I cannot settle, cannot fall asleep, have been unable to sleep for the last few weeks. Every time I lay down, I feel the heavy unease deep within, the stirring in my belly. Something is not right.
A glance through my diary reveals nothing. I frantically rip through the pages, trying to jolt my memory into recognition. Still nothing. The fast pace of my city life, the hundreds of people I encounter each week, the whirl of my social life – it’s all a timeless blur to me, and I can’t attribute any dates to these events.
Each day is a struggle. I feel the life growing and dying inside of me, the heart beating sometimes with hope, sometimes anxiety, pulsating with the energy of a life that wants to be lived, felt, savoured, experienced… and whose potential I continue to suppress.
I have tested it, just to be sure. It says there is nothing there, but I just know. I can feel it. I am swelling up, rounded and swollen from my wounds, heavy with the burden. It is growing daily and I am powerless to halt it.
My body has become detached from my mind. My hair, a voluminous bouffant of frizz and unruliness, refuses to co-operate with my GHDs. My blood sugar levels are uncontrollable, defying the attempts of the Guggel herbs that have worked so well thus far. Despite my inner resolve, my hand repeatedly reaches for the left-over Christmas jar of Celebrations chocolates, the pile of empty wrappers covering the top few inches of the bin, a testament to my loss of control.
Though perceptible perhaps only to myself, I am beginning to resemble a mid-90s pop star, my rounded belly nestled between the waistband of skin-tight jeans and a tight t-shirt that barely covers the growing mound. I wonder which spineless cad has left me in this nauseous pit of worry and destruction, and it makes me yearn for a long-forgotten time, when sex was still unconditional, non-politicised and altogether more innocent.
The stirring inside me is unrelenting. The contractions and the nausea and the pain and the anxiety, and I am floored by its intensity. Whatever the outcome now, it will have touched my life, etched another indelible trauma upon my soul, added another defensive layer for the next poor sod who may or may not come along to peel off. I will be forever bound to the deluded sod who thought he could project all his fantasies and ideals onto me, who fought to stop me from running, but who then ran himself; sprinted, disappeared, melted, disintegrated, until it was as though his physical self had never existed. Except for the painful, pulsating evidence that remains inside me.
In the morning I awake. The contractions and bloatedness have gone, replaced by intense, crippling fatigue. A familiar sensation of dread I have experienced many times before, but not for nearly 4 months now. I look down in time to see the familiar dark-red droplets stain the toilet bowl.
It is back.
I got my period.
A glance through my diary reveals nothing. I frantically rip through the pages, trying to jolt my memory into recognition. Still nothing. The fast pace of my city life, the hundreds of people I encounter each week, the whirl of my social life – it’s all a timeless blur to me, and I can’t attribute any dates to these events.
Each day is a struggle. I feel the life growing and dying inside of me, the heart beating sometimes with hope, sometimes anxiety, pulsating with the energy of a life that wants to be lived, felt, savoured, experienced… and whose potential I continue to suppress.
I have tested it, just to be sure. It says there is nothing there, but I just know. I can feel it. I am swelling up, rounded and swollen from my wounds, heavy with the burden. It is growing daily and I am powerless to halt it.
My body has become detached from my mind. My hair, a voluminous bouffant of frizz and unruliness, refuses to co-operate with my GHDs. My blood sugar levels are uncontrollable, defying the attempts of the Guggel herbs that have worked so well thus far. Despite my inner resolve, my hand repeatedly reaches for the left-over Christmas jar of Celebrations chocolates, the pile of empty wrappers covering the top few inches of the bin, a testament to my loss of control.
Though perceptible perhaps only to myself, I am beginning to resemble a mid-90s pop star, my rounded belly nestled between the waistband of skin-tight jeans and a tight t-shirt that barely covers the growing mound. I wonder which spineless cad has left me in this nauseous pit of worry and destruction, and it makes me yearn for a long-forgotten time, when sex was still unconditional, non-politicised and altogether more innocent.
The stirring inside me is unrelenting. The contractions and the nausea and the pain and the anxiety, and I am floored by its intensity. Whatever the outcome now, it will have touched my life, etched another indelible trauma upon my soul, added another defensive layer for the next poor sod who may or may not come along to peel off. I will be forever bound to the deluded sod who thought he could project all his fantasies and ideals onto me, who fought to stop me from running, but who then ran himself; sprinted, disappeared, melted, disintegrated, until it was as though his physical self had never existed. Except for the painful, pulsating evidence that remains inside me.
In the morning I awake. The contractions and bloatedness have gone, replaced by intense, crippling fatigue. A familiar sensation of dread I have experienced many times before, but not for nearly 4 months now. I look down in time to see the familiar dark-red droplets stain the toilet bowl.
It is back.
I got my period.
I am not pregnant.
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