Sloughing My Skin - 11-29-08

This is another of those very few entries I must preface with a plea for mercy, that I be allowed to vent without throwing a wrench in the Secret works. I am frustrated, tired, angry, and totally stumped. The very first thing I chose to use the Secret on, back in January, now ten months ago, was my skin. It quickly became clear that, like my perfect mate, clear skin was a desire I needed to build stamina for. I accepted that I needed more and various successes to build the faith required for these two, huge, long-held desires.

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So I waited, frequently testing out my faith on my skin with visualization, gratitude, etc. And each time finding myself unable to follow through. I have never had clear skin. Even on those rare occasions where there is, miraculously, no new blemishes, the scars would be there. I have never been free of the mask I must wear. It rules every social event, every outing, every choice I make that brings me into contact with people. I can’t even take a freaking nap without deciding whether or not the nap is worth removing my makeup and reapplying it. I have always been a slave to my skin’s needs and dire imperfections, and always longed to be free. It is therefore frustrating when part of the Secret, part of God’s faith, is visualization. How can I visualize what I’ve NEVER known? For more than half m y life, I have known my diseased skin and the despair that accompanies it. How can I make believe that my skin is creamy and radiant without makeup and feel all the attendant feelings of excitement, joy, relief, happiness, and confidence, when that has never, not once, been in my experience? Just consider that reality for a moment: since I was 13, more than half of my entire life span so far, I have NEVER had clear, unmarked skin.

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So I wasn’t surprised I needed time with the Secret to really tackle this first desire. But I feel as if I’ve been teased for ten months. Especially this summer/fall, when I discovered Mary Kay and began drinking lots of water, the latter of which was nothing short of a miracle as I have tried more than once to drink more water. And it started to work. For a while. How supremely frustrating to find it takes a month or more of drinking like a fish, 8 or 10 or 12 cups a day, to begin to see some change, and only a few days of falling off the wagon to have a full-blown breakout. How terribly disheartening to discover that freedom from food doesn’t include anything with a hint of sugar, which is no freedom at all. And how heartbreaking to realize that after all this time consciously, consistently using the Secret and years of aching for this freedom, I still don’t have what it takes to manifest this. And I really thought I had broken through. I was whispering every day in the mirror as I washed or make up my face, “Thank you for pure, white skin” and really trying to picture it. Trying my damnedest to imagine my husband seeing me with no make-up and not flinching. Because, you see, that is the rub, the greatest and really only true fear I have of marriage (which explains why I’ve tried so hard to use the Secret to rise above the fear and only concentrate on the picture I want): the horrific thought of evening coming on my wedding night, taking off my makeup because I can’t sleep in my makeup, and having to face my new husband with ravaged skin. The thought is so horrific, so disturbing and dreadful, it almost makes my gorge rise. It’s the worst picture I can imagine and it’s my worst fear, and I can’t seem to let it go, throw it away from me. What can I do? How can I use the Secret on it? It plagues me, even though I have been drawing up feelings of joy, relief, gratitude for my pure, white skin. And I’ve never been able to free myself of this depression when my skin is particularly bad by thinking, “Well, I’m alone and single and no one has to see me until after I’ve applied my makeup” because I ALWAYS look ahead to my marriage and know that I would HATE to be seen like this.

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I started crying last night as I watched the wedding scene in “Fiddler on the Roof” and clasped my hands so tightly my knuckles turned white and thought with my loudest voice, “Please, God, let that be your wedding gift to me. Let perfectly clear, unmarked skin be your only wedding gift to me. I don’t need anything else.” I just shudder, weep, cringe at the thought of my husband seeing me with this face. I want to be beautiful for my husband, not just because he is looking through the eyes of love. I don’t want him to have to find me beautiful and desirable in spite of my skin. Beautiful skin is such a necessary component of physical beauty; it begs to be touched, stroked, and kissed. I desperately don’t want my husband to reach out to me and see me cringe at the prospect of his hand caressing my bumpy, pockmarked, spotted face. I am sick with this.

