What Is Not Born

In the loft of your nan’s old barn, the smaller one with the rusting roof that I painted metallic silver for less than minimum wage, lies an empty manger covered in cobwebs.

Of course, it is only a relic from a time long before ours. When your pa who died before we ever got together had been sprung prematurely on his ancestral property - it being part of your maternal family since the nineteenth century - and his parents had been making daily rounds when his mother fell into labour, so they commandeered it following his birth, stolen away from their barnyard animals to prepare a makeshift crib in the middle of the milking room.

I am a worrier so cannot help but worry. Especially when you tell me that everything is alright most all the time, I worry. When you are not fine though are adamant to suggest that you are. Except when you let me in and choose to open up, I’m not so worried anymore.

Still after all this time particular things much more than others make me think of it. Obviously it can wander into mind fairly often, yet meaning the actual gruelling details of the experience. That is not my story to tell, and so I will not, though just know that a part of me (indubitably much smaller than for you) perished in that space that day, too.

Although darkly it is an intimate nightmare to go through and remains your burden, I have to say that I get it. Certain sects of society might try to castigate me for saying so, however anguish does not exist on the basis of one or other. Trauma is not something monopolized at the expense of another’s even if there is standard to quantify grief. And if it could be commodified, I told myself in silence by your bedside table that I wished I could have taken the brunt of it for you - searing ache in your womb, electrical storm of brain.

Everything is still a reminder and if this for me is truth, and it is, I probably cannot even fathom how true it is for you. The thoughts, feelings, and notions that intrude, more than what else. Infants in their strollers being carted down the sidewalk. Endless streams and vlogs on social media channels about any given young mom and their family, that we watch together (awkwardly). People who we grew up with that are about our age and some even younger, and nowadays even friends and family members settling into parenthood, nuclear familyhood, and then as well those blazing examples of courage trekking onward as single mommy’s.

This could have been you; we both know you could have done it without me. Honest to the universe it was as much your decision as it was not mine. Regardless, I know how it is for the voices of heart and mind not to fall in alignment. How could you decide? I realize and recognize my tepid response was the nail in the coffin to an unbearable, unmakeable decision.

I am sorry that I did not embolden you by saying from the get-go: Please do not consider how I feel and make the decision that you feel is best and right for you.

I tried, several times, to do so later on yet comprehend these felt no more than shallow attempts to salvage face and understand fully, with maturity, that perspective of interpretation. Regrets have marriage with remorse and, in the end, I played a part in the whole engagement. Still, I think in any circumstance the outcome would have been the same. This might be ignorant and accurate at the same token, despite held to clear intentions to understand deeper that which I cannot and do not. Maybe nothing I did or said could have helped. Perhaps nothing I do now can render anything different. I saw then all those years ago how it changed you. And now.

Now you are rawer than ever, evolving day by day as the next chapter unfolds.

Though back then, when in the early days like nervous system was jolted out of socket and then as if you were living outside of yourself. Mind is bogged with a dark veil and the world you perceive becomes disjunctive. I know how that is, not in what you went through but from things I’ve endured. Sometimes life can become so intolerable that you lose the will to live. Physiologically, your being gets so sick that there is war to devote self against suicide.

So, abortion might or may not be like that for some person who goes through it, as well. For this reason alone I would monitor you. This you definitely knew; I’m sorry for it. From desperation I made things worse for an entire age of time. I wanted to make sure you were catered to in every way, yet in this attempt completely neglected my own smouldering soul. In all the ways that I could not see, or understand, I must have brought it to a boil even more.

Such as by purposely speaking the word itself instead of talking around it as if it were He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. You see, part of my own condition requires exposing myself to any and all triggers whatsoever. Kindly forcing you to tend to exercise, meditation and breathwork even when you felt like doing nothing. Actually, I am not so much sorry for that. And further, for everything you hurtled my way when you hurt the most and the alcohol merely numbed what was dead inside, and marijuana caused it to simmer, I forgave you immediately every single time. Both parties have come so far since then. So have I.

For me, the idea of someone I cared deeply for suffering as much me was not palatable. Although back then I did everything to avoid confronting that sentiment. I could not realize it was a journey that was to be singularly on your time, your pain, your healing onus; I could not see beyond mine own dark haze enough to catch my feeble attempts to part yours. Now I know and hold to heart much as anything that we cannot stop the rain for another, not under any circumstance. We can only be there for each other, stand by while the rainclouds weep.

