"Finding my Routes"

Ironic, really, when you think about it.
I set out to start again, and I have literally returned to my routes. This Blog was started nearly a decade ago, a bright vivid scar lost on the internet - a reminder of a more romantic, simpler and more naive young man - the Shevek that I once was. After getting back into my writing in a big way, I shall be using this blog once again - I was going to start a new one and call it "Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror and hate"
Which just goes to show how much (or, perhaps, how little) I have changed.
I need to write more - I need to set hours of my day out so that I can start tyo flex those old wings again. I need to write, to create, once more. I am slowly pushing my old friends away as I did, Aeons ago it seems. But this time something feels...different. More distant, more brittle. In old days relationships were more fluid, more plastic, more flexible, but also, in some indefineable way, more meaningful.
Now I seem to feel too distant from them all, too absent.

Bt this is not a Blog to rant about that - or is it? Are not my emotions and my thoughts going to be core to all of my actions? All of my writing? I write most and write best when I am under some nost of emotional strain....And this is very much an emotional time.

I am going to be a father again.
And I am terrified.

Some context: Two years ago, I was going out with a young woman called "Elisha Hetherington". A sweet girl; friendly and bouncy, lovely and likeable. She got pregnant and though the pregnancy was a bit of a scary shock, I was happy. I began to sing to the baby as I rubbed body oils into her belly as she got bigger. ...apart form that, though, I cannot really remember much about the pregnancy. I remember the scans, the plans, and her nesting....I remember giving way on her plans for names and such, finding out it was a boy and being happy, buying things - books, baby grows, and so on... But there is a strange disconnect to it all - facts are there, memories stay, but there are absolutely no real emotional connections to that time. As if the scars have run too deep - as if I have denied feeling anything from that time for so long that I no longer can.
We woke up one morning with the bed slick with her blood. It wasn't normal, and I panicked. We called an ambulance, despite her insisting that she didn't need one - she would rather get an ambulance. I remember the ambulance arriving, getting my jacket and the bags...but I do not remember the ride to the hospital. I remember the bored, absent look on the midwives' faces as we came in - another pregnant woman causing a fuss. I recall Ellie being sick into a sink from the gas and air. I recall her screaming as the Indian doctor inspected her, and I remember the measured strain in the doctor's voice as she told us that the baby was in trouble and was coming out now.
I remember them wheeling her into the ER and being escorted away from it by a young, scared midwife. I remember going back to the room, sagging to my knees, shaking and sobbing.
I remember begging the silent world "No." I remember shaking and retching, begging again and again. No. No. No.
And then going numb. I locked the panic down. I locked down the pain.
Ellie's mother arrived and I hugged her numbly.
When the doctor came back to tell us that Ellie had had a close call but was going to be okay, I realised then how close it had been. Life drained from me, leaving me cold. Then they told us about my son. He had been deprived of oxygen for too long.
Ellie's mother told us that we would take care of him no matter what. I stared at her disbelievingly then. No. It was selfish of me, but no. I wanted a healthy, smart boy. I wanted my boy to be able to read, to think , to feel, to live like all little boys should.
It was selfish, or something like it, but I wanted a little boy....not a boy too brain damaged to think.
My stomach dropped away when I looked into the doctor's eyes. She had no hope there. The hope was all a fabrication, one last little glimmer for Ellie's mother to cling to.
My boy was already, in her eyes, dead.
In my cold numbness, I noted how she never said "I'm sorry". Some sort of legal thing, I supposed. As if saying a vaguely human nicety would make her responsible for it all. She shouldered on her doctor's jacket and donned the mask of professionalism. She told us that as a doctor she knew she had made the right choice and that if she had not done what she had done, both Ellie and the baby would be already dead.
And then she fled.

Those were dark days to come...the time we spent in the hospital as Ellie recovered and myson slowly died. I remember the way he smelled - like a baby, but with the vaguely chemical overtone with all those tubes and wires stuck to his tiny, skinny body. Babies always look plump and pink when they are born, but not my son. He looked frail, weak, and skeletal, but with a full head of hair. I smile painfully at that little memory.
That and the memory of Ellie hold his little body and smiling vacantly - the pain, the loss, and the drugs driving away all sense from her - her vague frown as I tried to pull the cold little body from her grip.
The corridor. The heart of all the scars, the root of all this damage. I see it now. They unhooked my son from the machinery keeping him alive and handed him to me to take to his mother, still hooked up wo wires and IV drips of her own. His tiny body felt oddly heavy to me as I carried him down that long, vacant, white corridor. I felt his little heart flutter.
And I felt it stop.
I felt my son die.
I held him in my arms as he died.
I held my baby boy in my arms as he died.
And I felt it happen.
And there was nothing I could do but walk down taht damn corridor, cradling his already cooling little corpse and hand him to his mother to hold.
What I handed her wasn't our son, it was just a little body. A tiny, vacant vessel for a life that had already departed.
I didn't want her to feel him grow cold and stiff, but she didn't want to let him go.

The days after that are a blur, and the weeks beyon dare a blank.
In a frenzy of need Ellie and I tried for another baby as soon as we could. Nothing came of it - whether because she was not healed or because I was not ready I do not know.
Our son did not survive the incident. And neither did we.
Not really. We were shambling shells for the longest time after that. I recall nothing of it, really. Pain turned to hate and we lashed out at each other. I tried to save us...but too little. Too late.
Dark days continued. I slept on a pile of fake fur in the corner of the room that was to be the nursery next to an empty cot. Along one wall remained the unfinished mural that I never got around to painting...something that I blamed Ellie for, in my mind. Yet I cannot remember why. I suppose I needed someone to blame for the pain. I suppose we both did. She started to live again and I sank down into my misery, scrabbling desperately for something to hold onto. My world fell away - or I fell away from the world. When seen through the eyes of an astronaut jettisoned out into space do the semantics really matter? My scars must have healed around that time though, because I can remember some of those days with something resembling clarity - events come in order and make sense, emotions scrape together roughly again. I know that I listened a lot to counting crows (for my son) and Teegan and Sara (to bewail the loss of love).
But I still remember the pain. And the hate. And the desperate need to connect to someone, to anyone.

But enough. Enough of that. It was my darkest times, perhaps. I can barely remember the pain any more, but the gaping maw of agony I do remember makes me terrified. All I can do now is wait for my second child to be born, but this time I shall feel every second. Every DAMN SECOND of it. And I shall not forget. I will not let myself forget.

I wondered what this blog was going to be when I started it. Now I know.
It will be me finding my routes through bringing this new life into a world I barely understand. It will be me venting my fears, my horror, my fury. It will be me drawing a map for myself and for him, when he comes out into the world. I shall guide both him and myself here with these worlds, with these thoughts. I shall forge a future out of nothing more than words - because that is all I can do - it is all we have ever done.