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My parents say I should get on birth control and not worry about the someday when I have to get off of it, but I can’t not look ahead to that time when I’m off birth control. There will be someone who has to see me, all of me, all of my skin, no makeup, and I so want that skin to be good, not diseased. And what just sucks, and makes me so angry at the unfairness of it, is that after their suggestion this summer, and my reluctance at taking it, Mary Kay and water seemed to finally make the difference and I thought, oh, finally! And it’s so easy because I’m thirsty for the water. And then my hopes have been dashed – I can’t deny it any more. It makes me so angry. Others can eat junk and have great skin, while I eat healthy but God forbid I should have a cookie without immediately downing 14 cups of water to flush it out before it can get to my skin.

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I don’t know what else to do and I’m panicking because will I ever be free for good from the breakouts so the scars can heal which will take months and months? What will I do if my wedding day approaches and I can’t even feel the perfect joy I’ve waited for because I’m sobbing inside at the knowledge that I will have to come to my husband on our wedding night scarred and poxy?

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I desperately don’t want this journal entry and all the bad, bad, bad feelings and images that go along with it to bring about more of this horror to my life. Why is that even though the Secret teaches that a positive thought is many times more powerful than a negative one and that it takes many negative thoughts to manifest negative things in your life, I have instead so often found that one negative thought (even when you immediately replace it with a positive one) immediately manifests, while I can invest positive thoughts all day, every day, for months and it takes forever? Why is it that I can stave off this flu that’s been dogging me for days by focusing on health, but my skin absolutely erupts after I’ve thanked God for pure, white skin and held my head high for the skin I’m going to get? Why is it that my perfect mate hasn’t manifested yet either but I have so much more stable, consistent faith in that than in clear skin, even though I have an equal lack of experience in both? Why is it that the Secret has worded for so many things, big and small, for me, from a stoplight staying green to a gorgeous condo, but after all that I STILL don’t have enough faith to manifest clear skin? Will I NEVER have the faith for that? Oh, God, what a horrific thought. What a truly terrible, dreadful thought. What a horror I feel at that. Oh, please, please, don’t make me go into my marriage so grossly marked!

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This is another case of how the Secret can’t just be dependent solely on human will and strength. I don’t see how this will ever change because I am, each time I get my hopes up, revealed to have feet of clay. Obviously, I do not, never have had, and maybe will never have, enough faith for this mountain. I’ve thought that maybe once my perfect mate is sitting next to me, I’ll know as deep as I need to know that anything is possible and will finally then have the faith required to finally manifest this Loch Ness monster of desires. But all I know is that I don’t know and have never had the faith to manifest this. Surely, there is yet hope for me. Surely, it does not all rest in my own two hands, because those hands keep dropping the ball like the shaking, arthritic, feeble hands of the old. Where there is no way and no how, a way will be made. I don’t know how but it has to be possible. Possibilities must be possible or what is the purpose in the world? I have much to be grateful for. At least much of my skin is soft and pure and white. At least I don’t have a worse skin disease than acne. I know it can always get worse. But oh, God, does it make a dent in the firmament of heaven that I want this so much? Maybe I’m finally to the point of expressing these thoughts instead of overwriting their silence with words of faith and promise because I’m just tired. Tired of being cruelly disappointed once more. Tired of waiting for my perfect mate. Just tired. Maybe I’m just at the end of my strength with certain desires. But is there maybe this one gift left in your bag, God? Have they maybe not yet all been doled out and one small neatly wrapped box is left accidentally at the bottom of the bag, lost in shadow till you happen to find it? Maybe I won’t keep reaffirming this and bringing it onto myself. Maybe someday I’ll read this journal, maybe in another five years, and think, “Wow, I’ve had clear skin for so long I forgot how horrible it used to be.” Maybe this journal entry will serve a purpose in five or ten years that the journal entry five years ago served me a few weeks ago. I don’t know what the future holds. It has been shown already to hold great things for me, some I had long since forgotten to want. Maybe, maybe, maybe this great desire will actually, finally, truly come to me, and maybe I will be free for good.

