Lately, my thoughts have been pulled to a time in my life when I was 20 years old, freshly in a relationship with someone that I thought I loved deeply and knew I was terrified of losing. We had gotten together in kind of a rushed haze of summertime memories, sweet nothings whispered in moonlit swimming pools we had to find and sneak into. We had met at a party a few days after I had shaved my head for the first time. I had recently returned from a six-week writing workshop and was still fresh in my routines, reading and writing and thinking every free moment I had to myself. I was wearing a tank top and high-waisted circle skirt and kept smoking so many cigarettes, sometimes sneaking off to write in my journal.

Somehow I felt powerful and beautiful, yet I remember being shocked when they asked for my number and messaged me that night to set up a next meeting. So used to being looked over, I felt uncomfortable that someone appeared to have seen me and even seen something they liked. We spent our first night together in a state of familiarity that suggested we knew each other before. Now I know we didn’t really know each other at all, were perhaps rushing a sense of intimacy because we thought there was something inside of the other that might save each of us.

The power of their attention was so intoxicating to me that I felt obsessive in my love for them, which extended into me being overbearing—wanting them to drink less, wanting them to spend more time with me, wanting them to see how much I needed them to feel whole. All of this, of course, was unreasonable and unrealistic, for every person you meet will continue on as they are and have been and will only institute change within themselves if it is their own desire to do so. Codependency was a word I had never really heard or understood before, though I observed it up close in the behaviors of my parents and unknowingly absorbed it into my bloodstream.

Our relationship unfolded in a predictable fashion: their initial interest sparked a heavy attachment on my end, and the more I needed their love and affection to keep me whole, the more they pulled away and grew distant from me. Most of our nights were spent sitting around drinking watery cheap beer, smoking cigarettes on their porch with their roommates, or hitting up a house show and continuously separating ourselves and coming back together throughout the sets. I hadn’t had my period in six weeks and hadn’t really thought of it, or perhaps I felt it lingering there behind my ears but refused to turn my mind’s eye to it. After all, I had classes to attend, shifts to work, and a life to keep together.

Somewhere around this time, a great thunderous horror struck through my body. I’m not sure what class I was leaving at the time. It was certainly something related to English because I remember having to walk the sidewalk stretch from the writing building to the parking garage I left my car in. I felt a lightheadedness lift me out of my feet and a heavy pain settle into my uterine area. Of course, I assumed it was a period, nothing to be concerned about or to go to the health center for. As soon as I reached my car, it was as though the pain inside of my womb finally felt comfortable to reverberate throughout my body. I couldn’t think about driving or doing much of anything.

The pain was growing in such a way that I knew I needed to be horizontal and immediately reclined the seat, writhing back and forth and sending a text to my partner that I would need help getting home. I couldn’t stop moving and rolling in place, somehow believing that keeping myself in motion could distract from the pain. There was a gush between my legs that was heavier and more dramatic than usual. It was as though something was being released from me. Time kept passing, and I heard nothing from my partner. I began to drift in and out of consciousness, the pain lulling me into momentary sleep. I remember at one point opening my eyes and seeing someone staring at me perhaps in concern but what I interpreted as judgment. After all, they didn’t help; just looked and kept walking.

When my partner finally showed up, over an hour, maybe two, had passed, and all I could say in between moans was that I needed to get home. They started talking about their day and why they were delayed despite their class having ended a while ago. They had heard about a protest that would be occurring on campus and decided to sit in on a meeting. It turned out one of my writing professors was there, and they remarked how enjoyable and witty they found him. They wanted to get more involved, felt it was very important for them to be there. I’m not sure if I remember them asking how I was or caring much that I was in pain.

When we arrived at their home, I immediately crawled into their bed, continuing my writhing and crying and moaning. I put my hand down my pants and came back to the air covered in blood. When I went to the bathroom, there was so much blood coming out attached to chunks and strands. I normally didn’t bleed like this on my period. There was an internal knowing that something was going wrong inside of myself, but I didn’t think to go to a doctor because I was used to enduring pain. Growing up, I was often accused of lying if I was sick, and I learned to suppress pain if I could so as to avoid being mocked or punished for it. Even now, I am never sure when I get sick or feel pain if I am deserving of taking the time to rest, recover, and feel through it.

