Deposition in The Night

Ten months have passed since losing Laurel.  The anniversary is approaching.  My deadline for filing a grievance with my insurance company is closing in.  Spring is blooming.  Soon, I won't have to count the seasons with memories of last year's useless gestational milestones.  Soon, I will get a fresh start.

I no longer feel broken.  Wounded, healing, but not broken.  I feel exactly where I should be with the infant loss piece of my tragedy.  I am full of sadness and acceptance for my dead baby, the little handful of ashes on my dresser, the sad place in my heart.  It's starting to be okay.  The other parts of me are poking up their spring-green tips after the winter, twining tentatively around the loss, setting forth this year's buds, weaving everything together.  Integrating the loss more than accommodating it.  That is huge.  It is progress.

Harder has been the abortion piece.  Not the procedure.  I can remember my procedure without any ill feeling.  I reach out to my clinic sometimes, finding an excuse to call.  They're helping me with my paperwork, but there's a good dose of conversation and support in every clerical interaction.  I can even talk to my genetic counselor and high-risk OB again, an association that was traumatic for a long time. 

It's the cultural isolation and the fear of retribution that hasn't left me.  This sense of being marginalized and misunderstood.  Still now, nearly a year out, I flinch at political yard-signs.  Signs that have nothing to do with a woman's right to choose.  Signs for local school committee candidates.  But signs mean elections and elections mean politics and politics mean stodgy old coots gleefully riling up popularity by vilifying me and smugly wiping out my safe and legal options -- wishing a lonely, shameful death on me at the hands of some quack in the back alley.

I have nightmares about this -- about being out of options.  I have nightmares about taking terrifying risks to have my procedure.  Nightmares about being kidnapped on my way to my procedure.  Nightmares about protesters rush into my OR mid procedure and kill my doctor or carry me off.  Nightmares about not making it in time and having Laurel torn from me and hooked up to machines to keep the heart beating.  Nightmares in which I am sent to prison.  Nightmares in which Elsie is taken away from me.  One epic and terrifying nightmare in which I beat a protester to a bloody pulp.

I wake in the night, every night, and immediately launch into my explanations.  I explain myself to these legislative bodies across the country who are choking abortion access down week by week.  I explain myself to religious zealots.  I explain myself to the doctors who undermine their patients' access to safe and legal termination (yes, it happens all the time).  I explain myself to picketers.  I explain myself to the murderers of my would-be Doctor, Dr. Tiller, and to the stalkers and harassers of my actual doctor.  I explain myself for hours and hours into the night.  Explain myself and my choice to all of these people...

People I will never meet.  People who do not exist in my bedroom at 3:00 am.

I -- and only I -- am there to hear it.

***

I have gained wisdom  insight, and peace from so many sources over this past year.  Friends, family, strangers, my wonderful therapist, support groups, Buddhist philosophers, The Bible, my yoga practice and my yoga teachers -- all of these have helped me and taken me so far.  But the fear persists.

I am seeking a new kind of help for this.  I've gone back to the hypnotist.  Hypnosis is, in equal measures, an act of emotional desperation and a logical tool to address a miserable bad habit.  It has helped me in the past.  If it doesn't help me now, at least it won't hurt.

My first session was two days ago.  It was very different than childbirth prep hypnosis.  It involved inner-child talk.  It felt a little weird and a little fruity, but I thought, "what the hell." and gave it my all.

The big surprise came when my hypnotist asked me to say, "I love and accept myself."

I couldn't do it.  Not the first time.  But giving it my all means trying again.  And again.  And again.  Saying it even if I don't quite believe it.  Opening my cold heart to believing.

***

I haven't had a nightmare since.  I still wake at night, but I am able to fall asleep again without even thinking about abortion.  How strange and surprising.