Visualization Entry - It's Over - 11-23-08

Oh, my God. I breathe. I just breathe and take it all in. It is the last day of school. Just a mere few hours ago, I stood at the curb outside the school waving the buses away for the last time with the familiar, itchy blue pom-poms. I watched those buses leave and heard among the din of shouts and motors faint cries of “Ms. Parks!” and simply smiled serenely. What those kids don’t know is this is the last time they will ever see me.

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And as I sit in my lovely home with the sun streaming, writing my thoughts out to remember on this inimitable day even as I itch to streak away on a celebratory run, I can only breathe. I am struck still and speechless by the place and time I am occupying right now.

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Today was the last time I will ever have to enter a classroom and prepare to teach a gaggle of children. The last time I had to count down for their attention. The last time I have to pretend I want nothing more than to stand here surrounded by other people’s children.

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Why is it the last time? Why am I not just on three-month parole until the start of a new year in September? Because my dream came true. I fell in love with a man who fell in love with me, who asked me to marry him after only a few months of dating as I dreamed of all those months ago. Everybody said we couldn’t throw together a decent wedding in only a few month’s time, but I knew we could, and sure enough the Chrysler Museum just happened to have one opening in September, the only opening they had for several months on either side of it. It is timed perfectly as my paycheck runs out in August.

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And the absolute best part of it all – aside from the beautiful man himself – is that I can let that paycheck run out. Why? Because this man I love, this man who makes me want to break out in opera, I’m so happy, has given me my heart’s desire: he is more than willing to support the both of us. I don’t have to go back to work. Ever. I don’t have to teach ever again. We had the conversation about the future and I was so hesitant to tell him what I really want, unable to shake the fear that he would feel resentful at my expectation that he would work every day while I just sat on my duff watching game shows. But I should have known he wouldn’t react like that. He’s this great millennium man, but he’s also traditional enough hat the idea of the husband supporting his family wasn’t foreign to him. He was so sweet about it, offering to take care of me. That’s how he put it: he wanted to “take care of me.” And what a relief to know he was capable of it, that we wouldn’t be living hand-to-mouth if I stopped bringing home a paycheck.

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When he offered, I just stared at him for a moment, overwhelmed with the prospect of finally having my dream handed to me in such a beautiful package, and then I just started crying. He was a little startled and concerned, but I just wrapped my arms around his neck and sobbed for a few minutes into his shirt, the sweet smell of him adding a few more minutes to the cry fest. When I could finally speak, I blubbered that he had just given me what I wanted the most, my heart’s desire for the last year, the chance to really focus on and experience my marriage and family, which was what I had wanted more than anything else all my life. He sort of chuckled and held me tighter now that he knew why I was crying and he said if he had known I would have reacted that way he would have offered weeks ago!

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So now when we go to pick out china or things for the house, I have a skip in my step, so happy because not only am I finally getting married to the love of my life, but I don’t have to mix in that experience with that of Newsome Park! Oh, I get giddy just contemplating it. I never have to go back! The only things I plan on taking home with me are my children’s books and my rolling cart and my refrigerator. Everything else is going to be gone! And I love that I still have a couple of months to deal with wedding stuff before the wedding without a job taking up all my time. I can meet vendors and make phone calls and arrange things during business hours.

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It’s like abstaining from alcohol for years and then getting drunk on three sips of champagne – all my dreams are coming true. Finally, I’m getting everything I want.

Melancholy - 11-11-08

I am having a strange time, an odd, incomplete melancholy that brushes my skin. I am still grateful for my life and my job, still holding my own at work in the face of all those needy children and looming administration, but each morning since Friday morning have found myself waking up to a reluctance to go to work, to enter that particular fray. And I find myself coming to consciousness perturbed, troubled.

