Two days ago, it was april second.

And on april second, i should have written everything down - but i was paralyzed with sadness and regret and guilt, and all it did was drive me more and more insane.

It was Darrel's due date. The child that stopped moving in my womb because of a couple of emergency morning-after contraceptives should have been born today - if only i hadn't taken those god damned pills.

And now, all i can do is apologize. That day, when i went out to sit with wessam in the garden square, there were a group of Korean mothers with their children. We watched them, sometimes smiling, sometimes pointing out their behavior or the way they interacted and laughing about it. It was a sweet sight - two girls, around 2 years old, and one boy of the same age. They rode around on a colorful trycicle and talked in their complicated language, with small voices and adorable facial expressions. When two of the mothers left, leaving one young woman and her daughter behind, we watched the child start crying because her playmates were gone, watched her climb onto the bench next to her mother and argue in Korean, while pointing one chubby arm towards the children in the distance that were returning home. I couldn't help but smile. An ache was there though - i envied what they had and knew that on april second, that very day, i should have had the same thing.

Damnit. I felt as though i couldn't be around people i didn't like, or didn't know. I wasn't in a good state of mind. I knew i would be going to the music studio once again, with wessam, so that he could form a new band with the studio owner's 15 year old son - a phenomenal drummer - and the vocalist from his band. There would be a lot of male egyptians swarming around that i didn't know, staring and smiling, and chatting in their language whenever they got tired of staring. I personally felt a strong need to get away from that, but i knew wessam wanted to play guitar and have people hear him do it - he's the best amateur guitar player i've ever heard, and everyone who visits the studio knows that he is probably the best they can find. He has dealt with all my bullshit for a pretty long time - so it was time for me to give him a break, i decided, and i kept the turmoil in my heart and mind to myself.

Melanie was passing through though, and she found us. It was the first time we saw her in around three weeks, and within those three weeks we had decided that we wanted nothing to do with her. But she sat with us, and wessam was nice with her, as if nothing had ever happened. I rolled my eyes and tried to ignore what was going on - and when nael arrived with an extremely high friend with him, it went back to the old days, where i sat around staring into space and wessam gabbed on with them in arabic. Today, of all days, was the one day i didn't have patience for it. So my frustration grew quickly and I became quiet, because there was no point in conversing with these people anyway.

We wound up waiting while Nael left to score drugs with our LSD friend, John. We used to be closer, all of us. We all took acid stamps back in late january and drove into the waadi (aka, orange  & yellow mountains, almost like a gorge or a canyon), where we all spent the next six hours feeling the acid overtake us, climbed the hills, drank sweet wine, played guitar, took pictures and felt the surroundings come to life. I had become overtly interested in small rocks, and found throwing them to be pretty fascinating. At one point melanie and i climbed onto a boulder and threw pebbles to the sand below, marvelling at whether it was a gunshot or a grenade or a nuclear bomb that hit the tiny world below.

While melanie found that she was more and more irritated by her boyfriend on acid, wessam and i were very emotional. Wherever i climbed, he followed. We would lie in the sand several levels of rock above the campsite we'd created, and stare up at the sky that was so blue, it looked like a piece of plastic and i reached up to try and peel it from what felt like the ceiling. We were all on different trips - Nael wanted to be close to melanie while she wanted to be away from him. John was so content with his high that he merely sat on a rock and watched his dog lounge around, finding little caverns and holes to claim his own. The other one with us, an acid expert named fady, disappeared by himself to 'find himself' as he put it, and he disappeared behind the rocks for three hours before re emerging. But wessam and i were both emotional, in the same way. I didn't want to be away from him, and he didn't want to be away from me. We clambered up the side of the mountain, over boulders and dust, never wanting to separate.

And when the sun had finished setting, bathing us in a red glow, we packed up our stuff and left. Wessam's car had become screwed up by the desert road and they spent at least half an hour trying to give one of the flat tyres a spare. We went to John's apartment, where we cooked up kebabs and lazed around on the couches, until late into the night. 

But those days are long gone, as melanie's relationship with nael turned into shit and she saw wessam and i grow closer. I don't think the bisexual crush she had on me really improved the situation, either. After what had happened, i didn't want to be around them, and found that i had no choice. When we left John's apartment at eight, they followed us to the music studio. I really wasn't in the mood. I felt more and more like i was on the verge of tears, and being surrounded by all these people didn't help my bad mood. Eventually, i coudln't take it, and i told wessam i would walk home and he could stay behind - i didn't want to ruin the night for him.

