5.27.2005

waiting. another arbitrary deadline passes everyday. the 23rd a deadline by last menstrual period, the 24th a deadline for no reason but it was tuesday and the weekend had me thinking tuesday would be a good day, the 26th was a thursday and months ago aleks said the baby would come on thursday, the 27th a deadline given by ultrasound... sometimes i walk around and think stupid things like, "let me just get this load of laundry done and folded and put away and then i'm ready." or something equally pointless and mundane. i suppose the more finish lines i give myself, the more targets, the more chances i get at being right once, or rather the more opportunities i give myself to miss it completely. the actual event gets pushed further and further back, day by day, hour by hour. it is a million tiny litle failures marking my path to the inevitable. it is a waste of energy to mark the passage of time this way. and yet i am still stupidly trying to out-think the universe, trying to dig my way to acceptance of things as they will be. but it cannot be forced. there is no way to navigate it, and somehow i seriously doubt that my faith in the universe has anything at all to do with it anyhow. it is not about me getting to the place where i have given up. my baby will come when my baby is ready, not when i think it is time, or when i have everything in order, or even when i have everything in disorder. it has nothing at all to do with me, i'm sure. i am simply up against my own brain trying desperately to predict something unpredictable, trying to accomplish the impossible for no reason except its own satisfaction. it is an endless thirst, incapable of quenching correctly. i am left as tantalus, stuck on this island, forever reaching for grapes just out of reach, water beyond my grasp... totally pointless this exercise is.

5.12.2005

being in birth. it occurs to me the difference in perspectives of being in birth versus having once given birth. time and retrospect have given me an appreciation for birth as a life-changing experience. i can view it as the experience that most transformed me, but it is a mottled lens - it leaves out the sensation itself - something forgotten intentionally thanks to a hormonal blueprint for the continuation of life. if i could remember clearly what it was like - if i could re-experience by simply remembering the pain and the intensity - i might not be inclined to give it this upcoming second go. but in thinking, in considering and trying to remember, i glimpse what it was. i recall the intensity of labor, how dark it was and how foreign. i remember the isolation and the sensation of feeling boxed-in, trapped in a tunnel of sensation, the whole of my body coursing with baby, with the impetus to eject. it was a place that i had never been, a landscape i had never before seen, and it was dark and treacherous. in trying to imagine, to remember the opposite of that, the positive side of it all, one might be inclined to think immediately of the end result, of the baby. having had one baby with problems, i am perhaps not in the place to feel as though the end result really is yin to this yang, and whatever opposite of the darkness and intensity was anything other than the survival of the experience, the challenge met. there is simply not, in my mind, a positive aspect of going through labor. there is no light to the darkness - it is all merely a challenge. a challenge that is certainly incredibly worthy, and an experience i treasure, of course, but i just cannot see it as particularly full of light. i see it all as something that enriches my life, just that it's - well, hard. there is a beauty to it, but it's got dirt in it. it is difficult, it is full of obstacles - it's life. despite all this, i am now looking forward to giving birth again and am ecstatic to meet my new baby and start my new life. i have reached the stage where all systems are go and everything is pointed forward, my life just a countdown to rocketing forth into the unknown. everything is chock full of anticipation. i am saturated with it. there is a touch of nervous energy in the air as i make my way through the mundane, through my daily tasks of familial upkeep. i am ready and i am waiting.