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And I think I know what it is now, as I’ve pondered it in my heart these last few days. I think I am tired. I’ve become tired of waiting. I just want him to come and, yes, rescue me. I can do this job now, at least till the end of the year, though I only consider each day as it comes. That is one thing the horrible beginning to this school year taught me – to be able finally to live in the present, even as I draw to me my future. But I just want him to come. It feels like it always did – a life of just-around-the-corner, my time marked in one-more-day, -week, -month, -year. And I’m tired and am compelled to ask, “Is he coming soon?”

To Match or Not To Match - 11-9-08

So I have a dilemma. Don’t you hate them? This weekend was my self-imposed deadline for signing up for Match.com, since my last date with It’s Just Lunch has come and gone and I am not impressed enough with the quality of the matchmaking at It’s Just Lunch, despite the stellar premise, to shell out another $700 for another year’s membership. And even though I have broken through I don’t know how many walls and barriers in dating, I have been dragging my feet to get my profile on Match.com. I have been with only feigned disappointment willing to accept any excuse to put it off. I’ve had report cards to do, I’ll wait for the weekend, oh, I have Chelsea’s girls-only pre-wedding dinner at Japan Samurai and I’ve got to shop for a gift beforehand, oh, there’s Saturday gone! Always something.

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Tonight I went for a walk, exploring some paths and trails in that odd, beautiful time when the sun is going down while the moon is already up in the sky. It was a clear evening and the waxing gibbous moon, I could tell, would be shedding layers and layers of blue light in a short while. I was happy as a clam, walking along in pine needles and gratitude, and out of nowhere, I realized that when I got back home, my deadline would be staring me in the face. And I felt so suddenly let down, so quickly I could almost feel the air hissing out of my punctured balloon.

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And with every step, I plodded toward a realization that had been nagging me for I don’t know how long. It was the first time I had really, consciously thought it, put it out there with the slim edge of desperation with which I had always furtively thought it. yes, I had found a measure of freedom with dating I had never known before. Yes, I could actually see myself going on Match.com, creating my profile, uploading my picture, and beginning to correspond with men. But deep down, with a passion that rides the edge of sadness, I don’t want to do Match.com, or any dating service. I don’t want that to be our story. For the rest of our lives, whenever anyone asks us how we met, I don’t want us to have to answer with “a dating service.” They are all well and good, but I’ve never been able to exorcise the viewpoint of being at base a little pathetic to need a dating service. What, can’t meet a man on your own? And I know all the arguments for them. I mean, look how well it turned out for Stephanie who, of all my friends, truly knows how I feel now, on the cusp of meeting the love of my life, because she was just there a matter of months ago. And I also know, without a shred of doubt, that if I did meet a man, the man, on Match.com or It’s Just Lunch or eHarmony, I wouldn’t give a damn how it happened, just that it happened. I would think fondly on the particular dating service that had delivered my dream to me, and recommend it to anyone with no hesitation. After all, it had worked for me, hadn’t it?

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But I always had a sense that I was more special than that. No love story ever had a character like me in it, so why would my story be just like so many others out there? I don’t want a cookie-cutter, fill-in-the-blank, put-your-name-here meeting story. If I told people I had met my mate on Match.com, their faces would light up in supportive understanding and they’d smile and say, “Oh, that’s so great!” And they’d mean it. Dating services are so common no one gives them a second glance. But I don’t want that reaction. I would have their same reaction to my own story if the story was that particular one. I want my meeting story to be one that catches them up in the romance of it. I want them to sigh and smile softly and say “ooh” and “wow” and exclaim, “Oh, that is so romantic!” I want to have that reaction. I want my own story, not everyone else’s story. I want a story that truly expresses how I drew him to me. Why, when I am like no other woman I’ve ever known and he is like no other husband I’ve ever seen and our journeys have been so unique, would our meeting suddenly stumble into the rut of the run-of-the-mill?

