at this moment - as i type these words - sixteen years ago, i was fighting to keep a smile on my face. i was in pain, scared, sad, frustrated and miserable. i had to keep the smile, since i wasn't alone and i didn't feel that i could let anyone see how i really felt.
i was lying in a hospital bed, in a hospital i had set foot in once (for pre-op work) in 22 years. it was the hospital my beloved grandmother died in. i had sworn i'd never, ever go back there. yet there i was.
in my room were my dad and stepmum, two aunts and an uncle. a friend was waiting in the hall to visit. i didn't want any of them there. i wanted to be alone.
sixteen years ago my life came to an end. the life i'd planned for, dreamed of and wished for since i was just a little girl. it was all gone with the slice of a scalpel.
3 months prior i was diagnosed with low-malignant borderline ovarian cancer. slow growing, they said. had it for years, they said. ovaries must come out. i saw several fertility and cancer specialists in an attempt to harvest eggs but they all said it was highly unlikely any would be viable. my surgeon promised to leave my uterus intact, maybe i could find a donor they said.
after surgery, the doctor said she was sorry, but they had to take the uterus too. the "slow-growing" cancer that they had scraped off my uterine wall when they found it 3 months prior had grown back already and had spread too far.
no babies for me. not ever.
to say i was devastated would be putting it mildly. i was put on suicide watch in the hospital. one of my friends (a nurse) was to come stay with me, but there was a very bad winter storm and i didn't want her on the roads between towns in that weather. she had two children and i couldn't let her take a chance on an accident.
that first night after surgery, i lay in that bed with those horrible balloon things on my legs (to prevent clots), sweating and crying. i was so hot! i kept begging them to turn down the heat and they had. but hitting full blown menopause in an instant is a bitch.
i was released from the hospital after a few days. days i spent trying to smile as my friend brought her two daughters to see me and my mum's friend came to see me and brought her daughter. it was like everyone was shoving what i couldn't have in my face.
worse, when i finally returned to work i found my direct supervisor's wife had become pregnant while i was out. as had my best friend. pregnant women and babies were everywhere i looked. i couldn't escape.
i became so much more miserable. i pretty much gave up. i gave up on friends, on finding a relationship, on having any type of family. i gave up on wishing and dreaming. i gave up on living.
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back in august of 2019, i took a trip that shifted something inside me. in december of that year, i chose the word gratitude for my word for 2020. i don't know about you, but around about march i felt maybe i wouldn't be able to find anything to be grateful for during 2020.
i was wrong. i found everything to be grateful for.
i found gratitude for grocery store clerks who could still be polite and smile and wish you a good day even when they'd been on their feet with rude greedy people being mean to them all day.
i found gratitude for the postal carriers who did their best when their bosses took away important equipment at the whims of a cry-baby tyrant that made their jobs so much harder.
i found gratitude for neighbors of siblings/relatives who know how to sew and made masks for people who don't know how.
i found gratitude for artists who created free programs to share with others so we would have some fun and maybe make a few connections in a digital world.
i even found gratitude in the chaos and dis-unity as it taught me who i could trust and who i couldn't. it helped me see who needed to be cut from my life.
i found gratitude in so many places, for so many things.
the most important thing...
i found gratitude in living.
the words came to me one morning back in the autumn as i was writing my morning pages and had just one blank line left to fill. i was searching my brain for affirmations and this one flowed out of my pen before i even realized what i was writing.
i am grateful to be alive.
some days are still very hard. the longing for children to love and guide is still there, but only occasionally. the sadness that i'll never have grandchildren to spoil and teach to love the earth and each other, still stings. but i'm better most days.
most days...
so, it's been sixteen years today... i don't think of it as an anniversary. it certainly isn't something i celebrate. i think of it more as a memorial day. a memorial to the children i would have had, loved, cared for and helped blossom into spectacular human beings. a memorial to the children of those children, and so forth.
i'm learning to accept that the gods had a plan and my being a mother wasn't part of it. i am learning to trust that it is okay.
i can dream other dreams. i can wish for other things. i can still find a relationship (hopefully?). i can still want things. i can still be grateful.
yes... i am grateful to be alive.
thank you for reading...
love, kisses & magical wishes...
~*~
