When Loneliness Comes Stalking
It happens at odd times, unexpected, vaporous, a loneliness combined with longing. A stabbing, hollow loneliness, a perpetual one.
All those babies, I miss them everyone, miscarriages, only a few weeks, but real nonetheless. They never got to see the light of day, nor feel the thump of a heartbeat.
But the worst is my loneliness for a baby boy named Joseph, a perfect child, his name came to me after he perished and I held him in my arms. That was after I pushed him out too early. A boy whose life was sacrificed to save my own.
He is a secret I’ve kept, or at least only whispered about. But now the need is great for the world to know about the loneliness that stalks me, many women, the knowledge that I could have been . . . would have been . . . one of those new Georgia statistics, that I live, but that meant he would die.
That choice, I don’t wish on anyone and it is not done frivolously, only through desperate moments of terror, pain, tears, screams, confusion, dread and no escape. Worst of all that moment, that decision never dissolves or fades, no matter how it ends. The loneliness stalks even when you least expect it, when you are suddenly feeling happiness, or hope, or joy, that’s when the loneliness comes in stealth and can surround and choke me until I am robed in the cloth of grief and yearning and loneliness for that little Joseph whose hand I held, who I apologized to, who I apologize to every day when loneliness comes stalking.
And why loneliness? Because a decision like that was made by me, I had to make the call, alone, in my fright, alone and lonely, looking for anyone, anything besides me to blame.
Yet I will always be grateful for my few moments with my baby boy, and forever grateful that the choice was mine with the compassionate honesty of a trusted physician and not a stranger in his leather government chair passing his draconian judgement from afar.
Just Carrie 