To add onto everything, my partner parted from me as soon as we got home. They wanted to practice playing the drums. As I bled out, I could hear them erupt the house with their rhythmic banging and thudding, taking a break every once in a while to grab something from the room. I’m sure they patted me on the back, kissed my forehead a time or two, but there was a distinct lack of concern for the pain I was enduring, as though it was just something that needed to pass in its own time. And perhaps this is true, but I will never forget that feeling of being scared, losing something inside of myself, and hearing them continuing on as normal in the next room.

Realistically, this should have been the end of our relationship, but I had been taught to romanticize and normalize neglect through my relationship with my father, a man who loved me but was ultimately absent in my life due to his need to maintain his alcohol addiction. It seemed the less someone was really there for me, showing up in a way that wasn’t supportive and present and solid, the more I was able to reason with why they are like that and imagine all the ways I could win their affection or get them to change for me. For the most part, I don’t think too much about this moment in my life because it is too painful to look at how little I was being cared for by a person who was meant to care for me. It’s sad to envision myself alone in that room, wondering what’s happening to me or why nobody cares.

The memory only resurfaced for me about a year ago when I started reading a book about the life and work of Jean-Luc Godard, EVERYTHING IS CINEMA, due to an interest I had in writing an essay about his work. I made it to the chapter on his film, UNE FEMME EST UNE FEMME (1961), which touches upon a time when his wife, Anna Karina, suffered a miscarriage in their home. The book describes her bleeding alone in a room while Godard is in the house working on his projects, doing other things. Suddenly, a rush of emotion fell over me and I realized the casual cruelty of what I had experienced. I closed the book and cried and never opened it again, the project idea ultimately being abandoned as I was left with the realization of what had happened all those years prior.

I never realized how much more I deserved in that moment, that it’s actually not normal for your romantic partner to be able to ignore that you are in pain and continue on as though it’s any other day. I didn’t realize you could be so close to someone who ultimately cared very little for you. We never talked about that day, and the emotion of the memory makes it such that I have never been able to talk about it at length. The truth is I would have kept the child if the pregnancy stayed. I thought I was in love and despite my fear of repeating the patterns of my parents knew I had a deep capacity to love and nurture a child.

Of course, our relationship fell apart in the ensuing weeks. Adding a pregnancy into the mix would have made the situation so much more chaotic and unhealthy than it already was, and who knows where I would be in my life now or what kind of hardships my child would have had to go through if I had taken that path. I can see now what happened was ultimately for the best because I was not ready to be a parent and my relationship with this person was not meant to last. We were simply supposed to cross paths for a brief moment and teach each other what we didn’t want going forward. But still, I sometimes think about who my child would have been, what passions would interest them, what they would be learning now, what our life would have been like together. Sometimes I listen to the song, “Baby Birch,” by Joanna Newsom and cry.

I once had a checkup at the OB/GYN and in their preamble of questions was asked if I ever had a miscarriage. I had always said no to this question because I never went to a doctor after what happened to me, but I knew it wasn’t a normal period. I felt shame about never having talked to anyone or tried to get any help for myself. I didn’t care much about my health or safety back then, and part of me believed I deserved the pain in my life. I went through the highlights of the story: the pain, the duration, the lack of period leading up to it. I said I was never sure but it seemed like it was a miscarriage. The nurse confirmed that it sounded like that was the case to her, but there was no way to prove as much after the fact and without having had tests done. I said it was all good and that I had never talked about it before, so I didn’t know if it was something that could still be detected in my body. So many years had passed by that point.

I was sent to wait in my room and when the doctor came in, she had been crying. She sat down and asked how I was. I don’t remember what I said or even what she said in return, but I remember her saying something about it being hard when you don’t have a chance to say goodbye. She hadn’t mentioned the story I told the nurse, and so I didn’t know if this was in relation to something she had just experienced or to my own story. This is something I still don’t know. But I remember being taken aback by her emotion and how numb I felt. I only ever allow myself to feel the grief of the experience briefly. It’s here and then gone. I go back to pretending it never happened. Yet it lingers in the background, the suggestion of another life, another timeline, another person I could be.