ghosts walk

At 4am in late May the sky is only light enough to see the barest outline of trees, it is a deep dark gray with the heavy clouds of a rainy morning. It is still and quiet and I lie in bed and feel my breath move in and out of my body, feel the weight of the cat on my feet, feel the weight of my worries.

4am is a time when, as my friend Michael used to say, ghosts walk.

It is a time I often wake and find myself thinking in crazy foggy circles and ghosts walk through- the ghosts of past choices, decisions, situations, ideas, wishes, dreams... and ghosts of my current struggles, the ghosts of my future wishes, fears, worries and the things I want most of all that scare me too.

I am not quite as stuck as I sound, I am just in the back part of my spiral, the one where I circle back, reassess, and blunder about in regret. But I move through again, I always do. I move through and forward again and say hey! Look at me! Moving forward! And for a time I do. And then there is a pause at the apex, then a slow retreat that takes me not back to where I was exactly, but close enough to make me think I've gotten nowhere. Disintegration, reintegration. Sometimes these cycles are quiet. Sometimes they roar.

So damn I am tired today and heavy hearted and I just feel so off. Fitful sleep filled with dreams of seeking and losing, and misunderstandings and forgetting. In real life I feel that way too I guess. At least right now. Not so much with the forgetting, unless words count, names for things. As my dear friend Tammy says, nouns are the first to go.

This afternoon I see the D&C doc for a follow up, I leave in less than an hour for that. I am scared of course, hate the invasion of the rummage and search. I worry about whether I am ok. Hope my body is healing well (no more spotting, hurrah). Worry she will give me the results if any from the tests on the stuff they suctioned out. Am worried about the emotional toll of the return to that place where I saw the screen, learned the news, first confronted the fact of my loss. I am usually so glad I am associative. I love connections that skip and jump through my head when I think of things that remind me or lead me from this to that to this other thing over here. But this same gift of association screws me sometimes. It links THIS PLACE with THAT EVENT and only time and new associations will let me off the big emotional meat hook.

I just want everything to be ok and to be through this and healed in body and trying again (and succeeding please)-- but the emotional side, yeah, well... I want to have an open heart and not live in perpetual paralyzing joy stealing fear of never getting pregnant again, of this not working and if it does, all that can go wrong. But I do not know how to do this. Being this old does not give me the options I want. I want time. I do not have it. And that sucks rocks too.

***
Good news update: I am relieved as hell that is over with. I did not cry.
My hCG is 65, my body is healing very well, and all looks "normal"-- she says wait until a period before trying again since there may be inflammation from the D&C still, but I also heard her say "looks like preovulatory cervical mucus" and what the heck do I do with that? My TTC self knows one thing, my cautious scared of fucking up self knows another. Hello Dr. Google.