I Am Human After All

Is October the month of good news or something? Everybody seems to be having a birthday. An old college friend got engaged, and my friends pregnancy is going really well. I'm happy for everybody celebrating something, I love to hear their good news, but it all feels so empty especially today.

3 hours before the stroke of midnight I was chilling watching Heroes. I felt fine that the day before Roman's birthday I wasn't upset or emotional, considering I'd been in a real bad funk weeks approaching his birthday. Me and his mother hadn't been on speaking terms for close to a week and I'd pretty much decided to leave them alone as a family, because I had no idea how they would be dealing with it all around this time.

Literally as soon as it was 00:00 everything changed. All of a sudden it became real. The sadness set in. Today was Roman's 1st birthday and he wasn't here. I had no idea what he would have looked like if he was, and my vision of him smiling and laughing with torn wrapping paper everywhere in their living room from unwrapping the presents whilst he was on a baby tricycle for the first time was just that, a vision. The realisation that I'm never going to be able to see that or him again kicked in. The last time I saw him I held him for about 3 hours straight and ended up staying over for the night. I wasn't his mother, but I knew didn't want to leave him.

This time last year I was working at Citigroup. I was trying so hard to keep composed at my desk and fight back the tears. I was looking at the clock continuously as I knew delivering Roman was a life or death situation. At this time he was a baby girl called Eden as we thought Mrs H was carrying a girl, we were just so sure. I hadn't spoken to Mrs H for days before he was born as she was too sick in the hospital. Suffering seizures, high blood pressure, preclampsia, memory loss, you name it she had it. Most times I called all she could do was rest. Even talking on the mobile phone would have been too much so I let her be. Even the last time she saw me before he was born she had a seizure before I left and to this day I don't think she remembers me visiting. The thought I had at my desk was what if I never see her or speak to her ever again and never see the baby I'd been excited about seeing for months? Before Roman was born she was talking about a will. This was real when your friend is 28 years old and talking about a will, this is serious. One of my closest friends could have died on the operating table and I hadn't seen or spoken to her in days. They even brought in special equipment for this delivery and the fact that they wanted to write up Mrs H's pregnancy in the British Journal of Medicine was just crazy to me. Doctors had never seen a pregnant woman with so many problems. Scared was not even the word.

So you fast forward 365 days and we're not speaking for different reasons. This is ridiculous. The short time [9 weeks and 5 days] that Roman was here was lesson enough for me to realise that this was a minor stumbling block in a 14 year friendship. I am stubborn at the best of times, but come midnight the tears took over and I'm there standing in a darkened room looking out of the window with tears rolling down my face. I cried for 3 reasons.

For Roman
Remembering nearly losing Mrs H this time a year ago
And for myself

After that argument last week I was numb. I was so far removed and shut off from all emotion connected to my friend I felt like a robot. I really didn't care [even blogged about not caring here]. I had suppressed all emotion. If you'd have hit me I don't think I would have felt a damn thing. I read a blog post about someone who was fighting for their life after being in a car accident. The author was asking people for people to pray for them and reminded us that life is too short. I remembered yes, but I still wasn't going to make amends [remember…NUMB!]. This really wasn't about being stubborn it was about being both numb on an emotional and spiritual level to even feel anything to reach out with an olive branch. There was a little voice in my head saying "look past it, call". Then there was the other one telling me "You'll be OK if you never speak to her again, even if the argument was trivial." Where was this coming from? I had no idea. I felt like I had gone over to the dark side.
I knew I couldn't go to sleep feeling the way I was in the early hours of this morning so I sent her a text. I had a feeling she'd be up after 1am like I was. It was like my finger had been pricked with a pin and the blood came to the surface. It was like holding your breath for the longest and then came that release. I remember thinking to myself whilst crying "Thank God I'm still human and capable of emotion." Within a minute of me sending the text she called. The 9th of October couldn't have come and gone without me speaking to her or at least communicating in some way.

We spoke last night briefly and we spoke this morning. She was in much better spirits than I thought she'd be with regard to her son's 1st birthday. I for one had my 'cross me and I'll kill you' face on for most of the morning. I was like that for a few months after Roman passed. I guess that was just my way of dealing with it and sometimes continue to. I spoke to her later and later on in the day it did get to her, she had her cry visiting at the cemetery, and that's OK and understandable.

Like she said last night "we're both grown. We're not going to agree on everything all of the time."
And like I said "there are going to be times when I get pissed off at her and she gets pissed off at me."

I just have to learn and remember every argument is not the basis for potentially cutting somebody out of my life for.

See I can admit my mistakes and learn from them.

It's 23:58, 2 minutes to go until the day we feared how we'd cope is almost over. We've got to do this every year? It really doesn't seem fair at all.