Chapter 173

Arry doesn’t come back, he texts from the airport and says he needs time to cool off and will call me when he lands. I don’t bother replying and he doesn’t text again to see why I don’t.

Heartbroken that he went and did the one thing he never does; walked out and left me when we are fighting the worst kind of fight. It feels like a betrayal, that he’s broken a promise and the way I am feeling, I want to hate him. Hating him for four days will be easier than missing him.

I go to the kitchen and grab the ice cream from the freezer, eating so much I make myself throw up and then lay on bed feeling about a thousand times worse. I despise that he can make me feel this desolate, that when we argue he becomes the one obsessive thought in my head, and I cannot function beyond it.

Love sucks.

I lay my hand on my stomach and flinch when I do, like an internal guilt filter kicks in and I find myself peering down the length of my body.

“I didn’t mean it.” I say loudly, looking at the flat expanse of stomach and then look away again refusing to acknowledge that I am even talking to it. I feel dumb, but I can’t shake the regret at telling it that Arry leaving was its fault.

I know what it feels like to have someone who’s supposed to love you, hate you instead. I’m nothing like them. Even though I don’t want it, something in me feels like a shitty human for telling it this is it’s doing.

I get frustrated with myself and try to shake the conflicting confusing thoughts out of my head and sit up. Still tear stained, still sniffing and ache for him, even though I hate him.

I try to push down the nausea which swirls around me whenever it feels like it is peeking out and banish all thoughts of something growing inside of me away harshly, like I do every time my mind strays there.

Don’t think it exists and it won’t be real. Ignore it.

I notice my phone is lit up across on the bedside table and realize I left it on silent after I got his text. it’s been a long time since he left. An hour maybe. I don’t even know what time his flight was going out, so it might be him if he is sat in the departure area waiting. I get up slowly and wander over to it, seeing the list of missed calls and one text. All with little ‘Arry xXx’ symbols in a row.

Despite myself I pick it up and open his text, bracing myself for a lecture or something harsh and inhale quickly to suppress my anxiety.

I’m sorry. We need to focus on coming home, everything feels like it’s hanging in mid-air and suspended while we are stuck there. I love you, Sophie. More than you know. Both of you. Don’t hate me, baby, I’ll call you later. Xx A

It makes me feel shittier.

I glance down at my stomach again with a pang of something I cannot put my finger on. I think it’s the fact he says he loves both of us, it does something to my insides. Tingly, weird feelings that make me feel instantly sick and I push it away. I put the phone down and rub my eyes in a bid to remove the overwhelm of emotions lodged in my chest.

Fatigue and emotional exhaustion are crying for me to lay down and take a nap and I can’t think of anything better. If I reply we will end up fighting, if I leave it alone, he won’t keep texting. He will leave me to have breathing room.

I need some head space. I should use the next four days to get my act together, he’s right. I can’t keep on like this, refusing to face what’s real and what’s happening. Whether I like it or not, there is a little thing inside of me that is already growing. I have no clue how big or how much it resembles a tiny person yet. I know nothing of pregnancy other than how crap I have been feeling nonstop and how often I go from shivers to fever and the constant feeling of sickness. So far, I am not impressed with it and hope to god it changes soon.

I’m losing him, I am losing us. If we keep on like this for another two months, then his threat might become a reality and I know this is all on me. Arry tries so hard to be what I need, to take care of me; it’s not his fault everything is falling apart inside of me. My dreams and hopes were pinned on Paris. It turned out to be the biggest mistake of my life in every way and I have never felt so alone as I do right now. Have done for the past two weeks even with him here. This is the peak of a shitty year and I don’t think it can get any worse.

The reality is that deny it or not, I won’t be able to start in New York when term goes back in two and a half months. I’ll be almost four months pregnant, Arry will be a nightmare, I know him. I remember what Jake was like over Emma and as much as I want to say that Arrick and Jake are two completely different people, they are not so far apart in certain things.

