Seasons (Ari AU)

Prologue

There are different seasons in life.

You're a child, care free and dependent upon the adults around you. If you're lucky enough you don't have to worry about where your next meal is coming from or where you may have to lay your head down at the end of the day. You can be aware of the world around you, but still remain in a fantasy land of imagination without consequence.

Then you're growing older, falling in and out of love for the first time. Experiencing the type of heartbreak that your young teenage heart thinks will be the worst feeling of your life, only to push it off to the side as soon as the new kid walks by, grabbing your eye. The time that you find those friends that you believe will be beside you all the days of your life, the big moments along with the insignificant ones.

Eventually you reach the season in which no one but yourself can really justify making your decisions for you. Deciding upon what university to attend, what career path to take, who to marry, whether or not to have children. People give you their opinions but ultimately it becomes your choice, and you must own up to the consequences of your actions.

Then the seasons we know will creep their way into our lives the older we get. Like the passing of a parent. We all know it's going to eventually happen; it's expected. We live, pay taxes and die. Full circle of life with the hope of it all being completed in old age.

But then there's those seasons that no one prepares you for. Those periods of time that are almost taboo in conversations, no one ever wanting to bring up the possibility of experiencing them. Some who believe they're not really seasons, but just mere moments that should be easily moved on from. Those people have never experienced those instances, given the fact that they believe it all to be over with a simple blink of an eye.

How do you move on from the death of a spouse? How do you grieve through the loss while carrying the remnants of his life left behind in your own womb? How do you keep your life from falling completely apart when you realize the man you loved with every fiber of your being had an entire family apart from you? How do you navigate a new life that now begins in bankruptcy thanks to your husband's ill choice of business ventures without your knowledge?

You see, those are the moments that should be discussed more so than who our favorite Disney princess is or what we want to be when we grow up. Each of those things change as often as people change their underwear.

But coping mechanisms? Those are things that can last a lifetime. Those are the things I had no intention of needing at a mere thirty-three years old.

And yet, here I am, sitting in a hospital bed with my hand resting against my swollen belly cursing all the people I've met throughout my life that managed to not give me the survival tips that I would need for this particular season.