looking back

i look back a lot because i really don't have a lot to look forward to. i dream a lot, but nothing is coming to fruition, so i think about where i went wrong in my life. i just read a post from 20 June 2008 where i bitch about changing my husband's view on having kids. fast-forward five years later.

18 march 2013... and my life is exactly the same. the only difference is that i am employed by someone else, we own a piece of shit condo and a different car. and my husband has gotten a vasectomy.

anyway, i was lying in bed last night, wondering why my period cycle was getting shorter and shorter. evidently it can be a sign of peri-menopause. i just turned 39. several of my friends have kids. and one of my exes is going to have his first come september. i also had just read an article about how the state of Arkansas (?) wants to limit abortions to 6 weeks, or to deny abortions after a fetal heartbeat is located. the catch-22 thing about that is that by the time you know you're pregnant, there's a heartbeat. nice.

my thoughts are a bit scattered, but you may see where this is going.

allow me to ramble on about what i've lost to my own hands over the years.

The First Loss

College
i was in college. i was supposed to be already graduated, but i had to drop out because of my parent's divorce; they couldn't afford my senior year. i was living in one of my professor's condos for free while he was in Dubai. and i was dating the man of my deranged dreams.

i had laid eyes on him in the Fall of 1993. i was the account exec at the humor magazine and he walked into the office to drop off a submission. with a student population of 35k, it wasn't strange that i hadn't seen him before. and i was pretty sure that i would never see him again. he breezed in, put his drawings in the submission basket, looked at me, and walked out, his long black coat trailing behind him as he closed the door.

fast-foward to later in the semester. i decide, with my friend annette, to join some art group at the art school. a bunch of people met in a studio after class and who walks in but Humor Mag boy. wtf? i told annette that i had seen him before at the Gargoyle office and neither one of us knew who the hell he was. the art school isn't that big; we knew pretty much everyone there, except freshmen. and he didn't look like a freshman. a sign in sheet was passed around; i got it after him and totally scoped out his name. steve glowicki.

January 1994. he shows up in my Graphics 1 class. he is beautiful and i can't keep my eyes off of him. he doesn't talk much in class. he observes and makes witty comments once in a blue moon. every once a while i catch him looking at me, but maybe it's because he can feel my eyes burning into the back of his head. i don't say anything directly to him because every time i run into him, my face gets all flushed and i am rendered speechless.

he kept to himself in the beginning, but he quickly becomes friends with my group of friends. he smokes, which puts him in good graces with annette and adrian and amr, the assistant teacher. i start going outside to join them in their smokes breaks, but he always leaves after i show up. i start to think that he's getting sick of my staring at him. he laughs and jokes and talks to everyone else but me. i'm starting to feel like a leper. i just can't seem to get this guy to treat me like everyone else. he acts strange when we're alone together and barely directs any conversation my way when we're in a group. maybe because my face is always beet red when we're together.

anyway, this is our relationship for about a year. him and annette and the rest of the group do things all the time together. movies, dinner, art gallery openings, trips for art supplies, etc. i watch his every move. i shake down annette for any information she can give on him. the summer after sophomore year, they hang out all the time because they're both in ann arbor for the summer. annette is starting to fall for him, and i think the same is happening for him. i had a boyfriend back home, and being away from steve for three months helps abate some of my feelings.

junior year starts. i see him and the feelings come flooding back. annette is upset because he isn't spending as much time with her as he was over the summer. her feelings for him subside. mine flare up something awful. we're in classes together. we hang out together. the way he looks at me, i can tell there's something there, but i am so paralyzed by the whole thing, it's hard to be objective about the situation. annette and i spend hours in our bedrooms, discussing every day's strange events and deconstructing his strange behavior. i have several journals filled with our encounters. typing this now, i miss the intensity of those days. i miss his looks, the things he used to say, the way he would look at me from across the room.

