Another Door Opens

57 - River

At this very moment, I don't regret the decision I made and the outcome of yesterday. Very simply, I met someone and we shared some fun moments together, which resulted in a pregnancy I wasn't ready for with that person, or even with myself. I never had the moment I see depicted in movies and television where the woman is brought to tears and overjoyed with news that she is now about to cohabitate her own body with someone else. What I felt was dread and disappointment.

The difference here with River is that his parents adore him, they were ready for him despite him not being planned, and they want to be on this journey together. I'm sure it also helps that they themselves both came from loving homes with near-perfect examples of parenting, and love visibly demonstrated and demonstrated often. After my experiences with the majority of my family when I left Trey, even beforehand with their attitudes towards Penn and my mum's dating history after my father died, I can't say I feel the same about my own. And I didn't want to create opportunities where someone I'm responsible for bringing into the world feels that way about me, or anyone for that matter. That isn't an energy I want to cultivate or be encouraging in the world, even unintentionally.

I like my life, or at least the one I have now. I like being responsible only to myself... and Hades. I like being able to go where I want to go and when without needing to think about bedtimes and feeding schedules. I want to be able to travel if I want to travel. I want to go out dancing with Heath in an underground rave if I want to. I want to go to my friends' place for pizza and drink too much vino that I need to walk and stumble home in the dark. I want to relax and sleep and not be woken at all hours of the night. I want to be allowed to be lazy when I'm tired and veg out on the couch watching Netflix and not feel the need to be constantly on alert and energetic. I want to make out with Miles for days after finally finding the courage to ask him out on a date, or say yes when he hopefully asks me again.

But even as I think all this, and have thought it many times, I know on some level I'm fighting some socially---or even biologically---ingrained belief that I should want to be a mother, and I know it will take me some time to process the grief I'm now aware I feel over my recent termination.

Not regret, but grieving. Grief over the physical trauma my body was put through and how it will take time to heal. Grief over the emotional turmoil I felt in trying to reconcile what is best for me alongside all the societal expectations of my gender. Grief over how this experience both detached and connected me more closely with my own physical body and sexuality, my heart, my inner desires, my goals…

It was a huge decision with a lot of emotional, physical and spiritual baggage attached to it, and one that has left me exhausted in so many ways, which is making it challenging to remain alert and open to the instant and intense love and appreciation I have for this little human in my arms, and my faith that he will make his parents' lives so much happier now he's in it.

A tear I didn't know I was crying fell from my eye and landed directly on River's cheek, and he stirred briefly before closing his eyes again and falling back to sleep. 

"You okay, Edes?" Wolfe asked quietly, having been watching me carefully this whole time. "You look a little pale."

I chuckled a little, thinking of how fearlessly Wolfe asks questions and makes statements that many people could easily take offence to. I haven't here, of course. I know I look as awful as I feel. And I know Wolfe would never say anything with intentional malice. He's only asking because he's genuinely concerned, and he's not afraid to ask like a lot of men are because he's so in tune with his own emotions that it makes him available to sense and hear those of others. He's truthfully rather remarkable, and I'm imagining having his own baby with one of my best friends is only going to increase the respect I have for him tenfold.

"I'm so grateful for your friendship, Wolfe," I said, not completely answering his question, or at least not in the way he meant it. "I honestly don't know what any of us would do without you."

Wolfe watched me quizzically a while as I stared at River, rocking him gently in my arms on instinct while I very purposely avoided Wolfe's gaze.

I meant what I said wholeheartedly. He's somehow brought us all together more closely than ever since he came to Byron and started dating Luna, and without having the support of my dearest friends these past six months, I'm not sure where I'd be. I'm not even sure I'd have had the courage to make the decision I did yesterday, which was the right decision for so many reasons, not least of all because Austin wouldn't have been anywhere near as confident and excited about being a father as Wolfe is here now. If I were to ever have kids---which is a major if, not a when---I'd want the person I'm co-creating that human with to make me feel as loved and whole and supported as Wolfe and Luna do each other.

"I could say the same about you, Eden. Life is just better since you've come back home, for all of us," Wolfe said, slowly kneeling down beside me. "Everyone instantly grew more alive when you arrived home. You wouldn’t have seen it, but I have. I can't explain it exactly, but it's just better, and I'm so glad that River will have you as his aunt because that's who you are to me, Edes. You're my sister and I'm always here for you."

Wolfe is good with women’s tears. Lord, he’s surrounded by them often enough with how emotional Luna, Nella and I naturally are. But I feel like the display I’m offering him now is just slightly beyond his level of comfort or knowledge to deal with, especially given he’s had his own dose of excess feelings with the birth of his first child in the very early hours of this morning.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he said after gently pulling both a weeping me and a sleeping River into an all-enveloping hug.

I shook my head, hoping to gather a bit of composure to not be hysterical and have Luna wake to see it too. She doesn't need to be dealing with that right now. “Not right now,” I said, reaching my hand out to hold his. “But thank you, baby brother.”

Wolfe’s chuckle and teary smile was the thing I needed to get myself together and pass his baby back to him, needing desperately to get some fresh air and space to myself to just feel whatever it is that I need to feel right now on my own.

I left him at the elevator where he insisted on walking me to, and made my way downstairs and through the lobby before I lost all control of my ability not to cry again, falling to the ground around the corner of the hospital entrance and wrapping my arms around my knees to shield myself from the outside world.

If I thought any of the miserable, preceding events that I'd endured this year were the lowest I could possibly feel, I have now proved myself wrong because this---sitting cross legged in a gutter post-termination, crying in public without even my sunglasses with me to try to hide my red and puffy eyes considering I left them upstairs in Luna's room when I felt the need to hurry and leave before the floodgates opened entirely---is as shit as I ever remembered feeling my whole life.

I don't even know why I'm crying at this point, which makes it all worse because if I don't know, I can't even begin to try thinking about it rationally to move past it. Which I guess is the whole point---what I need is to just feel, and there's no place like a gutter to do it.

“Eden?”