I left home. Not with the intention of never going back, but I left behind something I just didn’t want to face. It felt absolutely cowardly and pathetic, but…it almost felt like life or death. I don’t know how else to put it without sounding so dramatic. But maybe dramatics are necessary. When something becomes a life-and-death matter, maybe we need to bring to light the severity of the situation instead of brushing it off as overreacting or being too sensitive. It’s what’s gotten me here, believing my thoughts aren’t as scary as they actually are, and maybe I need to stop treating them like something that’ll just magically go away.
But maybe, hope against hope, they’ll turn into something I can carry around with me. Something I can just toss in my purse rather than hook onto a chain and lock to my ankle. Maybe, over time, I can learn what it’s like to not have my depression define me but rather be something that I’ve learned to live with. With the good days and the bad days. With the help and support. Like from James.
I feel like the self-destructive behavior I put myself through should be enough to have me committed. It’s almost enough for me to exist. Act like a normal human being, participate as a citizen in society. I want to be able to tell James that I just want him to hold me and tell me everything’s going to be okay even though we don’t know if it will be. I want to tell him my feelings, as inconsistent asthey are, are something I really don’t know how to control. They build and pile on top of each other until it’s too much. But what happens after I decide it’s too much? What if I start pushing him away again? He can only put up with so much. And I can’t ask him to be more patient with me.
All of this, this crushing feeling like the pressure is going to vaporize me, makes me want to just disappear. And I don’t mean that in a whimsical, magic trick-type of way. Existing is so hard. It’s so fucking hard. And how easy would it be if I just…didn’t. If I could just go away and all of my problems would go with it. Wouldn’t that just be grand?
I don’t know when the tears started falling, but they’re falling off my chin and landing on my skin. On the keyboard, on my lap, everywhere. She’s hurting so much, and all I’ve seen from her is anger and frustration and resentment because I couldn’tseeher. I couldn’t understand her. Instead, I pushed and pushed, wanting to know all these things without realizing I wasn’t ready to hear it. But now I’ve read it, sorted and arranged it in front of me. I’ve seen and felt it. I feel like she’s reached between her ribcage and squeezed out her heart through the small space just so she could show me the sides of it I wasn’t aware of. All the sad parts and the dark parts and the hurting parts. All turned away from me, leaving me so blind and stupid.
I go back to the inbox to confirm it’s the last one she sent. The most recent among the sea of emails dating as far back as nine years ago. She never addressed the last one to anyone like she did before. She didn’t even sign off on it. It was written like a journal entry with no rhyme or reason, but it made complete sense to her. She went through the motions of coming back to these emails and adding another entry. It’s become a healing part of her journey without her even realizing it.
And maybe now, I can add more entries of my own.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Kendall
THEN
“What about Blossom?”
I look at James like he just suggested we have raw squid for dinner. “Blossom. Like a flower?”
He shrugs, my toes spread apart and held between his fingers. He presses a knuckle into my sole, and I suppress a moan. “I thought it sounded pretty.”
“We are not naming our daughter after Mayim Bialik.” Another roll against those sore achy joints and I hum a sigh against our couch cushions. He’s so good with his hands.Sogood.
“You know she’s a neuroscientist.” Another one of his random facts.
I lean up against my elbows to eye him with a nonthreatening glare. “So, you think if we name our daughter Blossom, she’ll grow up to be a neuroscientist?”
“Unless you want to name her Mayim,” he teasingly suggests. I shake my head, and he throws an offhand, “Doesn’t hurt to try.”
I lay back, my shoulders shaking. I land a playful punch to the bottom of James’s sock-covered foot, and he taps my shoulder with his big toe. We’re sitting on our couch, one of theonly pieces of furniture in our new home, and we’re positioned so we’re facing each other, my feet cradled in his sure hands and his own poking the bluish-gray polyester near my ear. We went for a darker shade when it came to our upholstery. With a baby on the way, we thought anything in the white or beige category would be a dangerous choice.
I still have about ten weeks left of my pregnancy. Right now, the baby’s the size of a cantaloupe, not quite ready to be taken out of the oven but getting close. Parts of her are still incomplete, and we’re waiting out the final stretch with the start of our nesting period. We moved into our new house a few weeks ago, and while the larger furnishings have been brought in, we haven’t taken the time to really make it our home. We have a fridge and a dining table, the same one we bought while we were in my old apartment, but there aren’t any plants or paintings. No framed pictures or refrigerator magnets. No throw pillows or scented candles. Those are still in the boxes in the garage.
I’ve been spending the majority of my pregnancy on what feels like a pendulum. The news came to us as a surprise, just like the last time, but it was different. We’re married now, a small ceremony followed by an equally small reception dinner. We took over a local steakhouse, turning the main dining area into the smallest dance floor known to mankind with a simple two tier cake. It was perfect. Simple and intimate and so appropriately us. And then suddenly, we’re pregnant. Those two pink lines confirmed that the constant bouts of nausea weren’t some bad lunch meat or indigestion. And the squiggly ultrasound video and the flutter of a heartbeat further confirmed that assumption. While we were more ready than we were before, I became vividly aware of all the things that could happen while I was growing life inside me.
What if we lost the baby again? What if, regardless of me being pregnant a second time, we really aren’t meant to have afamily together, and I’d lose this baby just like I lost the last? And it would happen again and again until I gave up. Until it broke me from the inside. After some time passed, my fears didn’t disappear. They changed. Those worries about losing the baby to another miscarriage watered down into the fear that I wouldn’t be a good mother. That I wouldn’t love this baby as much as I loved the first. That something would happen to her after she’s born. There are so many freak stories about babies being kidnapped, some even in the hospital just hours after they’re born. I started to wake up in the middle of the night, startled from a nightmare where I couldn’t find the baby. I was holding her one second, peppering kisses to her silky hair while she slept in my arms, and then she was gone. Vanishing into thin air.
And my biggest fear. What if this baby erased my past and I forgot all about the one that never was? What if this was finally the end to my grief? What if I finally had to move on?
A sharp kick to my side has me wincing, bringing me out of my tormented spiral. I lay a hand on my large belly and shift positions.
“You okay?”
I nod. “She sure likes to play punching bag with my liver.”
James watches me like a pot of simmering water, waiting for it to reach boiling point. Once the pain subsides, I relax back into the small nest we’ve created. James settles himself between my legs, his face inches from the underside of my belly.
“Hey, you,” he says with a stern voice that’s wholesome. I laugh at his attempt at discipline. “You better watch it. You can’t go around kicking Mommy whenever you want.” He has his hand running along where my belly button is turned inside out, and another sharp kick hits his palm.
We both laugh. “I don’t think she likes the way you’re talking to her.”
He kisses my stomach and rests his cheek along the spot where “Not–Blossom” just expressed her protest. His hand slips under my shirt, running possessive sweeps over my overstretched skin. I try to play it cool. Like his touch doesn’t send shivers up my spine every time he manages to sneak a feel. A hand slipped under my shirt with the desire to feel my stomach, a playful slap on my ass, an “accidental” brush against my chest when he’s walking by me.
He maneuvers around my stomach and lies down so he’s next to me.
