Blackout

I have an assignment, and I've been putting it off, but now I really to finish it and turn it in. There are so many reasons I procrastinate, but in this case the reason is that the subject matter causes me emotional distress, and I am going to have to push through it to emerge intact on the other side, my piece submitted.

I am supposed to write about the circumstances of Lily's birth, albeit in a non-graphic way. Specifically, I am supposed to write about how desperately I wanted to leave the hospital after the traumatic experience--24 hours of labor, prep for C-section, emergency C-section, discovery of placental abruption, DIC, night in intensive care wavering between life and death--and to go home, to my childhood home, for Christmas. A large part of my motivation, for this is all true, was to bring Lily to meet my grandmother, who hadn't been able to make the trip and wasn't entirely aware of just how traumatic the birth had been.

One problem I am having in the writing, which I will post when completed (tomorrow? I hope so.), is that it is proving difficult to achieve poignancy without the specifics, but the specifics, when included, drown out everything else. Another problem is that thinking about the experience is challenging in and of itself. I can see before and after so clearly, remember details such as a splotch on the wall in the stairwell on the way out of my building, the way the air felt as I stepped out of the car, Lily in my arms, but the trauma itself requires a kind of digging I haven't really forced myself to do.

Anyway. This is what is on my mind, and on my plate, today. We shall see, I suppose, how I work these issues out.