430. Blood, 8

(Rose)

The last time I had my menstruation is too far away. I recall I didn’t bleed much at the time, but nothing else.

Now, it’s been too long. And this day, it felt different.

There wasn’t really any blood. Not much at all even.

I’m beginning to realise that I’m on the process of losing them for good.

I’m 35. I think.

I’ feel like I’ve been through a lot over the last nine years, but also like it was only last week or so that I was still just 20 years old.

Oddly enough, my body feels manifold stronger and healthier now than during my early twenties.

My life as the original Rose was always a little frail and odd. I thrive much better in this world. My mind and inner demons made me more adapted for this world than the last.

If I were given by a daiûa the chance to go back before it all happened... If I were given the chance to wake up back in this train where I got lost...

How much I’ve changed, you know...

I would probably refuse.

Despite Blue waiting for me at home.

It’s meaning a lot, for me to be able to say that now.

That now, I would refuse to come home.

Wouldn’t you be proud of me?

I’ve matured. I’m much older now.

And I’ve now lost the chance to ever have a child on my own. I’m already too old for that it would seem.

That’s what my body has begun telling me. That time is over.

Roses can bloom all year long. I’m enjoying comparing myself to roses and rosemary to a point where it’s more about onirism than sense and metaphors. This situation is beyond my ability to link with a good metaphor.

My time of fertility as a woman, as a human, as a sapiens, it’s ending.

Oh well.

I was never quite eager to reproduce, for a few reasons, but... Such a time could have eventually come, given everything that changed over time.

I’ve lost something hard to value, and now that it’s gone, obviously I realise a little more clearly what it meant for me.

My issue was with sex first, not being a woman. Blume and Bleue broke that in me.

Even after what happened last, I could have eventually reconsidered it.

But now it’s too late for the normal way.

I’m not feeling that bad about it. It’s age. It’s not like I have a sudden desire to have a child.

Also, I’m aware that the normal limits don’t mean much nowadays.

If my fertility as a human has now withered, it certainly doesn’t mean that I would never have a child in this world.

I did get another woman pregnant after all.

I still can’t quite believe it...

And I’m not even considering what a being like Dragod was able to do.

I’ve already lost two children before they were born.

No, three...

The first one when I was still a child, about nine or ten years old.

Though my trauma drowned most of my memories of the time, I was pregnant.

My parents made me abort that baby born from rape.

The second one was carried by Bleue and died with her without a name.

The third one was Ogre’s offspring... I remember eating it to kill it inside of me.

I hated it beyond words.

Who knows, maybe the fourth time will be the charm... One way or another.

My mother carried three new lives inside of her.

My sisters.

She was happy afterward like I wish I was.

Who knows what opportunity will appear next to me.

If the main road is at its end, there’s still a world ahead and out there.

I’m not dead yet anyway.

And losing my fertility certainly doesn’t change anything about my current life and journey. It’s just a bittersweet surprise along my way. One that involves blood, but no sword.

It’s about life, and mostly death in my records; but it’s probably not a sealed fate.

My mother was still smiling as she aged.

Losing her husband did more harm than reaching that time of her life when she couldn’t have children anymore.

My fertile time started younger than the average, and in the end is ending younger than average as well, as far as I know. I still have about half my life expectancy ahead of me. It’s a little odd.

~

I’m passionate about the theory of Evolution, adaptation and transformation...

Lamarck and Grant’s ideas of evolution, I was educated on their work. Along with Wallace and Darwin later on.

Their work was the core of my natural philosophy studies as a child. I grew with it more than faith. My family wasn’t very pious, but times were changing.

Still, regarding evolution, it bugs me that humans evolved to lose fertility dozens of years before the end of their lifespan.

It’s probably not unique in the branch of mammals, but it still is counter-intuitive. My father told me it was probably about education. My mother that when we had evolved like that, our lifespan was matching it. How much time is given by individuals to educate their offspring.

I don’t know what nature or God had in mind.

Now that it happened to me, I’m thinking about it again. I still don’t know.

Another thing bugging me about evolution, is how much knowledge about our own body we don’t have innate. We instinctively know the bare minimum to survive. Our intellect hasn’t evolved much on that part. I would have expected some knowledge from our culture to be assimilated in our natural instincts over the centuries, but it doesn’t seem to work that way either.

I want to catch-up with the modern times discoveries on Evolution.

There’s so much I feel I don’t know or feel curious about.

And I’m sure the scientists of the centuries that followed my old time found most of that knowledge.

I’m losing my menstruation it would seem. That makes me desire to find a library on my way ahead, so I could learn more about evolution science and better understand why it happens.

All I can do is laugh about it.

My womb can wither. I’ll go on blooming flowers regardless. I still have many years ahead to live on hopefully.

And if there’s one thing I know about life and family, it’s that blood does not matter.

Like honour or innocence, bloodline purity is meaningless. Its true importance is what one wants it to be. Like faith.

We love people with different blood. And we can adopt orphans into our families as if they were from our own bloodline.

Adoption is a process more miraculous than reproduction.

It’s also a counter-intuitive process that goes against Evolution in my opinion.

But this one makes far more sense to me, in many ways.

Because I’ve seen bad blood rot in other families, but mostly because I was adopted in mine, I can tell how much the value of blood is what you make of it.

For me, for us, like faith, blood mattered less than family.

Blood and love are not as related as one would intuitively think.

I live as a proof of that, in many ways. And I’m quite proud of it.

I’m forever thankful to my parents, greatly.

Because even though my mother didn’t carry me inside her womb, even though I don’t carry my father’s blood in my heart, the two of them gave me life regardless. And love!

More than others could dream of, even through bloodline.

I’m alive thanks to them.

I had dreams, hopes and happiness thanks to them.

They might have not created the baby I once was through blood and sex, but they gave life to the child and woman I became.

Or we could say, they saved my life.

It doesn’t really matter.

They were my parents.

So because of all that, because my travel is unchanged...

Because it makes me want to learn more, rather than feel odd about it.

Because it isn’t the end of my life.

Because I could find another way to create a life I would call my child.

And because adopting a life would mean at least as much as bearing one to me, for all that, losing my fertile blood doesn’t matter to me.

Tomorrow the sun will rise again; and I’ll bloom some flowers.

The last reason matters to me above all others.

Adoption is creating your family with more love and philanthropy than Evolution could ever care to give.

To me, it’s a greater creation and gift of life than reproduction itself.

~