Deflowering beauty

I’ve attempted suicide but my hands were incapable of holding onto a gun or a knife. I had thought about the oven, but getting the gas fired up was another challenge. I should have thought of it before, but I knew that I actually had to go through with this. I never thought that my world would have been turned upside down in an instant.

I was a vibrant youth, running wild in the fields adjacent to our farmhouse. My three brothers and I always challenged each other in everything. Who could run the fastest? Who could eat the most corn in a given time or even who could milk the cow and fill the bucket the quickest? Never did it occur to me that as we became adults that tradition would keep going. However, our challenges started including other people than our own little circle. Who could get the teacher to cry first? Who could get that date for the prom the quickest and who could get married first?

In truth I was usually the last to arrive on every challenge except for one: who could have a baby first?

I was the last to marry, but my brother’s wives were all too busy with their careers to even consider starting a family. My husband, Thomas, was only home every other week from the oil rigs. As an engineer and it was his duty to see that everything worked as it was supposed to out in the open sea. I often dreamed of seeing him on the rig, hands shot up in frustration as yet another drill failed.

My heartache for him soon subsided when I realized that I had won a single hand against my brothers.

I was chosen to carry cargo far more important than anything else. I was delighted to be on my way to become a mother. It was no secret that I was the carefree loving kind that would end up spoiling her children to ruin. But I was excited to be on this journey. During one phone call after another I rambled on about the baby. Thomas was elated and could not wait to see my stomach grow every time he came home. Soon he would transfer back to Seattle and we could raise our child together. Dreams do come true.

I dropped the first cup in mid April. I was so busy clearing the table over my engorged stomach that I was certain it must have slipped. My little finger started to tingle a few days later. Carpal tunnel was not uncommon in pregnancy. The pressure on the median nerve caused my hands to go numb. The pain was excruciating. Wrist guards helped a little at first but soon the pain became unbearable. I was scheduled for surgery during my second trimester and as soon as I awoke from the dreadful anesthesia the doctor delivered the news. Was I going to have to wear the horrid wrist guards again?

The answer I received was far more aggressive than that. Upon inspection the median nerve was fine. He mentioned that the swelling had to affect my thumb and index finger and not the others, but I felt the pain in the outer digits. Angry and baffled, I left the hospital cursing modern medicines for not taking away my pain. The occasional pain pill helped for a while. I decided to ignore the pain and rather enjoy the rest of my pregnancy. The pain would go away eventually.

It was a week before my delivery while I carried a tray of snacks outside to the barbecue when I dropped the entire thing on the veranda. It was the fourth of July and the fireworks were supposed to explode in the sky but all I felt was the pain exploding in my hands. It grew more difficult to hold onto anything. Getting up from the couch was nearly impossible. I couldn’t wait for Leila to be born so I could get the feeling back in my hands. The pen was hard to control and it slipped so many times that the nurse had to complete my forms at the hospital. It was nearly over. She was almost here and then I would be back to normal.

The delivery was difficult. My body seemed to shut down rather than to come alive with each contraction. I had to be sedated in the end for an emergency c-section. I hated anesthesia. It robbed me of my daughter’s birth. I only saw her hours later, bathed and dressed in a pretty little purple outfit that I had made for her. When Thomas handed Leila to me I became anxious, as if I was given the most precious gift and should it fall, it would shatter into a million pieces. I didn’t want to hold her and gave her back in an instant. I felt as if I was betraying the only thing that actually came from me.

Later that night I stood above her little crib, oxygen tube in my nose, still trembling from the morphine running into my veins. She was so small and so fragile. I reached out to touch her rosy cheek but I couldn’t feel her. I pushed harder trying to touch her smooth skin but she started to cry, not out of fear but out of pain. I was hurting her and I felt nothing. The nurse ran into the room ready to aid Leila but stopped short to see I was the one crying and Leila was just staring wide-eyed at me.

The sensations in my hands were gone; the pain left my limbs with it. I might as well have lost both hands under a farming implement. It would have been better. In a matter of weeks I stopped feeling anything in my arms. They moved like shadows in the darkness. Numb to the world and to my daughter. I still held her close to my chest feeling her caress me as she filled her stomach with milk. My shoulders were next and with it the sensation in my chest. When Thomas placed her inside my arms I felt nothing. All I could do was breathe and look at this beautiful little girl.

I was fading away as a rare Neurodegenerative disorder swallowed my body one bite at a time. Inside my womb I carried a life and now I was forced to watch that life from a distance. To never be able to touch her skin, never to feel her hand caress mine or even her kisses on my arms. It was a fate worse than death.

We were supposed to raise our child together, but instead Thomas came home to take care of a wife on the downward slope to her death.

Soon I would lose function to my limbs entirely. Then my speech would deteriorate until even my ability to swallow would be gone. The aggressive nature of this advanced disorder was unapologetic; rude to the core. It ripped you to shreds. I was fortunate however that my decline would be swift. Within a matter of months I would be no more and little Leila would grow up in another woman’s arms. Never remembering her mother.

The snow was falling quickly. Little cries could be heard over the fireplace crackling in the hearth. The ever present oxygen dried out my nose. I could not reach my itching eyes. All bodily functions had shut down. I was only a husk of the once vibrant young girl that ran after her brothers in the fields, competing for trivial trophies.

It was in my last moments of despair that I became the overall winner after all. I beat them to death's door. A prize we so often laughed about, but in reality it is a prize I would have wanted to lose.

I gazed at my busy family at the dinner table, laughing and exchanging jokes. I was glad that I got to spend one last Christmas with them. Leila had pulled herself up against my leg, crawling at only four months. She had her mother’s spirit. She looked up at me and smiled. The last image I had before my death was this little girl searching her mother’s eyes, holding her, loving her.