This is something that has been weighing heavily on my heart during this pregnancy. I just need to get it out...
As I am writing this, I can feel my son turning over in my belly. He is nearly 32 weeks and healthy as can be as far as we know. I think all the time of his future and what that will look like. So much is uncertain, but this much I know: he will be surrounded by people who love him, and who love his parents. He will always have a safe, stable home to come back to no matter where his road leads him. He will not know as a child what it is like to ache for a family he never had or to miss people who made an impression on his heart and then disappeared. And when he does somehow experience that, as is inevitable in this world, he will always have his parents’ love as a rock to land on.
During the last 10 years, I can count on one hand the number of “conversations” I have had with my sister, aunts, uncles, and cousins. None of those conversations included questions asked or answered about decisions I have made that have been held against me for so long. No one bothered to ask me if there was a reason for what I did. No one tried to help me while I was silently screaming for help, suffering with undiagnosed bipolar disorder, depression, and PTSD, ready to take my own life. Instead, I have been ignored and shunned and talked about behind my back. I have been made to feel inferior at every turn. If not for Grandma, I would never even be invited to family gatherings. If not for Grandma, I would be dead.
When I miscarried with my daughter in June 2016, the only condolences I received were from my aunt who happened to call me trying to reach Grandma while I was lying in a hospital bed. If not for that, I would never have heard from anyone about it. In fact, the same aunt, my uncle, and my sister came to the house a few weeks/months later to get Grandma’s treadmill. No one bothered to acknowledge my daughter…my sister’s niece…my aunt and uncle’s grand-niece. She was their family, too, but no one could even acknowledge she had existed. I later found out that my aunt could not understand why I had a memorial service for my daughter because she was “never really born.” What she didn’t understand was that I had spent my pregnancy imagining my daughter’s life, making plans for her future, coming up with new family traditions to start with her. What she didn’t understand is that I KNEW my daughter completely while she was still growing in my belly. She was real. She was a person. She was my daughter. And she was gone. It was the worst kind of grief a person could feel. It still is, though the hard days are fewer. She also did not know that the memorial was not even my idea – it was my in-laws’ idea, and they paid for it. I was grateful, but it was not my doing.
Now that I am pregnant again, and it is looking like he will be born alive and healthy, my aunt has expressed some interest in being a part of it to Grandma. She has not reached out to me personally, though I am the mother. No one has. She has, however, talked about “when she gets a hold of that baby.” She has assumed that she will automatically be welcome in his life. That is not going to happen. My son is not a toy to be passed around to anyone who wants a turn. He is also not a bargaining chip. Anyone who wants to be involved in his life must have a relationship with me first, but not only that – they must be willing to accept me, listen to what I have to say, and forgive the past. Their intentions must be true, not just a show to get to my son. If I am not good enough for you, neither is my son. I will not let people play with my family that way. I am who I am, the good and the bad, and there is plenty of both. I never once claimed to be perfect or better than anyone else. I will be the first to tell you all of my faults. And I am more than willing to acknowledge, accept, and apologize for the wrong I have done, if given a chance. I just need for them to acknowledge, accept, and apologize for what they have done to me, for how they have made me feel for the last decade. If this is an unreasonable request, so be it. I will happily raise my son without their presence.
Source: Google Images
