All you wanted was for them to talk to you as if you were never leaving. Not plan your goodbye, because you’re not going – that funeral you’re planning? It’s for someone else. I'm not dying.

And everyone around me cries… but my roads still thin. I haven’t even begun to do what I wanted to, and when I try and list it all down… it all seems so pointless, so empty, so selfish or pretentious.

I didn’t pack much and my flat was empty. I had no photos on the walls, and no one knew my number, still, I cursed them for not calling.

Mum should have followed me. She knew what was bothering me. She knew why I was acting cold. She wasn’t crying because she’d miss me… she felt bad, guilty.

It was so long ago now… I was so young; she said I was stupid to think I could do it. He said he loved me. I wanted to keep it… her… the doctor told me in advance.

When she was gone, he left me. Called me a murderer. But mum had said I was stupid for thinking I could keep her,
“How will you pay for her? Who’s going to look after her? Not me…”

She told me to kill her.

I hate waiting rooms because I hate waiting, for good or bad, waiting gets me nervous. I was thirteen.

But she held my hand and told me she loved me, told me that it was for the best. The doctor was sweet…
“You know there are other options…”

He loved me. But I lied to him, I told him I had gone through with it, I knew he wouldn’t let me get rid of her.

…Having something grow inside of you… I touched my stomach all the time, I talked to it.

I didn’t get to meet the family, I wasn’t allowed – they said it would only complicate things, they also said that once I signed off, I signed off. Dad said they only told me that to make sure I was certain… mum told him to shut up.

It was just as painful as it seemed on TV, took longer then I could have ever imagined. Mum stood by my bed, I wanted her to go away… but she wouldn’t. She stood there squeezing my hand and whispering to me.
“GO AWAY”
“Shh baby... I’m here”
“LEAVE ME ALONE!”

It’s amazing. Once it’s out of you… the pain just stops, I heard her crying. They carried her to a small bed next to me… I saw my mother look at her and then look away.
“Mum?”
“It’s better this way”
“Can I hold her...?” She started crying. "Can I see her?"
She cried because she felt guilty. I swore that I would never cry for selfish reasons as I watched the tears trickle down her face… she wiped them away. “This isn’t right. You’re too young… you have so much to achieve” she smiled, reassuring herself, started playing with my hair, “you’re going to get married, you’ll be in your late 20’s, you’ll have the start of a career… you’ll be happy, and that’s when you’ll have kids”

We didn’t talk on the way back home, then not much… slowly I relaxed slightly… I had boyfriends, I passed my exams. I needed to prove to myself… that I couldn’t possibly have had her. I think mum was proud.

It had been 3 months since I suspected it; I sat in that waiting room, just down the road from where I had last seen her ten years earlier... It had been so many years… but she was somewhere. Calling someone mummy. I got cold when she was taken from me.

“There’s nothing we can do for you”
“How long?”
“Six months”
Mum cried. I didn’t.

I drove home. My real home… they were all out, I went to my room but it still had the conversation between me to myself as writings on the wall. Well I didn’t want to read and re-live that hurt again. I went downstairs… there they were… standing at the bottom of the stairs looking at me, happy that I came home, but with a blank look on their faces. I walked past them…

“Stay… you must have come back for something…”
“I missed the house”

My dad… who had been silent all this time, followed me out of the house, he grabbed me and turned me around to face him, keeping his hold firmly, digging his eyes into mine…
“It’s ok to feel…” he started to cry but carried on talking… “It’s ok to be upset, to feel angry and ripped off… its ok not to be ok…”
I bit my lip and turned away, I didn’t want him to see me crying, but I couldn’t fight back the tears, I would miss him, him, my sister, the world – hating the world, my crap job, my crap car, watching people on the bus, running my fingers through the grass in the park, reading, smiling, laughing, drinking… eating. How do you say goodbye to these things? how do you say goodbye to everything…? “I can’t” my voice broke as I spoke, he understood.
“Don’t hate us”
“I don’t… I don’t hate you…”
“Don’t be mad at her…”
I turned away again, “let me go”
“She did what she thought was best for you”
“I know… I know that…”
He let me go, I wished he didn’t, I wished he had dragged me into the house and made me stay. He let me go… I turned around and walked towards the car… he called after me…
“If you had kept her… then what?” I ignored him, “another person to say goodbye to?”

I turned around and walked back in his direction, “goodbye? You don’t think that I’m saying goodbye now?! I’m saying goodbye now! She’s mine! And you let her take her from me! I’m saying goodbye now! In eight years – she could have contacted me; I could have seen her…!”

I started to shake… then I felt weak… “She’s mine…” my eyes felt heavy… I half saw my mum run outside to see me,
“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” she got on her knees and started crying, shouted at my dad to call an ambulance.
“Was she pretty?”
“Oh… oh hunny… she was beautiful...”
My bones hurt, my head hurt, my mum’s words were drained by white noise and I couldn’t see her… “I knew she would be"

First I saw red… then I saw black… then I saw white… and then I saw nothing.