Title: Ruminating On An Empty Womb 1/2
Author: IndigoMuse
E-mail: IndigoMuse@aol.com
Rating: Not Rated
Spoilers: Momento Mori & Emily I suppose...
Summery: I think the title says it all.
Keywords: Scullyangst.
Disclaimer: Not mine...I'll give them back in a few pages,
and they'll be glad to go.
Ruminating On An Empty Womb
There is a smile I have perfected over the past few
years. Completely convincing. Utterly insincere. A
polite acknowledgement of whatever form the words
take - an armour against the discomfort, the unease
that would arise from it's recipient if it were absent,
leading them to realise from the pain that it disguises so
well that they have crossed some unknown line,
ventured inadvertently into the too-personal and almost
certainly painful. It comes accompanied with a small nod,
sometimes even a hollow little laugh and whatever banal
comment I deem most likely to close the subject on the spot,
without it looking as if I am fleeing. It is an automatic
response to the subject matter. It is there, fixed in place
before the emotions really kick in for the emotions vary
within rationale. Today I feel hatred.
She is the epitome of the kind-granny cliché, small, grey
and jolly. She has sat beside us for almost two hours,
insinuating herself into our space with a friendly and
genuine warmth that had made her less invader than guest.
She had regaled us with tales of the town, intermingling
gossip that meant nothing to us as strangers, with history
and the drama she surely exaggerated, recognising Mulder's
boyish enthusiasm for the tales, of the boats that had been
lost on the rocks before the lighthouse was in place.
She had joked and laughed, revelled in the way he flirted,
complimenting her narration with well placed gasps and
almost intimate little words to urge her on. We had shared
our respective picnic lunches and it was over one of her
wonderful chicken sandwiches that she turned this warmth,
the unexpected affection that had so quickly formed, which
had allowed us to drop our guards and sink comfortably into
our coupledom before her, into hatred. With nothing
but good intentions and kind words this lovely lady made
me hate her.
Laughing at us, with a fondness that might have suggested
to any passerby that we were kin, not virtual strangers,
as he tried to coax me, amidst giggles and shaking heads,
into eating more...she said it.
"Ah - you two are going to make beautiful babies".
She said more. She said something about couples in love.
She said something about my hair...his nose....about
happiness....two lovely people....it didn't matter what.
All that mattered was that she had taken my wonderful
day and daubed pain across it's canvass.
Without flinching, without breaking or pausing for a
second in his outer joviality he sought my eyes and
read the hatred. He had taken upon himself the role of
saviour in these situations. He had perfected easy
apologies and verbal escape routes that carried us as
far away as possible as quickly as possible, whilst
offending no-one. I vaguely noted his chatter, the
excuses he made as he packed our bag and bid her
farewell. I looked at her briefly enough to see that she
suspected nothing, was taking no offence at this
sudden departure, and despite myself I was glad.
We walked silently across the beach, not touching
each other, not looking. He has learnt that any attempt
to broach the walls that I suddenly erect at these
moments will be thrown back at him with one or
other variety of viciousness attached. I cannot help
myself. It is as irrational as the feelings. Oh, not that
I *do* feel them...I think I have the right to be angry, be
hurt, be morose...it is the lack of consistency. What
passes me by with little more than a twinge of
recognition one day can twist in my gut like a knife
on another...like today. Whereas one day I might
accept his comforting caress before I turn from him,
because turn from him I will, on another I have actually
split his lip because I hit him so hard when all he had
done was ask me how I was. When I feel this much hurt
I have a need to cause pain...suffering it is not enough
as surely as it is too much.
"I'm just going to sit down here on the beach a while..."
and I lower myself onto the sand without another word.
He too remains silent, just allowing himself a brief touch,
a hand on my shoulder, a finger light across my cheek
before he continues his long strides, walks past my
bowed back and away from me.
Once, I would have needed to emphasis the *I*, to make
him aware that he was not welcome on these little journeys
into contemplative misery. Now, he takes it for granted. I
no longer bother to look at him as he acknowledges the
words. In the beginning, he had always tried and failed to
cover with a pretence at understanding, the pain in his eyes
at what he saw as rejection. In all other things, whatever
the magnitude or the insignificance I would have allowed him
in, but this was mine. This pain belongs to me and me alone.
I cannot - I will not - share it. That fact I think he does finally
understand.
Mulder is a man for whom guilt is practically life blood and
in his world of real and imagined sins he has much he can
feel guilty for. I know though, that it feeds him as surely
as it devours him. Even if he were somehow completely
absolved - absolution he could really believe in - of all of it,
he'd find something else. He'd create it if he had to. I can
almost imagine him kicking small animals just so he could
feel bad about it. He has to have it and if I invite him into
this pain of mine he will make it his own and I would hate
him for that..
