Is that more fun than how many words?
If i end up with something that halfway makes sense, then maybe i'll try to do some proof reading, edits & revisions in December - if not... maybe i've wasted quite a bit of time. For now, it's barelling through, trying to get a lot of the story line down...
My sister read the first 15 pages & said that i'm writing neil... & yes... i guess i am. Here is a taste of Neil/Jack for you...
I’m heading to work in 5 minutes. I can’t button my pants. Not because they don’t fit, but because any pressure feels painful. Brushing my teeth has become my most hated chore causing dry heaves at each and every attempt. When I looked at my face in the mirror today, I hardly recognized the exhausted face that looked back at me. I have dark circles under my eyes and the crease from my pillow seam snaked across my cheek. My hair is brittle and disobedient and my face is pale with more blemishes than I can cover up.
Where’s my pregnancy glow?
I told Jack I feel ugly and he said he couldn’t hear me over the sound of my boobs expanding. Nice.
Friday, November 5, 2010
Thursday, November 4, 2010
7999 - skipping ahead a few pages... 'essa'
Monday, September 24th 2007
It has been angry, grey, wet and rainy all week. It’s the perfect weather for sitting inside sipping tea in my pyjamas crying all day. I took the whole week off work, even though by Thursday I felt better physically than I have for a month. I phoned work on Friday and Megan answered. I told her that I’ll be in on Monday and she sounded relieved. She said that Essa has been signing my name constantly. I should have known that Essa would worry about me. She’s my little shadow at work. Right now there are 8 residents at The Manor, (the elegant name of the group home that I work at). Essa is unique because she’s non verbal. Everyone has different gifts and challenges, but I can’t help but love Essa the very best. We’re about the same age – and especially since I lost Tuesday – her silence has been about the best friendship a person could ask for. I haven’t told her I lost a baby. I didn’t even tell her I was pregnant. Megan says that Essa lacks the capacity to understand my situation. She told me to just leave it alone – but when Essa looks at me with that disquiet in her eyes, I can’t help but acknowledge that it seems deceitful to keep it from her. I had kind of decided before I went to work this morning that if the right opportunity arose, I’d tell her today.
I got to work - to the familiar din of the breakfast dishes being cleared. I was working the 7-3 shift – getting off just in time to get to my first writing class. When I took off my coat and turned around, I found myself wrapped in the warmth of Essa’s little arms. Essa has Down Syndrome and physically, she’s really tiny. She understands every word I speak – and it seems, even more of what I don’t speak. She has brown hair cut in the sweetest little bob, with perfectly straight bangs framing her gentle face. I noticed that her fingernails were pink and chipped when she took my hand and led me to the couch.
She looked at me with those almond eyes – and I wished for the millionth time that she could speak. I read in her file that she used to have some limited speech, but that she had quit speaking after her last stint in foster care before coming permanently to the Manor. It makes me ache for her to know that someone, or something - circumstances I’ll never know or understand, took that away from her.
We sat on the couch – friends – and she laid her brown head on my shoulder and put her hand on my stomach. I was so surprised I didn’t move. She started rocking – and making crooning, weeping noises as she pressed her tiny self against me. Suddenly, I was too hot. I was overcome with the sadness I had been carrying. My chest started heaving, and my little friend became like a mother to me. She soothed my distress and eased the anguish of my loss – her low moan, a lament as she held me in her capable arms. When finally I pulled myself from her, she smiled her impish smile and stood to leave.
Then Megan came around the corner and told me that breakfast was cleared up and she was finished her shift and ready to go home.
When we were done talking, Essa had already slipped away to another corner of the house where she was working on some baskets for the farmer’s market, and I didn’t get a chance to talk to her – or thank her – for grieving with me.
