Nearly fifty years ago a young woman screamed and pushed and laboured for nearly fifty hours and finally squeezed out a dead baby girl. The doctors in attendance worked on the tiny body and forced some “life” into it. The baby girl has never forgiven them for compelling her participation in a life that has never fit. Although her parents did everything they could, she always felt like something wasn’t right. She had acquaintances, even a few mates, but not one friend – ever. She never understood the crowd and it never accepted her. Even when she gravitated to the other misfits as a young adult she was the outsider, the one who was always on the edge of the circle. She developed a shell of faux indifference for self protection. When she had a child she tried to feel all the fluffy mummy things but they felt alien and forced. So she taught her children to be self reliant & intellectual. The only thing that she ever felt good about was her intelligence. She was very bright, but even that worked against her in many ways. It showed her how dysfunctional she was, how dysfunctional society was, and alienated her from those around her. Her entire adult life has been one of failed potential. She has achieved nothing in real terms. She has no career and no realistic hope of one. Her children are growing further away all the time and she can foresee clearly a time when the dutiful visits of her birthdays will be their only contact. Despite her efforts, she has failed at everything she has attempted. Her body is breaking down. Never thin, she is growing fatter and fatter, her teeth are crumbling and her eyes are blurring more all the time. Tinnitus is a constant and her joints are seizing and failing. She owns nothing except a share in a clunker of a car and a semi functional bass guitar in a broken case held together by elasticated ropes. The only future she can see is one of increasing poverty and decrepitude. She sees nothing to hope for or aspire to. She doesn’t want to be any more, but obligation and duty to her adolescent child make suicide a non-option for several years to come. So she has to resentfully endure existence for a bit longer yet. She hopes frequently that an accident or something will cause her death but, as is normal in her experience, she has been thwarted in this hope. She sees the blithe optimism and acceptance of surfaces by others and envies them. She always wonders if it was being born dead that somehow caused the disconnect between her and what others see as a normal life (or maybe it was the forced sexual activity before she was ten?) She was never meant to be, and that has tainted everything she has done and experienced.
Sometimes doctors should just let things be dead.
5 comments
Wow. My heart actually hurts
You obviously have a way with words why not write a novel?
I read this a while ago but didn’t reply since i’ve been replying so much today that i’m thinking i’m alone here haha. But you know… you are right on that, i don’t remember if it’s a proven fact (i think it is) but being premature or having problems at birth or shortly after birth (in your case dying and being brought back) can provoke serious issues later on, and one of those is detachment.
I’ve experienced it too, all of my life (i was premature and almost died a couple of times along the first months), and well, the current state of society doesn’t help much either for people who don’t feel like they fit in. I relate to many of your points (feeling like you haven’t achieved anything, being dysfunctional, an outsider all of your life, etc) but i think you are diminishing your accomplishments.
In that sense i gotta applaud you for sticking up for your children, and you can’t say you haven’t accomplished anything, having children and raising them to be adults is one of the most difficult things a person can do in my opinion. And some people shouldn’t even try in the first place, but you sound like you did a good job even with all your issues. I know for sure i wouldn’t be capable of it (and don’t see myself having the chance to do so), so you should be proud of it.
And yeah… you might consider writing a book or novel… what you wrote really got to me (and was well put together), and i have a feeling like you could write some really interesting stuff.
Plenty I could relate to there endinsight, and maybe we’re of a roughly similar age…I was a lacklustre baby (not very keen to suckle apparently, lol!) though didn’t actually die at any point. There is far too much medical interference, but what can you do , it’s inevitable given all that we know. My son was having trouble breathing and my cervix wouldn’t dilate enough, he was born by caesarian in the end, if it hadn’t been for that intervention, who knows? Like me, he’s not happy with life and doesn’t feel it’s ‘his thing’.
I fear I should never have procreated, given the mental state I was in (I didn’t have the luxury of choice, I was too psychotic to make an informed decision). My life is a calamity, I have passed it to my son (with interest), I feel extremely guilty (and I know that’s somewhat unbalanced but it’s hard not to). Sounds like your kids might have emerged all right, I hope so.
I don’t have a career either, and was also intellectually gifted. I say was because years of mental illness and psych meds have dumbed me down considerably, and I am also fat…so, as I say, plenty of identification with your story (unfortunately). And hopefully, my end is also ‘in sight’.
Was also sexually abused at nine years old…aaargh, it’s uncanny how similar our stories are! But you taught your kids to be self-reliant and use their minds. That’s a useful legacy. I wish I could say the same about mine.