For I know that the primary reason I am able to compartmentalize my own, quiet struggle is because it is entirely my own, and it is entirely my own because of the nature of the choice that I made. My child does not wander this earth, living another life. My child - and it is such a mental and emotional wank to even use these terms - was never born. My child never became my child. He/she/it was embryo, barely fetus, not a child. I did not have a child; I had a pregnancy. And then I didn't.
(And yet. Even as I say that - "I did not have a child; I had a pregnancy" - I want to take it back. I'm a mother. I've had a very early term miscarriage. I very nearly lost Emilia to miscarriage. I know the terror of losing or fearing to lose that embryo, that not-quite-fetus, that not-child who is loved none the less for his or her unformedness. I would never have said - could never have said - of the embryo-that-became-Emilia, this is just a pregnancy, there is no child here. For even though she was not yet child, she was the cellular embodiment of my wish that she become a child, that she become my child. In the absence of that wish... is it just cells that remain? I don't know. I do not know. I have not yet sorted this out. It is painful, trying to sort this out, this which might be, simply, unsortable. All I know is that these experiences are different, despite their similarities, and that I remain firmly committed to the rightness of having the ability - the choice - to distinguish between them. Ah, me.)
It will be easier to heal once you admit the truth.
The those "cells" were a human life. Not a potential life.
The longer one engages in mental gymnastics, the longer the pain remains.