Overprotective, overbearing and suffocating when they’re in carer mode. Bossy and controlling if he thinks he knows best. It will be another round of fights and for what? A couple of months before the school say I’m a danger and can’t go there anymore.

I’ll waste my time there and fall behind. A whole year out is like wiping the slate clean and I would be as well starting all over again. My Career won’t get off the ground at all. Before I get a chance, I’ll be elbow deep in diapers and bottles and have some little person clinging to me.

What do I know about being a mom? About giving love and support to a little human?

All I know is how not to be a mom. How to ignore my child suffering and not give a shit about anyone else, that’s what I learned from my birth mom. My adopted mom got me at fourteen when the mold was set.

How do I know I will even be a good mom at all; maybe it’s not in me? I’m not maternal. I’m selfish and childish and like Arry says, a Princess most of the time who is too reliant on him for everything. Can’t fend for myself, so how in the hell am I supposed to fend for a small little creature? Who cries and can’t talk or tell me what it wants. How am I supposed to know what it wants?

Panic rises in me, like it’s done a million times in the past couple weeks and I get angry once more at how pathetic I am. I’m a mess, a failure of epic proportions. A woman who can’t even get her head around something women are meant to do and have naturally, apart from me. I’m sweating in fear at the thought of something relying on me for any sort of survival at all.

I’m not good at nurturing and letting people close. What if I end up like Emma’s mom? Some cold unfeeling woman who kept her child at arm’s length and didn’t bond? Who screws her kid up as bad as Emma was messed up before Jake? She’s told me extensively of the affects her mother had on her over the years, and her final absence in Emma’s life since she married Jake. Emma’s mom has not been in the picture at all, not even with the arrival of grandkids and even though she seems okay about it, I know Emma thinks of her.

What if I am going to be that way? So cut off and unable to love anyone properly except Arrick. He’s the only one I ever let close, ever let under my skin properly in every way. Emma, I see as a guardian, but she still doesn’t get near the way he does. She doesn’t” know the half of the things I tell him.

What if I can’t love it or let it love me? What if I am so emotionally fucked up that the maternal instinct doesn’t exist in me?

I’m not normal. I’m broken, even though I have learned to function a bit more like everyone else. Deep down underneath it all, I am still that little kid who had to fight to stay alive. Who had to blank out her mind to endure being raped by her father repeatedly. She shows up when I am low when I am angry or upset. She lashes out, she acts like an idiot when she’s in pain or defensive. She pushes people away and she runs. Every fucking time it gets too much, she runs. Whether physically, mentally, or emotionally. I’m doing it now, with him, with this. I’ll do it with my kid, and I will fuck it up the way I am fucked up.

What if I hurt my baby?

That same sense of impending doom and choking paralyzing terror grips me again and I can barely breathe. This is how it’s felt from day one, as things go around in my head. This is why I won’t stop and face the fact that there is a baby inside of my womb. I can’t let a baby have me as a mother. I can’t destroy an innocent little human that way. Arrick would dismiss this, tell me I am overreacting, but this is how I feel. This is what I believe about myself.

Arry is not on the same page as me, he’s all happy families and planning what pram to buy, while I am treading water to stay afloat. We don’t talk because it goes one way and that’s exactly like this morning did. It’s too raw, too upsetting, and too depressing. He would think me insane if I voiced any of this.

I pace around and shake my hands in a very weird manner, but it’s calming me, helping me self-soothe and catch my breath. I need to stop thinking and let it go. Go to bed and sleep because I’m shattered and haven’t slept much in days. I’ll feel better. I’ll be saner and less emotional if I sleep it off. Then when I wake up, I can text him back and try to not kill each other while half a world apart and get my shit together for him coming home. I need to give him a reason to come home to me. I want him to miss me, not be relieved that he’s not dealing with me for a few days.

I climb into bed and curl up under the duvet with the intention of blocking it all out, switching on the TV in our room for some atmosphere. It’s too quiet when he’s gone and Janetta won’t be up for a couple of hours.