It has been angry, grey, wet and rainy all week. It’s the perfect weather for sitting inside sipping tea in my pyjamas crying all day. I took the whole week off work, even though by Thursday I felt better physically than I have for a month. I phoned work on Friday and Megan answered. I told her that I’ll be in on Monday and she sounded relieved. She said that Essa has been signing my name constantly. I should have known that Essa would worry about me. She’s my little shadow at work. Right now there are 8 residents at The Manor, (the elegant name of the group home that I work at). Essa is unique because she’s non verbal. Everyone has different gifts and challenges, but I can’t help but love Essa the very best. We’re about the same age – and especially since I lost Tuesday – her silence has been about the best friendship a person could ask for. I haven’t told her I lost a baby. I didn’t even tell her I was pregnant. Megan says that Essa lacks the capacity to understand my situation. She told me to just leave it alone – but when Essa looks at me with that disquiet in her eyes, I can’t help but acknowledge that it seems deceitful to keep it from her. I had kind of decided before I went to work this morning that if the right opportunity arose, I’d tell her today.
I got to work - to the familiar din of the breakfast dishes being cleared. I was working the 7-3 shift – getting off just in time to get to my first writing class. When I took off my coat and turned around, I found myself wrapped in the warmth of Essa’s little arms. Essa has Down Syndrome and physically, she’s really tiny. She understands every word I speak – and it seems, even more of what I don’t speak. She has brown hair cut in the sweetest little bob, with perfectly straight bangs framing her gentle face. I noticed that her fingernails were pink and chipped when she took my hand and led me to the couch.
She looked at me with those almond eyes – and I wished for the millionth time that she could speak. I read in her file that she used to have some limited speech, but that she had quit speaking after her last stint in foster care before coming permanently to the Manor. It makes me ache for her to know that someone, or something - circumstances I’ll never know or understand, took that away from her.
We sat on the couch – friends – and she laid her brown head on my shoulder and put her hand on my stomach. I was so surprised I didn’t move. She started rocking – and making crooning, weeping noises as she pressed her tiny self against me. Suddenly, I was too hot. I was overcome with the sadness I had been carrying. My chest started heaving, and my little friend became like a mother to me. She soothed my distress and eased the anguish of my loss – her low moan, a lament as she held me in her capable arms. When finally I pulled myself from her, she smiled her impish smile and stood to leave.
Then Megan came around the corner and told me that breakfast was cleared up and she was finished her shift and ready to go home.
When we were done talking, Essa had already slipped away to another corner of the house where she was working on some baskets for the farmer’s market, and I didn’t get a chance to talk to her – or thank her – for grieving with me.
Wednesday, November 3, 2010
4761 - and the first bit...
Thursday, September 6th 2007
I’m not even pregnant.
I got home from work tonight and I found this package – from Jack – sitting on the table. He wasn’t home. I knew he was working night shift tonight, but he left the lights on. Every single light in the house was burning. He has a hard time telling me he loves me – in words - but he knows I have begun to hate the dark and that I would laugh when I saw the whole house lit up like that. So, I’ll take that ‘I love you’ and I’ll tuck it in my pocket along with the thousand others like it.
He left the stew bubbling in the crock pot and a wrapped package on the table. When I opened it, I found this pregnancy journal... and a box of my favourite black pens, the ones with the fine felt tips.
I feel bereft of words. I’m incapable of expressing where I have been – and where I now find myself. I feel odd writing in a journal with a picture of a rounded belly on the cover – and the words, “40 weeks” inscribed beneath. I have always been the wordy one – finishing Jack’s sentences if he pauses too long, writing him long love letters and filling his ears with chatter the moment he walks in the door. He told me he ‘misses my noise’. Part of me feels like laughing at his teasing and letting myself fall back into our normal patter. And yet, I feel like it would be the most offensive lie to try to act like I’m the woman I was, when I know I’m just not her anymore.
So, I’ll write. I’ll write for the husband I can’t speak to.
I have been a mess lately and I know it. I can’t seem to get my feet back under me. Jack knows I’m lost, but he seems a little lost too and in this darkness, it has seemed impossible to find each other. Silence winds around our evenings till it’s so thick, we turn on the television to escape its stifling oppression.
I lost our baby.
Even writing that, I feel the shame flood my body and my leaden hand finds it difficult to even pen the words. I know that Jack gave me this journal as a sign of hope. He keeps saying that we’ll try again – that we’ll have a baby... and while there’s a part of me that believes him, there’s another part that just doesn’t want to let go of my first baby. The baby I feel like I failed. The baby I lost.