"What are you, crazy? I'll go home with you, i'm not gonna let you leave n walk back by yourself."

I didn't blame him for being overprotective - everybody i've ever grown close to, besides florinda and siri, have had this feeling that i need to be protected. But i felt more and more suffocated the longer i stayed in the studio room, stoned from only two puffs of the cannabis plant, my head spinning and the room swaying. I hated it.

Wessam tried to talk to me about it when we were sitting in the same square, at 11pm, when i was close to home.

"Why don't you tell me what's going on anymore?" he kept asking. "It's not a relationship if you feel like you can't talk to me."

"I can, but i thought you might, for once, need a rest from all my crap."

He was suddenly surprised and worried. I knew he would never understand how i felt, anyway. His only involvement with the child was in his sperm - otherwise, i was the one who carried him and shared my blood and food with him, and i was the one who felt the loss, and i was the one he depended upon to protect him as he grew. And i didn't. Instead, i was the one who destroyed him. Nobody can really know how it feels to swallow pills and find out later that those pills killed your own unborn child - a child that nobody knew of and nobody cared for, while it still had a beating heart. Nobody can know how it feels until they themselves have done the same thing.

But i'll tell you this much. It fucking sucks. I would live in a bath filled with vodka if i could. I am so guilty, and filled with so much regret and so much loss, because i know that on april second, this life was supposed to begin, and i'm the one who took every embyro's right to a life away from my own flesh and blood. Whether i knew it or not, that's not the point. I had too many signs. In switzerland during the summer i woke up one morning with an abnormally swollen stomach. When i sat down, the usual fat wouldn't fold over - instead, it stuck out. I was so surprised and so freaked out that i tried downing lots of water to flush it out. But nothing worked, and i walked around like that trying to hide it. The next moring, it was gone - but the next morning, i had morning sickness that i should have realized the true nature of. Damnit. It's as if he was screaming to me from inside the womb, trying to tell me that he was there and i should stop drinking, stop smoking, stop taking whatever contraceptive pills i did, as a matter of life and death.

But i never listened. And now,  if i had listened, he would be in my arms, and whatever other life difficulties surrounded us, at least he would be here and he would be safe. Even if i wasn't the one to raise him, and we gave him up for adoption, i would have had control over what kind of family he entered and what his first few days on earth would be like. Now, i have nothing. Just old ultrasounds from a week after his death, and a memory that will never fade.

That's why wessam will never understand - he placed his seed there, and that was it. While it grew, he was on the other side of the world. When I had a swollen stomach,  he stayed exactly the same. When i had morning sickness, he was going about his day, uninterrupted. When i took the emergency pills and i was feeling the pain, his worry was only on me, not on what may have happened. I was the one who saw it on the screen - he was the one who sat by and watched. It's almost like they were friends of a friend - their only connection to each other was through me.

So i knew no matter how i tried to say it, it would never come out right and he would never see it my way. He's surprised that i still can't move on, even though it's all over.

I went home and cried, pulled out the ultrasounds and cried harder, and apologized until the words 'i'm sorry' lost their meaning, and i drank away the guilt, falling asleep with every bad feeling clawing at my skin. And i dreamt of heaven. I asked god if he was there, if he counted as a human being and went straight to the other world. And if he did, was he still merely an inch long?

Damnit. The injustice is so damn unfair i cant get my head around it - around what he would have been and the way i'd treat him - i'd make sure he had a much better childhood than i did, whether i was the one to raise him or not.

Man, my sadness is eternal. At least, that's the way it feels. I'm not the same anymore, and whatever fun i had in the past, whatever wild partying or sexual experimenting or substance experimenting i did, those days are over. The teen in me is almost dead. Of course i still display immaturity sometimes, and of course i'm still too trusting and sometimes very naiive, but it will follow the path that the rest of my adolescent youth did and soon dissolve, just as quickly as the rest. For sure, i'll become old minded much faster than i really should.

That's the way i've lived my life for the past six years though. And six years seems like such a short time, but to me, it's long - it's the most significant share of my short life, and it's defined everything i am and everything i will be - but not necessarily for the best. I know that when i think of him, and his body - wherever it may be.