A/N: Thank you to everyone who reviewed! I keep rereading them because they make me so happy. Perhaps that is silly, but I don't care. This update only has one spoken word in it, but I think it perfectly summarizes Shelby's feelings. Don't skip ahead, you'll ruin it.
That old expression, "Hindsight is 20/20," annoyed Shelby very much. It was one of those overly repeated clichés that bothered her like water bothers a cat because she found it to be frustratingly accurate. She had spent a huge chunk of her life looking backwards and wondering how she could have been so blind and so stupid, and every time someone else uttered those words it felt as though they were rubbing salt into her already inflamed wounds with sandpaper.
As she pinched the bridge of her nose and closed her laptop in fatigue, that awful phrase stuck itself between the countless lyrics, performance dates, and finances that had been rolling around in her head. In this case, her 20/20 vision helped her come to the realization that working on Vocal Adrenaline stuff for four hours straight was not the best idea she ever had. Even though it had successfully distracted her from more significant and depressing matters, she was suffering a massive headache as a result.
Where was the refreshing satisfaction that was supposed to have come from spending the time doing something productive for her students? All she felt was lousy. She was becoming so weary of caring and giving so much up for Glee. What good did any of those damn trophies do for her? They couldn't rectify her mistakes or fill the emptiness inside. All they did was collect dust and cause her to waste half a day every month cleaning them.
From her spot on her sitting-room couch, she stared at her unused fireplace and imagined it roaring with tall flames, fueled by meaningless sheet music and her many notebooks of show-choir notes. Ah, there was that satisfaction that she was waiting for! She should have been ashamed at the thought, considering she had been largely neglecting Vocal Adrenaline for the last few days, but she was starting to become estranged from it all. It was reminiscent of her feelings about becoming a star after Rachel was born: it was important and she should care, but she just didn't anymore.
She might have believed that the emotion (or lack of) would pass with time, that once this craziness with Rachel passed everything would straighten itself out again, but after her conversation with Will Schuester earlier that day that did not seem very likely. She exhaled miserably, burying her face into her hands. She didn't want to think about it.
She wasn't hungry but she figured some food, as well as some aspirin, in her stomach would probably be good for her. She trudged to the kitchen, pulling out random boxes of Chinese food to make a plate, trying to work up an appetite for it. She really didn't feel like chow mein or chicken with broccoli, but she had a fridge full of it and she didn't want to let it go to waste. While it was spinning in the microwave, she moved around the kitchen, finding the low-dosage pain pills in one cabinet and a drinking glass from another.
She was working on auto-pilot mostly; she had lived many years alone and the sameness was just a part of the package. So it wasn't until she had taken a gulp of the water and swallowed the pills that she really thought about the cup in her hands and the clear liquid inside of it.
"When I was little and I used to get sad, my dads would bring me a glass of water. It got so I couldn't tell if I was sad or just…thirsty."
Any glass of water she ever held would simply be that: a glass of water. It would never be a means of comfort or a fond memory. There was nothing that she had ever owned or touched that would have even an ounce of the same meaning for Rachel as a cup of water from her fathers' hands. What was worst was that Shelby couldn't think a single way of changing that.
To imagine a future with Rachel was difficult. What did it matter that she loved her little girl and wanted her more than anything if she couldn't ever truly have her? There were already two people who called the teenager "daughter" and a three's a crowd. What's more, Shelby knew very well that the Berrys wanted her far away. They would never accept her presence, and they must have been going crazy with Shelby complicating everyone's lives.
"She's clearly convinced herself that you are as committed to this reunion as she is, and I don't think you are."
Shelby had been careful not to try and encourage Rachel. She had known since she first walked away from Rachel in the auditorium that she was harmful for the girl but that didn't change how she felt. It was possible that she had given herself away too much and as a result Rachel believed that they would have a happily ever after.
Things weren't that easy. There were no happy endings.
"I really need a mom right now."