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And as I came to the end of my path in the woods, so too did I come to the end of my argument. As I stood there at the water’s edge, hidden among the reeds, gazing up in longing at the white moon in the blue sky which was scarred on my right with the bloody colors of the jagged sunset, I clasped my hands against the wistfulness that misted my eyes and whispered up to the sky above me, “God, is there no other way for me than Match.com, the one dating service left for me to try? Are you not wise enough and powerful enough and creative and imaginative enough – you created the giraffe, for heaven’s sake! – to think of a better story for me?”

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I wound my way back along the trail and up to the marina, still thinking. It occurred to me that though I have grown and matured and really come into my own, I have never altered in my expectation – or sometimes just desire – for a really great story of how I met my husband. I always wanted a romantic story. I can no more cut that desire out of me than I can the expectation that there is one man and one man only out there in this world for me. Surely God knows that. Surely the Secret will work with that desire the same as it will with my belief in the One. And I thought finally, for the first time, in time with my footsteps toward the water, I want a gloriously, grandly, surpassingly romantic meeting story. I’ve always wanted that, dreamed of that, but never have I so boldly declared it. And I unexpectedly felt a real frustration at that point. It seems to me that my meeting with the One keeps getting postponed because I keep needing to come to these realizations. My journals are full of them. I felt like, in the manner of all the other epiphanies, I needed to come to this one before I could meet him. And I got upset looking out at the water with furrowed brows, thinking, am I ever going to meet him? If I keep needing to claim these different realizations, will I ever meet him? There is always more detail to paint in the vision I have for my life. There is always more knowledge to grasp. How many of these life-changing moments of insight do I need to draw in before I’ve had enough to meet the One? I felt like saying, “Jeez, God, do I have to do everything?” Did I really need to stride into my bold declaration that I want a unique, romantic meeting story? Couldn’t God have done that on his own and just dazzled me? Before tonight, before I planned to register on Match.com, before It’s Just Lunch called, I had just been focusing on meeting him. Wasn’t that enough? Couldn’t the Secret have taken care of the “how” since it always knows the best, quickest, most harmonious way to your dream? So even though I knew this epiphany would be useful, as will all the others, in fashioning my life exactly as I want it, I couldn’t help but feel frustrated and wonder, “When will I have collected enough a-ha moments to have things in place for my perfect mate to come? Which epiphany will be the last one I need to complete the “before” picture of my life and open the door to the “after”?”

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I just want him to come. I want it to be time. I’m so tired of waiting. I’ve been on the cusp for weeks now. If I need to do Match.com, I will and clamp my mouth shut. If he could just find me, then lead him to me. I could respond now – as I couldn’t have not so long ago – all I need is for him to see me and be intrigued enough to walk up to me and start a conversation. If just a glimmer of why he is the One for me came through, I would happily give him my number. Couldn’t he do that? I am drawing him to me with all my power. Can’t he then find me?

Visualization Entry - Primal Nature - 11-6-08

I’ve always had a sense of primal nature. I’ve always been aware of the rhythm of nature in those essential differences between male and female that make the mingling of the two so perfectly scintillating, so irresistible. The pattern of life, the innate urges that harken back to purer, more savage times. The basic purity of the need to eat, to sleep, to hunt, to mate, to procreate. Compulsions that slip the tether of refined, evolved society while still running through its veins. And it has always seemed strange and ironic to me that I seemed so much more attuned to these undeniable compulsions than those around me, yet more than any of them, I have remained apart from these compulsions, feeling them but never experiencing them. All my life, I have, in some inarticulate place inside me, seemed to be waiting to dive in, to be swept overboard. And all I’ve ever known is the coldness let in by the door I left open.

