Today is a hard day for me: it's the seventh anniversary of the due date I was given when I learned Ben and I had gotten pregnant. On the one hand, I am grateful that there is no permanent bond tethering me to Ben. On the other, I feel the loss of the child that is not here.
For a fleeting moment, I thought of reaching out to Ben because he's the only other person who might remember the significance of this day. This is an old (and bad) habit. I've given into this type of impulse in the past at times when I was not clear on malignant nature of his behavior. From those experiences, I've learned that contacting an abuser in a weak moment is a terrible choice that opens the door to manipulation and invites further abuse.
It was easy to reject the impulse to contact him this year because I have access to truth. Knowing the extent of his lies and betrayal, and recalling that he has also leveraged other women's personal misfortune or tragedy (e.g., divorce or death of a loved one) to start or attempt to start abusive relationships, made the right choice glaringly obvious. On days like this, it is easy to appreciate how fortunate I was to see Emily's text message in June. Pulling on that string unraveled his fabric of lies and provided much needed clarity.
That I ever thought Ben was the only one I had to turn to for consolation about the lost pregnancy, when he was the very person who decided it must end is absurd. It speaks to how much perspective I lost and how isolated I let myself become. I'm working to make sure I never find myself in a comparable position in the future.
4 comments:
Hi- I've been reading your blog for a few months (I loved hearing about your time in Tokyo). I just want to tell you that I'm thinking of you, and I hope you're able to be gentle with yourself and maybe do something kind for yourself since today is a hard day. You're a valuable, worthwhile person, and it's okay to grieve or mark this occasion however you need to.
I agree with JJ's comment above. Grieve the way that you need to but don't be hard on yourself. You're the victim of Ben's deceit but you really arent a victim at all, you are to strong and smart to be stuck with that label and you are doing a great job of taking your future into your own hands!
I hope you are doing well during this. You're not alone, and you are strong.
Thank you for your support and encouragement.
Now that I know Ben for what he is it is harder to justify the sadness that is the absence of the seven year old child that should have been here. (Harder to justify because I feel a lot of pressure to be happy I don't have to deal with Ben as a result.) But there is just no getting around the basic emotions that well up when a child that was wanted by its mother no longer exists.
My life would be so different with a seven year old that it's almost beyond imagining, but I'm sure it would have been wonderful and brought a lot of joy to my family.
I try to take comfort in knowing the outcome makes things easier for Ben's son--it's obviously easier to believe your Dad is a good guy when you aren't confronted with a living, breathing half-sibling that is proof your father was having an affair before you were even conceived.
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