Excerpt: A Letter To My Dead Child

I remember the first day I stopped bleeding. I remember the confusion and later on, after I had taken the pregnancy test, I remember the panic. I wanted to take it all back. I wanted to make it all not true. I fell to the floor of my bathroom and cried and cried and cried. I do not regret you; I only regret losing my self.

I remember wanting to call -------, but instead I called your father. I only heard his answering machine. When the tone came, I hung up and then I cried and cried and cried. I wished you could have had another father; perhaps you would have been born breathing if you had. I called ------- right after. He picked up (he always did) and said, “Hello?” His voice sounded confused, so confused. He hadn’t heard from me in weeks. I hung up in his ear. He called back, but I couldn’t bring myself to answer the phone. I was still on the floor, still crying. I wanted your father to be him, but no matter how hard I wanted, he wasn’t. He called two more times. He didn’t leave a message.

Later that night, he called for a fourth time. I had collapsed in my bed, my entire body cocooned in my blankets, watching my phone light up while it rang on my desk. I could no longer feel my legs, my arms, my heart. I only felt dead. I watched my phone light up while it rang and I hoped he’d stop calling me. Your father still hadn’t called me back.

I stayed up all night, thinking. I would like to say I thought of you, imagined your microscopic form inside my belly, but I didn’t. I only thought of ------- and how much I wanted to hear his voice. I wanted to tell him everything, lay my soul bare before him, be forgiven. He didn’t know I had slept with your father. He didn’t know how far I had lost myself since he had moved away. And although I wanted forgiveness, I didn’t want him to ever know what I had done. I know now that he has never been responsible for the shattered heart inside my chest; I break my own heart, time and time again. I drop it on the concrete floor only to watch the millions of little pieces scatter. I do not need to be punished – I punish myself.

------- left a message after his fourth phone call, but I didn’t listen to it until close to dawn. I can remember his message word for word, even though I only wrote the last sentence down. Funny what the mind chooses to remember, isn’t it? He said, “Hey, I know you called earlier, so I’m just calling you back to see why you called. Okay, well, I guess I’ll talk to you later then. I love you.” Click. That was all he said. I wrote down his “I love you” in one of my notebooks, so I wouldn’t forget. I lost that notebook five months ago.

I was only nineteen years, four months and fifteen days old when I took the pregnancy test that told me I would be your mother. That night when I thought about -------, I didn’t know that you wouldn’t come out breathing; I didn’t know that I would be sitting by your grave, instead of by your cradle; I didn’t know how things were going to turn out and so I didn’t think of you that night. Had I known, would I have done things different? I am not sure. I do not regret you; I only regret losing myself. I wish things could have been different.

Every day, I write letters that I never send. I write words that those I love and I hate and I bury never hear. I wonder why I do such things, but I have no answers that explain myself. All I know is that when I cry, I remember how you didn’t cry and I don’t believe I will ever be happy again. Your father never loved me, ------- no longer loves me, and you didn’t cry.