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How constantly astonishing it is, then, to have finally come into that which I always felt so keenly. It stays in my mind, and I wonder what others’ eyes make them see of life that they can walk through their days and take for granted that they are with someone they love, are sharing their life, are bringing a child into the world, and truly feel their life is ordinary. I don’t seem to have the gene necessary to take those things for granted. Maybe the gene got burned out of me as years fell into time and I was still alone.

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All I know is I am constantly aware – over and under and through every moment’s consciousness – of those animal instincts that make these human experiences so powerful and magical. My mate. Male to my female. So strong and muscled where I am soft and white. So tall where I am small. So straight where I curve. Our differences dizzy me. I look so hard at him, my eyes grow warm with the concentration. I look at the animal kingdom and can’t feel so civilized. I don’t feel so apart from it. We humans may have high, intricate thought patterns, may have invented wildly wonderful things. But the most satisfying human experiences are the ones that are closest to the undeniable simplicity of the animals. The life-long bond of mates. The instinctive defensiveness of home. The purpose of continuing the species.

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And as my belly swells with my mate’s child, I feel at last that I have dived into the current of life. The entire point of a species, the ultimate urge that cannot be denied, is the propagation of itself. I have watched others do this while I have stood apart. A dead-end. A gene pool when there should be a river, flowing into and then out of the pool. I was only unto myself, and somehow felt at odds with nature. There was more to my destiny than just my own life, my own self. The river kept lapping at my feet, sucking me gently into its current, but I couldn’t immerse myself. All of human life flowed on in its proper pattern, but I was like a dam, storing up all I have to offer, all of the fruition of those who came before me along hundreds and thousands of years. Rich life pulsed in my veins, strength and goodness, health and possibilities, and all of it stayed locked up. And nature flowed on past me, always showing me what was supposed to be.

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But now, I have stepped into the river. Like the animals, I have a purpose. I have finally come into that purpose. I am giving life. This flawed humanity that so many believe doesn’t deserve to continue, will only devour its young, is swelling in number by one. I am giving the world another child, and it is proof of my kinship with unstoppable nature that all the arguments for not bringing a child into the dangerous, devolving, depraved world, that there are so many children who are already here who need homes, cannot dissuade me. This world has enough children! A ragged, unwanted army, and yet I can no more stay my footsteps down this path than walk on the ocean – I must have a child. My body has its purpose, it will not be denied.

Visualization Entry - My Child - 11-5-08

I can feel him inside me. He is always with me now, nudging me, a flutter here, a quiver there. It seems surpassingly strange that he was not always with me, from the beginning of my own life, inside my womb as I was in my mother’s, from the thinly breaking dawn of time. When time himself was being born, emerging owl-eyed into consciousness and action, my child was there. All my life, I could feel him, as if he was pressing so soft against the thin curtain of the unseen. I could feel his breath-quiet pushes against the thin film that separated his future from my present, until I could find the seam and meet present and future together.

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My hands always touched my body, my skin, drawn to its own softness and warmth, touching myself because no one else did. My hands know every curve of my arm, where the cool flesh of my upper arm gives way to the firmer, warm skin of my forearm. I know the particular curves and hollows of my jaw and throat. The heaviness of my breast and the sinewy boniness of my ankle. I know the veins that ripple under the skin on the backs of my hands, I know the strength of my fingers twisting around each other. I have always known my body. And I don’t go long without touching my skin. Self-soothing, I suppose.

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So it is no wonder that I touch my body even more now. And it is every wonder to feel what I feel as I run my hands down my belly. I have only ever known softness, sometimes a little too much softness. Only ever knew the specific lumps and bumps and tucks of my ribs, hips, and waist. But that is not what I feel anymore.