Shelby didn't know how she could be a mom to her little girl. She wasn't Mom. If she were, she wouldn't have only have met her daughter three days before. She wouldn't have had to have gotten Rachel's cell phone number from the girl's boyfriend, nor would she have had to convince that boy to befriend her in the first place just so she could figure out a way to know her. She wouldn't have had to learn that the girl was a long-time vegan after offering to make her dinner. She wouldn't have had to deduce from the background of Rachel's MySpace videos that her favorite color was pink. She wouldn't be brokenhearted to know that her little girl was already greatly loved.
Shelby was not blind to how it hurt Rachel to hold back calling her own mother "Mom" and that she only resisted out of respect. If she allowed Rachel to regard her as Mom, how much would that snowball? How much would be expected of Shelby that she wouldn't be able to live up to? Shelby was no Mom; she was a lonely has-been who once played surrogate to a nice gay couple so she could make money to live out an idealistic pipe dream.
Hadn't Rachel ever wondered what kind of mature adult willingly signs a contract prohibiting contact with the biological child that adult carried within her own womb for nine months of her life? Shelby thought about that all of the time and she felt strong hatred for that person. Perhaps Rachel was too naïve to really see that or to recognize how damaged and inadequate Shelby really was.
Shelby had spent nearly 17 years of her life suffering with her emotions on her own and in silence. If she had spread out her weight onto supports like family and friends as her doctors and the surrogacy agency had recommended, she would have fallen through the crumbling base; her family disregarded her and her "friends" had been too preoccupied with their lives to give a damn about hers. Friendship was a funny thing— it was possible to remain delusional and oblivious about it until life was at its hardest and so-called friends showed their true colors.
By the time she found someone who really cared about her years later, she still wasn't able to face the shame and guilt in handing off her baby to someone else. Scott never knew and in that fantastically clear hindsight Shelby knew that he would have been beside himself with rage and disappointment if he did know, particularly after her surgery. She nearly told him once a few weeks after her operation, but she had begun to notice that he had already started to change. His gaze was no longer one of adoration but of waning endurance and it was in that instant of near confession that Shelby realized that the man she loved no longer felt the same way about her. They had been holding hands when she had accepted that she was alone once again. Three weeks later, that theory became an actuality.
When she thought back to her surgery, she remembered the smell of the hospital, the daze of the drugs and the hours she spent by herself listening to the constant beeping of her heart monitor. Once the faceless doctors had removed her uterus, she felt strange in her own body, just as she had when she had conceived Rachel. It was a philosophical reminder that her psyche and her body were separate entities and if she had believed in a higher power or heaven she might have been more able to accept life in her rebellious, deteriorating casing. She also might have made the depressing conclusion that she was receiving her due for the inexcusable sin of abandoning her baby. As it were, she simply believed her life and her luck to be shitty.
It was impossible to think back seven years to when she lay in that stiff hospital bed with innumerable tubes with unspecified functions running in and out of her without reflecting on the previous time she had been hospitalized. Cloudy, newborn eyes had haunted her, and in that sterile hospital bed she had cried for days about the loss of the daughter she had given up as well as the daughter she would never have.
Nothing had changed since then. She had lost her little girl the moment she put her pen to that contract and every cup of water would also serve as a slap of that reality for her, just as the scar near her navel would forever exist as wretched reminder of her infertility.
Liquid sloshed over the rim of the glass as she clutched it dangerously tight in her trembling hand. With a harsh wail of despair and an uncharacteristic break of control, Shelby hurled the glass away, her fierce eyes watching as it shattered against the refrigerator door and showered her kitchen with water and shards of sharp glass.
"Shit," she muttered, deflated, and ran her hand through her hair as she took in what she had done. Unsurprisingly, the outburst had failed to make her feel better, and instead of relief she was left with even more distress and a mess to clean up. Her food was forgotten about in the microwave as she disappeared into her garage to find a dustpan and a mop to deal with the simplest of her problems.