive itself into my brain. Inside me now, grew a child with a chance to turn out as beautiful and happy and full of life as the six year old girl who stood before me, asking for a sibling to play with. If I had followed through with the abortion back then, my little best friend would never have had a chance at existance. So why was I tearing this one out of my body?

What if it had been her?

I felt the maternal need to protect my unborn child. I would hold my arms around my stomach in an embrace. As I cried, I would worry that the stomach convulsions caused by my heartbreak were distressing it. Even though I knew I was going to kill it anyway.

Each day, I floated in limbo. Staring at baby photos of my daughter, reliving her birth, reliving her little list of 'first's'. My daughters words would haunt me at night as I lay in bed crying.

I'd imagine her playing in the back yard with that longed for brother. I didn't know of course, if I was carrying a boy or girl. But in my hopeless day dreams, I had a son.

As I dragged myself through each day with the weight of guilt riding on my shoulders, I'd tell myself that I was strong enough to ignore the voice of accusation. But how could I ignore it? How could I avoid it when it spoke with a crystal clear scream inside my head?

Months earler I had started a training course. I had ambitions to do something with my life. To lead a good example for my daughter, rather than rot away inside the house day in and day out. Now was just not the right time. This did nothing to lessen the guilt.

The nurse handed me the 'you can't change your mind after this' pills. They would prepare my body for the abortion. And once they slipped down my throat, there would be no going back. Right then, I was standing before two doors, and I still wasn't sure which was the right one.  And I felt so numb. Everything felt so surreal. I hid within myself and allowed auto-pilot to guide the pills onto my tongue, and the water to slip through my lips. There.

The cramps started sooner than I had expected. I lay on the hospital bed and stared up at the ceiling. Wondering. Imagining that it was the baby trying to protest against its own murder. My boyfriend sat beside me and tried to lend his support. He didn't understand. He wasn't carrying a baby inside him. I wanted to scream.

A curtain seperated us from another couple, and so on and so on, right down the ward. I could hear a girl crying. She had just returned to her little section of hell, having just had her procedure. I heard the nurse wheel her past. I wanted to reverse time for that girl as much as I wanted to turn it back for myself. And so I stared at the ceiling while I clutched my stomach and silently cried.

They gave me the remains to bring home and bury. A glass container within a brown paper bag. For discretion. I sat that bag beside me in the car as if it were a damn McDonalds Happy Meal.

I can no longer look at a brown paper bag in the same innocent light that I used to.

I opened the jar, to pour its contents into a large pot of soil. And I saw things in that liquid mass... things that made me suddenly realise the horrific magnitude of what I had done.

It was then that I fell into as many pieces as there were floating in that container. Realisation of what I had done, hit me with the force of a Mac truck. I crumbled beneath the weight of my own horror. My own guilt.

As I tipped the remains of my child into that soil, I tipped out my soul with it. I poured out the very essense of me.  In this action, I realised just what I really was. A weak little coward.  It's not as if I had ever had a high self-opinion, but until that moment, I never realised just how low my self worth was.

It was the recognisable parts that shredded my mind into little pieces.  I wanted to turn my head away, and get the burial over and done with. But I had to see. I knew I deserved to suffer. And so I watched the red liquid tumble out from the jar. Only, it wasn't just liquid. And as pieces plopped out onto the blood soaked soil I picked them up.

And no amount of grief and tears shed over those remains, would reverse the decision I had made. I buried myself in that hole too. Nothing would turn back the clock, but I knew I would spend the rest of my life travelling back in time anyway. Through my memories.

And so there I was, looking down at the severed spine of a baby in the palm of my hand. My baby. Each one of the excuses I had made for murdering my unborn child, crashed down over top of me. Pressing down around all sides. Choking me. Filling my mouth with dirt. Blinding my eyes with dirty tears. Pouring my soul into that soil within the pot. To keep my child company in his final resting place.

Nothing could justify what I had done.

I should have known. I thought I could handle having an abortion. I thought I could push it out of my mind and carry on with my life.   But since that day, my life has slipped further and further out of my grasp.

Sure I shoved the memory out of my mind. In fact I buried it so far within myself, the dirt of my own conscience caved in and suffocated me. Leaving me completely devoid of any emotion at all. For a while.

Now each day I wake up and dig that hole all over again. That is, if I've managed to actually go to sleep. Because you see, I can push the guilt of my second child out of my waking thoughts, but it's still there in my sub-conscious. And guilt has a really fine knack of filtering it's way back into the waking mind. Like Freddy Kruegar, it attacks while you sleep. Therefore, I try my damnedest not to sleep.

I thought I would do something with my life. I thought I would get a good job and be someone my daughter would be proud of. But right now, I can't. My life came to a grinding halt the moment I poured my second child into a pot of soil. I gave it my soul, for company. Since then, I feel as I exist - but I don't live. This computer has become my life support system. It enables me hide from the damning reality of my own existance. Most of the time. Some people bury their misery in alcohol or drugs. I bury mine in the hard drive of my computer. I pour out my pain into words. The words don't relate to my lost child, they relate to anything else but.

Every day is ground hog day. I've lost touch with reality. I've lost touch with my friends and family. I've even lost touch with my daughter. The one that lives. But I can't face reality. Everytime I try, I feel the self-loathing crash upon me once more. I'm lower than dirt.

There is a Peace Lily in my lounge. Actually, there are several. Most of them flourish in their pots. Except for one. One plant is sick. It's been this way for nine months now. In the dirt around it are little ornaments. A statue of a baby unicorn. A heart on a stick. A letter Z, made from polyresin - with little zebra's on it. It looks like something one might put on the bookcase in a baby's bedroom. But instead, it rests under the sick drooping leaves of a sad floundering lily.

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