It has been two months. Two months and I still don’t know how I’m supposed to act. Sometimes it amazes me that I can be walking around, going to work, coming home, cleaning house... continuing on like nothing happened – when my womb became a tiny coffin. Seems my body doesn’t quite know how it’s supposed to act either. I have been avoiding going back to the doctor, but I’m starting to wonder if there’s something not quite right.
Kind of adds a great big sigh on a sea of sadness.
So, there it is. The first pages of my pregnancy journal filled in. A journal that should be filled with expectancy has begun in sorrow.
I’m not even pregnant.
I got home from work tonight and I found this package – from Jack – sitting on the table. He wasn’t home. I knew he was working night shift tonight, but he left the lights on. Every single light in the house was burning. He has a hard time telling me he loves me – in words - but he knows I have begun to hate the dark and that I would laugh when I saw the whole house lit up like that. So, I’ll take that ‘I love you’ and I’ll tuck it in my pocket along with the thousand others like it.
He left the stew bubbling in the crock pot and a wrapped package on the table. When I opened it, I found this pregnancy journal... and a box of my favourite black pens, the ones with the fine felt tips.
I feel bereft of words. I’m incapable of expressing where I have been – and where I now find myself. I feel odd writing in a journal with a picture of a rounded belly on the cover – and the words, “40 weeks” inscribed beneath. I have always been the wordy one – finishing Jack’s sentences if he pauses too long, writing him long love letters and filling his ears with chatter the moment he walks in the door. He told me he ‘misses my noise’. Part of me feels like laughing at his teasing and letting myself fall back into our normal patter. And yet, I feel like it would be the most offensive lie to try to act like I’m the woman I was, when I know I’m just not her anymore.
So, I’ll write. I’ll write for the husband I can’t speak to.
I have been a mess lately and I know it. I can’t seem to get my feet back under me. Jack knows I’m lost, but he seems a little lost too and in this darkness, it has seemed impossible to find each other. Silence winds around our evenings till it’s so thick, we turn on the television to escape its stifling oppression.
I lost our baby.
Even writing that, I feel the shame flood my body and my leaden hand finds it difficult to even pen the words. I know that Jack gave me this journal as a sign of hope. He keeps saying that we’ll try again – that we’ll have a baby... and while there’s a part of me that believes him, there’s another part that just doesn’t want to let go of my first baby. The baby I feel like I failed. The baby I lost.
It has been two months. Two months and I still don’t know how I’m supposed to act. Sometimes it amazes me that I can be walking around, going to work, coming home, cleaning house... continuing on like nothing happened – when my womb became a tiny coffin. Seems my body doesn’t quite know how it’s supposed to act either. I have been avoiding going back to the doctor, but I’m starting to wonder if there’s something not quite right.
Kind of adds a great big sigh on a sea of sadness.
So, there it is. The first pages of my pregnancy journal filled in. A journal that should be filled with expectancy has begun in sorrow.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
3414
i skimmed my hammered out first pages yesterday for a snippet to share with you & i was overcome with shyness.
It seemed a little - silly.
Did i tell you my synopsis?
My novel is the pregnancy journal of a woman who lost her first baby & is now pregnant with her second.
i'll see if i can find a tiny snippet to share with you tomorrow...
It seemed a little - silly.
Did i tell you my synopsis?
My novel is the pregnancy journal of a woman who lost her first baby & is now pregnant with her second.
i'll see if i can find a tiny snippet to share with you tomorrow...
Monday, November 1, 2010
october has dwindled away...
& now here we sit -
on the eve of november.
Suddenly i feel a little cowed by my new years resolution.
i feel a little foolish -
But i'm too stubborn to give in to my insecurity.
& so, i'll put on some slippers - & give my cold feet a chance to warm up.
November is here -
clickety clack... my keyboard calls.
on the eve of november.
Suddenly i feel a little cowed by my new years resolution.
i feel a little foolish -
But i'm too stubborn to give in to my insecurity.
& so, i'll put on some slippers - & give my cold feet a chance to warm up.
November is here -
clickety clack... my keyboard calls.
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