I consider for a moment turning my head to see how far
he has gone. He'll be somewhere within sight...far
enough away to make clear he is not intruding, near
enough to come running if I call for him...which we both
know now that in these circumstances I never will,
but I love him for the fact that he waits for it nevertheless.
No - I don't need to see him and he doesn't need the
hope that he is being included this time which my looking for
him would give. I distract myself by scooping warm dry
sand in my hand and allowing it to trickle between my fingers.
Another handful. How many grains of sand? Beyond
hundreds certainly. Thousands? Hundreds of thousands?
Maybe millions. If I could lay each grain apart from the
others and count them, I could attach to each individual
one a dream that I never realised I'd dreamt until it was
lost to me.
Do parents, those people who have children to love and
cherish have the same dreams? They have hopes and
aspirations for their children...some specific - be a doctor,
a lawyer, a teacher...some less specific but somehow
more...be happy, be healthy, be loved. Do they also
dream the tiny things though...I dream of the smell of
a baby, the softness of the skin, the sound of sleep.
I dream of the weight in my arms, the mouth at my breast.
I dream not just of the first smile, first words, first steps
but of being able to join in conversations about sleepless
night and dirty diapers. I map out in my mind mythical
conversations that I know will never take place - how
I would discuss anything and everything...cleaning teeth,
school, cars, grades, sex. I want to cover tiny hands in
paint and print images I can date and store, retrieve when
I am older. I dream of remembering an adult child's
childhood. I want a box containing the first cut
lock of hair, the first shoes, every work of art. I
want to meet boyfriends and girlfriends. I want to
wash muddied, bloodied knees, kiss better bangs
and bumps. I want to taste toddler kisses. I dream
of choosing Christmas presents, of baking messy,
imperfect cookies.
My dreams are as innumerable as the grains of sand on
this beach.
They come without order or reason.
I dream of everything possible and more besides.
I dream of being *able* to dream for my child.
Yet even as I dream I question. Why do I feel this way?
Children had never been on my agenda. I was at an age
where, if I didn't already have them I would have had to
start actively planning them - and I hadn't. They had just
never been a real consideration. I had never played at
being mommy, even as a little girl. When my girlfriends
in high school spoke of marriage and babies I was nothing
short of dismissive, derisory. It was never part of the Dana
Scully game plan. Then I was in med. school, then the FBI
and in as much as I looked forward at all I looked along a
road that was marked by what I could achieve through
work and that became not just the road I had happened upon
but the one I wanted to travel, the one I fought to stay on. I
wasn't actively opposed to the idea of settling down, doing
the family bit, but I certainly didn't actively aspire to it either.
Sometimes, when friends had babies and they'd ask..'When
are you going to do this Dana?' I'd think about it for a while.
I'd conjure up little visions of me, babe in arms, but they
were neither endearing nor enduring images. It just wasn't a
part of where I saw myself. And then suddenly I am told
that it doesn't really matter whether I want it or not - I can't
have it. And everything changed in just that instant.
*Everything*.
Suddenly, where before there had been nothing instinctually
maternal I became almost suffocated by this desperate
need to reproduce. I couldn't pass babies in the street
without tears forming. Pregnant women were anathema
to me - I found myself examining the casual physicality
of them to locate something I could twist, interpret, that
would give me a reason to hate them - to hate a total stranger
because she had what I would never. I wandered aimlessly
into the baby departments of department stores, fingering
tiny clothes, coveting cribs and strollers....hell, even diaper
adverts on the TV would set me off.
I had tried once, during a brief stint in ER as a student
to comfort a woman for whom a car crash had ended
a pregnancy. Laden with good intentions, bizarrely
imagining I could provide comfort with the cold medical
facts I had explained how at her early stage of pregnancy
there had been no baby as such...it was a tiny mass of cells,
mere millimetres in size, limbless, featureless, functionless.
'You don't understand' she had cried and I didn't. Now I
do. Oh how I do. Each microscopic egg stolen from me
was a promise that can no longer be kept. What I had
damned each month, amid blood and cramps I now
craved. Each one ceased to be a collection of cells and
became a murdered child. My children. It was as if my
entire future had been aborted...
I flinch anew at my choice of words then berate myself
for such over-sensitivity. I do not understand it. I am
mourning something that I never wanted which I guess
is why, in the moments when the pain subsides but the
thoughts still hover, I damn myself for feeling this way,
hating myself for creating misery where there is really
no need. And then I remember Joanne.
Joanne - my room-mate during my third year at med.
school fell pregnant. Adamant from the outset that she
would not have - did not want the baby she arranged
an abortion. It was not a decision she made lightly but
one she was resolute was the right one. The night before
she was due at the clinic she woke me, crying for me
in the night, and entering her room I had found her on
blood soaked sheets, hysterical, knowing she had
miscarried. Even when the physical pain and the shock
abated she remained inconsolable. She didn't understand
it any more than I did. She was still adamant she would
have gone through with the abortion and that she would
have felt a far lesser and different emotional trauma.
