Unconventional Conception

Today I feel like I’m standing on the edge of something huge and fragile all at once. Embryo adoption. Even writing those words feels heavy....like they carry both hope and exhaustion. Which they do.

 I want so badly to believe this is the path that will finally bring me another child, yet I’m terrified that it won’t work. And if it doesn’t, I don’t know what comes after, because this feels like my last chance. That thought alone makes my chest ache.

The practical side of it: the endless paperwork, the appointments, the calls, the waiting rooms, has drained me in ways no one could ever imagine. It feels like my whole life is being managed by calendars and forms. Every time I need time off work, guilt flares. I worry what people are thinking, if they’re judging, if they’ll whisper about my “constant absences.” I don’t want to explain. I don’t want pity or awkward silences. I just want this process to work without feeling like it’s costing me everything else.

Mostly, I feel so alone. No matter how many pamphlets I read or appointments I attend, no one really knows what’s happening inside my head. The fear that gnaws at me at night, the longing that lives in my bones. I ache for this child I don’t even know yet, and the ache is sharper because I know how fragile it all is. What if my body fails me yet again? What if the dream shatters all over again?

But even under all this fear, there is still a tiny flame of hope. It’s why I keep filling out the paperwork, showing up to the appointments, pushing through the exhaustion. I picture holding that baby, my baby, even if not born of my genes, but of my love and determination. That picture is what keeps me moving forward, even when I want to collapse.

Today, I just need to let myself feel it all I suppose. The fear, the sadness, the loneliness. I need to write it down, so it doesn’t crush me from the inside. Maybe tomorrow after my initial blood work and scans, I’ll be able to find the hope again, to whisper to myself: keep going, you’re closer than you think. We are almost there. 

Trembling from the unknown, 

J.C. 

All Tomorrows Haunted By Your Ghost

It has been 22 years, and still, he lives in my dreams. 

I can close my eyes at night and see his face as vividly as if no time has passed at all. His smile, his eyes, the way he looked at me in a way that made me feel like the only person in that world. 

I wake up drowning in the memory sometimes, like I’m underwater and struggling to reach the surface. Each dream is heavy, pulling me back into what could have been. What should have been, 

Sometimes the dreams are tender. We are walking side by side, laughing, touching, whole again. 

Other times they are bittersweet, as if he is just out of reach, watching me with eyes full of something unspoken, before turning away. 

And then I wake, aching, and clutching the ghost of him. My heart pounds with longing that I can’t shake. It lingers in my chest all day, like a bruise I can’t stop pressing.

I tried to mend it once. I reached out 13 years ago, desperate for some sort of closure, or maybe a spark of recognition that what we had mattered. 

Instead, he told me never to contact him again. Like I was the serpent that wrapped the thorny vines around our hearts. That rejection crushed me. Gutted my entire being. It wasn’t just a door closing; it was like a wall being built higher and thicker...... locking me out of a place I once belonged. The devastation of it still echoes, and yet my heart refuses to let go. I can't stop the dreams. 

What torments me most is how much I want him to speak to me. To see me. To acknowledge that we existed together in that fragile, beautiful time. I carry this hole in my heart like a wound that never healed properly, raw and aching for his voice, his presence, his forgiveness. Or maybe just his acknowledgment that I exist. Maybe to prove to be he is flesh and bone and not a phantom that I conjured up. 

It feels so unfair that he can walk away, while I am still bound to him in dreams, tethered in the deep waters of memory and longing. Each night I fall asleep, I wonder if I’ll see him again, if his face will appear to haunt me or to comfort me. And every morning, I wake up hollowed out, reminded that in reality he is gone, and he refuses to acknowledge me, like I never etched out a piece of his own heart and took it with me, 

Somewhere far beyond this world, I sit in silence, just wondering,

-J.C.