Anticipation

Sizzling. Searing. Cauterizing blood vessels to stop the bleed. Precise in the hands of a skilled surgeon. Blood vessels that fed my womb are severed, the part of my body that knew Justin first. Gone. Her only fault is that she slipped out of my body. I miss the memories she held. She and I followed the pull of the moon, we waxed and waned, we held life.

Anticipation, the taste of perceived joy. Dopamine is the anticipation molecule. Our brains reward us with a small hit of dopamine when we anticipate a pleasurable experience, and if that experience is truly going to happen, then our brains receive a bigger dose of dopamine. Sweet anticipation. All humans need something to look forward too, its called motivation, tiny little dopamine hits to propel the brain forward.

Strip a life of anticipation and watch the colors fade into monochrome. Gray overlaps gray with no relief of vivid color. The death of a child robs the anticipation of a life with that child, a future of small anticipatory joys is snatched away, sinking to the bottom of a silty pond.

I wake every morning with a deficit. Morning brings the burden of responsibility of managing my deficit. Entering my tenth year of child loss, the deficit looms unfathomable, unmanageable, greedy to exhaust my resources.

Hemorrhaging my life’s blood, I scramble my resources to stop the bleed. I evaluate relationships, dreams, where is the bleed?

Picturing the multiple arteries that ooze life, I poise with my mental cauterization knife, what needs to be seared shut, will severing connections stop the bleed, or will it just find another outlet and continue to leak life?

One of the most cruel things we can do to another human heart is rob them of anticipation. Every life needs the promise of joy, however small, even if it is but a transitory joy. Picturing the vessels of connection in my life, the weaving of those cords that form seasons and cycles of anticipation, I evaluate where to cauterize.

Sizzling, searing, where to cut and seal, how do I chose to redirect the life blood to fewer arteries to insure survival?

I wax and wane. My body can still hold life, I hold my own life in my hands.