My Greatest Regret

Sometimes, okay all the time, the only way to find a cure is to purge the poison.

While Tristan needs an intense cure, both physical and spiritual, I have my own need for a cure.  Too long I've gone without being who I once was.  And I've held onto pain that I should have just let go, all because I couldn't bring myself to face my own consequences.

But I have to let it go.  I have to confess, to face the pain, to purge it.

November.

The month started off with a change inside me.  I'd only just given Tristan the last vestige of my purity and we were...well, we were greatly enjoying this newfound activity.  Not just the bonding part, but the fact that it could potentially (we prayed) create the family we've dreamed of.  Tristan wanted me to carry his child, and I wanted nothing more than to have that honor.  Okay, I wanted to be his wife.  Still do.  But to have a baby, his baby, would make me so incredibly happy.

I looked different in the mirror.  My eyes were brighter.  My hair was fuller.  Every morning I woke up with a strange sort of nausea in my stomach and I had the weirdest cravings.  I was HUNGRY all the time, but nothing looked good.  And I was smelling a coworker's cologne that he'd put on the day before, 12 yards away from him.  Hell, I could tell when a woman was going through her "time of the month" from an aisle away, or if a toddler was still on natural milk.  My abdomen ached.  And I noticed things that were....different.  Inside.

It was too early to take a pregnancy test.  I think I tried, just one, and it came back negative.  One of those times that made me laugh despite the anxiety, gazing at Tristan whose eyes were glued on that small strip of vital information.  I think I asked him something and he merely grunted.  Around the second week of November I was to go on a trip, a sort of mini-vacation to go see my friend who lived a few states over and was about to be married.  I was her maid of honor, and to tell the truth, we've become best friends since our time together in college.  I insisted on seeing her.

"I don't think you should go," Tristan said the day before I was to leave.

"But I have to." I was conflicted as well.  There were bills to pay, food to buy, but I had made this commitment to my best friend and couldn't cancel on her the night before.  "I promised her."

Tristan sighed and shook his head.  "I just have a really bad feeling about this.  Like if you go, something terrible will happen."

I had the same feeling.  The same fear.  But it'd been almost two years since I last saw Samantha and I missed her terribly.  The fact that I had the opportunity to see her, to spend time with her laughing and talking and staying up late while planning her "marital fun" and going lingerie shopping....I couldn't miss out on this.  "Baby, I have the same feeling, but I can't ditch her.  I've been looking forward to this for months.  I took the vacation days off and she's made her arrangements, too."  I kissed him, hoping to reassuring him.

He grumbled but kissed me back.  "I don't like it.  Stay home with me, please."

The pleading in his eyes and voice was almost enough to convince me to stay.  I wanted to, really, but I wanted to see Samantha.  I wanted the adventure of travelling on my own (not a recommendation for other young unmarried women, by the way).

Samantha was overjoyed to see me again.  We hugged, laughed, even kind of cried at our reunion.  Somehow through all we'd been through in college, we'd become like sisters.  To this day, she is still my go-to friend for everything from good news to horrible trauma.  My first night there, she took me out to a local Mexican pub for awesome food and $1 margaritas.

I told myself the ice diluted the alcohol.  Then I told myself I was worrying over something that might not even exist.  So I drank the margarita.  I downed the melted ice and sweet syrup, completely forgetting about the alcohol.  And I needed her assistance to get down the wheelchair ramp.

The rest of the week was alcohol-infused.  We made brownies and drank.  We watched movies and drank. As I sat there on the floor in her living room, watching a movie while sipping my third beer for the night, I heard...no, I felt a soft, faint voice inside me.  Calling to me.  Pleading for me.

I told myself I was being ridiculous.  I justified the drinking with the reasoning that if it was meant to be, it would happen.  Genetics, our genetics, would reign.  Things would heal.  If I was meant to have it, it would survive.

Only a week or two later, I saw the blood in the toilet.  The small blob of blood that occurred in the middle of my cycle, not when it would be normal to have that sort of thing happen.

And the horror sank in.

I didn't breathe a word to anyone, least of all Tristan.  The pain was so deep, the guilt so fierce, I couldn't even cry.  I couldn't bring myself to come to terms with what I'd done.  When I went to the OB-GYN midwife, she said I had a minor infection which most likely caused the miscarriage.  So I told myself that's what it was.  I chanted that it wasn't my fault, that it was the infection.  But I knew.  I knew.

Finally I told Tristan, as a bargain chip for explanation for something he'd done.  He was silent.  And despite my pleas to tell no one, he told his parents that same night.  So I told mine.  Mom was understanding, and reaffirmed Tristan's mother's statement that our baby will be waiting for us in Heaven.

I don't want another 80+ years before seeing my baby!  I want her back!  I want my baby!!

God, I am so horribly sorry.  Tristan....oh God, how can I even begin to tell him about the terrible sorrow that's plagued me since the day I found out?  When he did mention it I'd get defensive, saying it's no big deal, that it didn't even implant into my body to grow.  He would look at me, almost in horror, and protest that it is a VERY big deal!

During my visit with him today we realized that had I not gone on that trip, or even just not drank on that trip, I would have been seven months pregnant right now.  Round, waddling, carrying our child, nesting for a new life with him and our baby.  Our baby.

Our baby.

My greatest regret in life.  My greatest sorrow.  What I would give for that chance to take it all back, to hold my baby in my arms, to have our family.  I beg God for forgiveness, for the ability to forgive myself.  For Tristan to forgive me.

For another chance, just to have her in my arms and in my life.

I'm so sorry.