i broke up with my boyfriend in January 1995. later that month, i stopped by steve's apartment to hang out with his roommate, Rob. i got caught up talking to steve for so long that Rob left without me. and then i was left alone with steve. i found out that night how much he did indeed like me.

two months passed after that and neither one of us spoke to one another. looking back, we were maybe too young to deal with our feelings. i wasn't very aggressive when it came to him, and he was left in his over-active mind to assume the worst. i guess he thought we were just friends, that i just wanted to be friends with him and that i had made a mistake in sleeping with him. that could not have been further from the truth. sweet jesus, the time we wasted.

anyway, we weren't very good at the whole communicating our feelings things, but things slowly started back up again. he was very intense and amazing and smart and funny and brilliant. i had liked him since i laid eyes on him in 1993 and it was hard for me to deal with the fact that, for the first time ever, a guy i liked immensely, liked me back. i probably would never really call it a conventional relationship, like we didn't really go out on dates, he didn't buy me flowers or cards, he didn't call me, we didn't make plans to visit each others parents or any crap like that. we enjoyed each others company when we had it and let it go when we weren't together. i guess it was kind of friends with benefits, but my attention was firmly on him.

he was supposed to graduate in 1995 (he was two years older than me and he had taken a year off of college to get his shit together), but he stayed. took classes. i never asked him why, i just assumed he wasn't finished. later, after he had graduated and we were at his apartment and he was packed and ready to move, he said that he had stayed around for a reason. he never really came out and said why. i was supposed to graduate in 1996 but alas, that was not meant to be.

Steve, Rob, Matt and Adrian all moved to LA in August 1996. and i had to watch them all leave. my world was falling apart. i can still see the UHaul driving away in my mind's eye. our relationship was left open. i was lonely and wen to find solace in other guys who would pay attention to me. they were poor substitutes. i visited steve in March of 1997. it was a blast.

and here's where this whole long, boring story is leading: i got pregnant.

my period was late, i guess. i hadn't been keeping track. my friend, kristin, was also late, and she said she couldn't wait... she was going to go get a test. so i did the same thing.

as i remember telling steve on the phone later: it wasn't negative.

i went to planned parenthood. i peed in several cups. i got a blood test. it was still positive. i scheduled the abortion on a Saturday during the 8th week.

it was weird. i don't remember anything really about it. i didn't feel sick or bloated or anything. i was happy. no PMS at all, which is really what tipped me off that something wasn't right. i was usually throwing shit and yelling at people for a week before. but not this time... i was happy as a clam. steve said, "so this is how you're going to be when you're pregnant later." or something to that effect. meaning, when we can really start a family, this is how it was going to be. it was one of the nicest things he had ever said to me that i remember. he also said that if he wasn't out of work that things would be different. i guess i never thought about steve wanting kids. we never talked about it, of course.

the tuesday, before the appointment, i had a miscarriage. it was like the worst period i had ever had. my boss let me go home early and i laid on the couch with a heating pad. i went to PP to see if that was what was really going on. the blood tests said yes, i was no longer pregnant.

steve called it a blessing in disguise. i agreed. i'm not sure what he would have said or how he would have felt had i actually had to go through with the procedure. i visited him again soon after that. things were a little different. they felt more serious. he sat with me at the gate before i boarded my flight home. i gave him one look back as i walked down the breeze way to the plane. that was the last time i ever saw him.

a few weeks later, i couldn't take it anymore. he was too far away. he was living his life without me and i without him. i enjoyed his calls at 3am, but i just wanted to be with him. i missed his presence. he called one day when i had another male friend over and i told him i couldn't talk. i hadn't talked to him too much lately and he got upset. "what did i do?" i had never heard him like this before. he was practically begging. i told him i would call him later. he wasn't buying it. i told him i wanted to see other people. i didn't. he was the only one i had ever wanted. but he was gone and i was tired of missing him. he said, "i will never speak to you again."

and that was the last time i heard his voice.

it's been 16 years.