For me, misery was blinding and all-consuming; only just now am I getting back autonomic controls to regain semblance of stillness in fractured pieces of mind. Thus do I realize you’ve had yours under control since potentially years prior. Transference, it is I think referred to as in psychology. So much I felt happening was personal perception, a mirror to my own past which refracted very little for you. Without emotional insight the intellect is essentially broken.

Recovery, for both of us, has taken years. Your part to me, as well mine for you, deep slivers, sometimes gashes amidst greater tales of sorrow, renewal. As we sleep some nights I watch you, and the venom which remains is seen clearly. Depression gleans around the eyelids down through lines in the cheekbones toward the chin, and anxiety in waking eyes as inner state broils churning the unhealed wounds. For what remains unspoken, says I that a vessel is vehicle and the soul will find another home. This goes beyond my role, as discussed. Yet how to harken biology to register beyond chemically imprinted limitations?

What I can promise is never to tell you how to think or feel ever again. I am not you nor does anyone have the prerogative to instill anything past kindness. Love is the end-all-be-all and its depths solely a compass for support and transmission. All my concepts are mine own and spirit, which goes farther than all form, must figure things out independent.

There is more that I cannot so will not say. Parts of our story’s, even as how they are concerned with others, will always remain private. For the sake of some thing unquantifiable.

Now on a spring afternoon we stand in the center of the barn under wedding bells and mistletoe, a Christmas touch that you insisted on including in our big day. Each gaping barndoor stands ajar and neat haystacks seat a modest gathering of loved ones who beam at us, where we stand down the aisle at the altar. Nanny’s farmhouse amid rolling green glades stretch along the horizon before we and gazes behold us excitedly as tears dampen many an eye, but we are looking at each other as the old matriarch officiates, as you insisted.

We are at the finale of wedding ceremony and after the vows, after the kiss, when you are smiling up at me it easy to note how much freer you’ve become. A shine is in the eyes which I have never known, not even before the trauma. Such freedom in the face of pain is the truest kind of way you can ever be free. It is having freed yourself even whilst dredged in the healing of steep sufferings. Even after climbs we both once felt totally insurmountable.

In your gaze I see as always someone who one day will be the best mother, and already is the finest love, friend, nurse, compassionate human. There is tenderness and empathy in your being which knows no bounds, that without doubt will reach into the ether someway, either directly or indirectly before your time this time round has come. Soon with our honeymoon we depart home to embark on a passage of travel, backpacking tour, just as you insisted.

And the healing will continue, like we intend. Life is not passage through what is here now for something else, nor a journey. It is music. The melody which plays flows and ebbs as with the changing of songs on the radio. Sometimes chaos and others peace. At certain times it can stay one thing for a prolonged chord. It remains to us that we harness any moment to the best of our prowess, and for the greatest most expansive souls to face contestation beyond reason or rationality until the frequency steeping them is driven to conclusion. Nothing is final or complete about adventure and the path we dance is ever winding. All we do is keep going. You never give up until one day you have been living in harmony, and the past pain that you once felt so mired by is long since processed and released. Don’t believe me? Then keep on. Forge ahead.

Because I have experienced the rapture. Fresh energies which flow in and burst out of your body like violet flames. Psychotic depression. Dissociation. OCD/Pure-O. PTSD. These variables are not so scary when you move towards them with knowledge of eternity. And there is nothing you could ever do or have happen to you that makes you ANY less worthy of unconditional and nirvanic love, peace, joy, and healing. Elysium awaits inside of you.

As we kiss at our wedding day I see a person I’ve shared six years and countless moments, memories, happiness and pains with. And whose own growth has enabled them to witness and encapsulate such wonders, as well. The one who I share my tomorrow with and that, barriers broken, aside we have toppled obstacles, stigma, and shattered the unconsciousness.

Truth is absolute. There is no method nor proper formula to living. You can chase who you want and strive to be going forward despite who you were at worst, in darkest moments.

The masses mental is buried below, so much deeper than six feet under. Wake up. It is your right. We have all wronged. We have all been wronged. Where does blame end and acceptance begin? Stop being who they tell you to be, allow the beacon of soul fire to light. At the extent of it, beside we are here and no one can take that away from us. Till death do us part.