Prelude to my poem & The Poem

What exactly am I doing here?  What do I think I can achieve putting my pen to paper or fingers to keys?

I don’t know what’s real anymore, I don’t think I can go on living the life I have fallen into.  That’s how I feel, that I’ve fallen into this life and these relationships.  I keep thinking I will wake up soon and it will all be gone, my children my partner, my home.  It just can’t be real I can’t feel it.

I search myself for some sort of emotion but I feel numb.  I feel as though I am medicated, but I am not.  I feel sad but not much else.  Sadness born from frustration and anger with the world, with my partner but most of all with myself.

I love my children, I must do, but I don’t feel it.  I would never tell them that.  My beautiful daughter.  I remember back to my pregnancy and the childbirth.  I remember taking it all in my stride because I felt no emotion.  Although I felt loss, a loss from the past maybe.  Something underlying that I had refused to look in the face of and deal with when it happened.  I felt that I would lose her so I didn’t allow myself to get attached. 

As the weeks went on I convinced myself that something would happen and she would be taken away from me somewhere along the line.  There was no way I would be so lucky as to keep something so precious.  When they told me of her distress and rushed us into theatre all I could think was ‘is it now?’

When she was finally born and she didn’t cry, I held my breath and prepared myself for the worst, and that was the longest few minutes of my life.  Then I heard her cry and I allowed the emotions to surface.  Machines beeped and freaked out and people’s faces told me something wasn’t right.  They called my name and asked me what was going on, was I okay? What was happening?.  So I had to put the emotion back in it’s box, I calmed myself down, detached myself again, the machines stopped beeping, the concern fell from their faces but I felt numb.  I was unable to let myself go, I didn’t want to cause a fuss.

It was a long 3 days in hospital, but I enjoyed being with my baby, I enjoyed the visitors and the attention.  Then we went home and there was nobody to greet us only an untidy room and no milk for tea.  I felt cheated again, I felt as if that was it and I came back down to earth with a bump.  I convinced myself it was just baby blues and that it would pass.  But it didn’t.  It didn’t pass, instead it became “the norm”. 

I was offered counselling after the birth of my second child and I thought perhaps that would help me understand.  Instead it made me feel worse and each session seemed like just an excuse for me to cry into someone else’s tissues for a change.  Nothing profound, no reasoning.  When I felt brave I’d tell her how I really felt, that I felt no real bond with my child.  It was explained away, apparently the kind of behaviour exhibited by someone who had lost a child in the past, but that wasn’t me was it?  I refused to let myself think about that.  I’d convinced myself it was nothing it was too early to be anything near a baby when I bled.  It was something that changed my life without asking me first.  It was something which haunts me still, and I feel like a fraud.  How dare I mourn for someone I had never even met.  Did I have more love for that ‘idea of a child’ than I had for my own flesh and blood child?  Did I wish that I had seen that baby on the screen in the hospital?

Sadness washed over me again even though I should have been happy.  I had accepted the proposal in some sort of desire to feel better, misguided it seems.  I felt as though if I tried to live the life I would feel the life, it hasn’t worked.  I still have my bad days, years after the events I write about them.  The emotion fresh in my mind as the day it all happened.  The beginning of the end.

The Poem:
Alone I'm sitting in my room
Alone in pain and fear
Dreading what I'm feeling
Dreading to make it clear

I knew I couldn't keep it
Thats only if it's there
A life, that part of you and me
I wasn't sure you'd care

The pain it started suddenly
Reality, tears hit home
I wasn't sure of what to do
So down and all alone

Was this the way I wanted?
Was this my wish come true?
Was this future I was carrying
Or just me feeling blue?

The arguements came quickly
The pain too much to bear
Eventually I told you
How little did you care?

The two words that I thought of
I'm not sure if you said
Did you even say, "I'm sorry"
And mean, "I'm glad it's dead"

I wish that I had had the strength
To tell you what I feared
Instead I've left it up to now
Too late by many years.