***

I must have fallen asleep fast, as I wake up in darkness with the smells of food wafting through the apartment and the faint sounds of music. That means Janetta is in the kitchen and by the looks of it I have slept the entire day away. I must have needed it more than I realized, and I sit up groggy and lightheaded. I feel weird. Hot, but not like flushes hot. I’m feverish and the nausea is all consuming. My head is throbbing, and I am so thirsty my throat aches. My body is heavy and achy like flu or something and when I try to get up, I’m out of sorts.

A sudden sharp pain in my abdomen knocks my breath away as I slide a leg down to the floor. I let out a muffled “Ahhh” noise loudly, and clutch at it before managing to straighten up and breath through what feels like a period cramp low down, only a lot duller. I haven’t had them for years, but memory reminds me within a second that’s what it feels like. A dull thud punch to the lower intestines and I really struggle to breathe through it.

I grasp the bedside table to get my bearings and let my swimming head clear, satisfied when the ache moves across my abdomen sort of warmly and then dissipates. It feels like a pulled muscle and I wonder if that’s normal. I guess if my stomach grows then it has to be.

I stand for a moment and blow out my breath, taking a second to let it subside fully before I carefully walk to the bathroom with the intention of running a bath. The thought of a steamy bath helping how crap I feel is all that’s on my mind. Still foggy headed from sleep as I pad barefoot on cold tiles.

I catch my reflection in the mirror after I turn on the taps and grimace at the mess before me. Blotchy tear-stained and looking like a tragic reject from a horror movie. I haven’t really been putting effort into my appearance lately and my hair is a riot.

I need to get my shit together, Arry is right. I’m stuck in suspended nothing, hoping to find a miracle cure to our predicament instead of focusing on what to do how to get through this and put plans in place. No wonder he’s getting so fed up with this.

I’m fed up with this.

Arry is a planner, he likes to know what’s happening and how everything neatly lays out. He gets used to something quickly and adapts it into his life as quickly as possible, so he can process all of it. Likes all his blocks in a row and neatly labelled so he can get on with what is required of him. All I have done is hinder his ability to do that and it’s messing with his calm, while I’m missing any sort of it.

More of a fall to pieces and bury my head in the worst way and ignore it kind of person, until something motivates me to make a change. This right here… Fighting with him so much lately and having him actually walk out on me, something he hasn’t done in two whole years. This is enough.

I’ll lose him if I keep pushing and pushing.

Another stabbing pain hits me low in the gut and this time my knees buckle, and I end up half kneeling as I catch the vanity to stop myself from an all-out collapse. I grunt this time with the intensity of feeling like something kicked me full force in the abdomen and try to breathe through the gnawing pain.

I’m held rigid unable to catch my breath or move as it encompasses my entire pelvis with a burning searing slice and twisting ache that brings tears to my eyes as I gawp weirdly. Knuckles turning white as I cling to a porcelain rim.

“Aghhh” is all I can let out before a warm flow of liquid soaks through my panties and slides over my inner thighs with the worst kind of sensation. It happens so fast, and it’s so excruciatingly painful that I cannot move.

My heart stops, my everything instantly freezes as though I am on autopilot and looking down on reality in a dream state. I reach my hand down slowly to touch the wet liquid on my inner thigh and pull my fingers back up to see the evidence before me. It’s like time freezes and the pain in my body becomes obsolete next to the pain in my heart and head. Shocked silence, terror, unlike I have never felt before as I bring my hands up to my eye level and begin to shake.

“No… no… no… no.” It’s like someone up there listened really hard to how many times I said I didn’t want this and decided to deal with it all by themselves; except now that I see this on my hands, this hot red liquid that signifies the most awful thing in the world …I start screaming hysterically, wailing like I am being murdered, because my heart feels like it is.

“JANETTA… JANETTAAAAAA…”