Live Motion

Right now, in this very moment, I am alive. A living vessel, gently cradling another fragile, delicate life inside. This is not my first time experiencing such a sensation, although it is the first time I possess the frame of mind to do more than revile it.

Yes ...

My first pregnancy, I am not afraid to admit it, was a literal fucking nightmare. Not so much in the physical (I never puked once throughout the entire pregnancy) but certainly in the mental. I hated the feeling of being pregnant, I felt my body was a battleground. A battle fought between my own sense of being and a tiny, ever encroaching invader, steadily claiming space and giving nothing in return.

I compared the child often to a parasite, and felt quite justified in my definition given the very real basis of our relationship at that time. She siphoned nutrients directly from me, used my body as home, bed, and lavatory, and gave me back what benefits exactly? The need to shave more often if I remember correctly.

When I was far enough along, feeling my baby move, at best would leave me with the mildest of joys. 'Well, it must mean she's healthy' I would usually say with a noncommittal shrug. On nights when she was more active than I cared to deal with, I would swear and roll over, clawing at whatever was within arm's reach with an anger I struggle to comprehend even now.

Some part of me knew that what I was experiencing wasn't exactly right. Which meant, something about me was wrong ... I. was. wrong.

Of course, it didn't help that in every maternity website, and in every expecting parent magazine I was repeatedly confronted with smiling faces, and stories about that blossoming flower of glowing maternal love and happiness most women were so eager to share. I thought that surely, these bitches must be making that shit up. Could my reality be so far off from theirs that it was at complete odds with the rest of the birthing world?

Surely not ... right?

Hell, there was even a period I imagined those maternity magazines were actually written by dudes in secret, to perpetuate the idea that motherhood and the desire for it should just come naturally to every woman.

So, suffice to say, I wasn't in the best place mentally. And then, physical shittiness finally caught up with my mental state in the last few months. From eight months on to the very end (oh which by the way, the typical pregnancy is actually 10 months total, not 9. That concept came from the fact that most women are not aware they are pregnant the first month. I did not suffer such a lack of awareness.) I was rendered quite nearly catatonic. What little energy I had completely flatlined, my feet and legs had swollen to nearly twice their normal size, The excess weight of the baby pressed on my already aching fractured pelvis, suffered from a previous auto accident.

Oh, and it was the middle of summer ...

in North Carolina ...

Yeah.

So what is the point of this post?

Ultimately, it is to point out that reality exists only within the eyes, the mind, and the body of the person experiencing it. As I am now pregnant with my second child, and in my final month no less, I can honestly say that this time around my experience is completely different. Although it began with a perception shattering nervous breakdown due to a tidal wave of crashing hormones, the rest of this pregnancy has been a snap. And maybe that could be due to my experience with the first.

Who knows?

The point is, we are molded by our experiences, and therefore we should never discount or disregard one another for possessing opposing views. Even (or especially) when another person's views are so damned paradoxical to our own understanding, it feels as if that person must be living on another planet, or they're just a damn idiot.

Knee jerk judgment like that cuts us off from the human experience, from experiencing one another, and does little to serve us. In fact it's a disservice to ourselves.

If I was to have run into one of those beaming mothers to be during the last few months of my first pregnancy, I would have stopped her in the middle of her fluffy testament to motherhood and gave her about ten reasons why she was full of shit, then I would have proceeded to attempt pulling off her rubber mask to reveal her to the world as some kind of alien controlled robot set upon the population to keep us pet humans procreating.

Something like that ...

But I would have been wrong. (And charged with criminal assault.) Because I would only have been seeing reality through the eyes of a pained, miserable woman with no idea in how to cope with the nearly indescribable sensation of pregnancy.

My reality is configured differently now.

I am weathered by previous exposure and strengthened by experience of motherhood. And it is in this new top down perspective, this different, and healthier frame of mind that I anticipate the coming of my second child into my life, and my reality.

Perception is something that should always be challenged and shifting. Because the world is always in a state of flux. If I could go back and tell myself that two years ago I would, and then I would dodge the flying debris my past self would fling in horror ... because my past self was fucking crazy.