What it eventually came down to was that the choice
had been taken away from her. She hadn't chosen that
way - it had happened without her consent, and
I don't think I ever really understood that until this.
Even if I hadn't ever wanted a child, there was always
this tacit understanding that I could have one. Whether
it happened or not would be a matter within my control.
I need control as surely as I need oxygen and control
was taken from me.
I was only just working this out when Emily was thrown
into my life and it was as if my greatest dream and my
worse nightmare had collided and landed at my feet.
I didn't know how to love her. I didn't even know if
I had the right to try. I'd never been there to do all
of the things that mothers do and yet there was an
immediate bond, formed even before I knew she was
mine. Sometimes I tell myself that this is because I
thought she was Melissa's - that I was clinging on to
the memory of my sister. When I feel more masochistic,
more inclined to make myself suffer then I tell myself it
was instinct - maternal instinct. She was my little girl,
my baby, and something in me knew this.
Was the bond I insisted on in these instances grown
from love or from the fact that she offered me the
opportunity to fulfil a need, without my having had to
make the decision? If she had lived...if...then she
would have been mine. I would have fought every
and any agency or authority that tried to deny me that
because she was there...because she had happened to
me. And yet when she died and I wept and I mourned
I told myself, convinced myself, that it had been need
because it was easier to face the loss that way.
So contradictory though. What I acknowledged in
myself, what I berated myself for, hated myself for
was the relief. In amongst the grief it lurked. I
would not, even in my most selfish of moments
have wished her death and yet when she was gone,
there was relief. I didn't have to change my life. I
didn't have to sacrifice anything. I wanted her,
I needed her, I missed her and yet I could never
fully dispel the admission that maybe...just maybe...
I believed this was for the best.
So contrary.
My despondent reverie is suddenly broken by the laughter
from the waters edge...three children, playing in the waves,
giggling, splashing. I can almost feel Mulder's gaze,
knowing he will have heard them too and will be
worrying, wondering if this will be another trigger. If
I were willing to talk to him about this I would be able
to reassure him. Children do not cause the pain. I do
not envy the children - I envy the act of parenting.
Provided the father who watches them from further
down the beach doesn't stray into my foreground,
doesn't join in the laughter and games, I am safe.
The first time I really understood this, the first time
I realised the difference I was sat in a car outside
a school. I watched a little boy run to a mother
who scooped him up and swung him round, bestowing
kisses with familiar ease. I had never before experienced
the manner in which emotional anguish translates to
physical pain, but sitting there, watching that tiny boy run
into those loving familiar arms, I had to wrap my own
tight around my abdomen, a futile protection against the
raw wrenching that really could not have hurt more if a
clawed fist were ripping and tearing my womb away from
me.
If I were willing to talk to him....?
One day I may have to do that. One day this might become
his pain in a real sense and not just by proxy. I cup my
hands around more dry sand and release it, marvelling at it's
easy assimilation into smoothness, a perfect form, as it lands.
We have fallen like that....easily, into perfect form without
thought of how we got there or where we are going. We
were partners who became friends. Along the line we were
enveloped by a deeper friendship than either of us could
characterize and further along that changed, without words,
without definition. We regarded ourselves as 'together'
though nothing in a practical sense had changed. There was
just some tacit understanding that we belonged. I was his as
he was mine. At some point we allowed others to
acknowledge it, though still it may have seemed that nothing
had changed. We made no vows, neither in front of a public
gathering of friends and family, nor between ourselves. We
just knew. At that point I would have regarded us as lovers
despite the fact that, for all our commitment, intensity and the
eternity we were silently promising, we had not even kissed
each other. When we eventually brought the physical into the
equation, it was as much a part of this blurred path as
everything else had been. A continuation rather than a
beginning. And so we continue along the path and perhaps
at some point he is going to realise that he wants children.
That he needs to reproduce...be a parent. Then I will have
to let him in because my pain will be his.
I dread that moment.
I do not want him to feel the hurt that I feel. I don't want
to be the reason for it. Most of all though, I don't want
him to know that my pain is not all the loss he believes it
to be...it is confusion, bewilderment. It is the realisation that
even if I *could* bear him the children he might one
day want, I don't know if I would....if I would want to.
I don't know if I've ever wanted to whilst at the same time
I want it more than I have ever wanted anything.
And so while I wait and try and figure it out, I turn away
from him...and he accepts this, forgives it every single
time. And as tears finally fall leaving tiny wet circles on
the ground before me I don't know whether I'm crying for
what I've lost, for what I want, because I can't have it or
because I feel guilty for not realising until it was too late
that I might want it? Because of the agony of having lost
the right to chose or because I feel guilty for the relief that
comes with knowing I will never have to?
The only thing I know for sure...I'm crying for an emptiness
that hurts like hell.
End
Feedback? Please. Constructive critisism is my medicine.
IndigoMuse@aol.com