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I stand in the dim shower, streaming with steaming water, slick and soft, and marvel at the feel of my swelling belly. Its foreign hardness where there had only ever been softness. I slide my hands from my ribs, still rippling through my skin, and then down and out and back under. And I think every time, this is not a dream. This is not pretend. Just to prove it, I try to suck my stomach in and I just . . . can’t. It won’t go. And even after months of this, it startles me. I can’t get used to it. My belly stays out. And unlike all those times when I pushed my belly out and pretended, but was always aware of the essential emptiness inside, always aware that there was still only and all me in there – unlike all those times, my brain spins at the knowledge that there is not only me anymore. I’ve only ever known just me, but there is another being inside that swollen belly, a being that came from me and from the man I love better than my life, but essentially, this person is his own. I can’t know what that will mean yet. What inklings and inclinations will be uniquely his? What mistakes will he make and shenanigans will he get into, simply because he is himself and could not avoid them? What will his voice become that has a separate timbre and special resonance because it flows from the tiny throat that is forming and swallowing inside my body? Worlds within worlds within worlds.

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My showers take an hour now because I just stand there on aching feet, happily letting my ankles swell with the heat, because my hands can’t stop learning and feeling and writing this belly of mine. And as I get out of the shower finally, all the hot water gone (sorry, honey!) to dry off and put on my bathrobe and lotion my legs, I am always so brittly and beautifully aware that this big, round belly of mine, so smooth and adamantine, doesn’t change. It doesn’t shift as I move around and go away as my stomach muscles tire. It stays hard and full and firmly a part of me. I adjust around it all the time, bending my body and my life around it even before a baby is in the house. Tying my bathrobe high under my breasts, noticing the outward flow of the fabric below the belt. Having to shift the cord of my hair dryer in different ways than before. Getting into bed and pulling up the covers and getting into a comfortable position, all in new ways, ways I never did them before. When I read a book or write in my journal or cook a meal or make the bed, my hands and wrists are constantly bumping into my belly because as I get used to and accommodate one size, my belly is yet growing even more. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve turned or rolled toward my husband and miscalculated and bumped my burgeoning stomach right into him. He laughs and pulls me closer when I apologize, but I can’t really mind it. Every one of these accidental touches only reminds me of where I am. Who and what I am. Wife. Mother. Family. I love every clumsy move, every accidental bump. I’m huge and I want to be huge.

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I wanted this. For so long, through all the changing currents and squalls and storms, this never changed, never shifted an inch, as entrenched in my body, ingrained in my flesh, incorporated into my blood as this baby is now. I wanted this. I wanted my strong, beautiful husband who makes me laugh and makes me breathless with impatience to meet my son to see how much of his father he took. I hope he was greedy there as he took his life and his nature from his father. I wanted this home, so beautiful and warm and inviting and painted with laughter and dreams. I wanted this marriage which makes me stronger, better, softer, richer, which comforts me and teaches me, which gives me diamond-hard lessons in appreciation, compromise, and commitment. And I wanted this child that grows inside me, that kicks me hard when I’m in bed and no longer moving around to lull him to sleep. I wanted this big belly and this warm, flushed skin and the contradictory feelings of delicacy and strength. I love the look of my nightgown sloping over my full body. I love the sheer femininity that charges my veins, and I love that those very veins are rising up under my skin as they pulse with extra blood.

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I love my body, whispering deep in my throat of my pride in its strength, its uncompromised ability to do what it was born to do. My body works perfectly, accepted my baby with all the naturalness I expected one such as me to feel when finally pregnant. I am strong and warm and healthy and soft – all the things my baby needs. I fill with pride to know I can care so well for my child. My body can handle both myself and my unborn child with no strain at all. Oh, I was made for this. Grow strong, I croon softly to my small, moving child. Take all you can from me. I can handle it. I have so much to give you. Take all you need and there will still be more. I love you.

I Want a Child - 11-5-08

I want a child. I saw one today and to my complete astonishment, started crying. My eyes blurred instantly with tears and my skin flushed with their heat. It wasn’t out of despair as it would have been, and had been so many times, long ago. I did not think it was out of my reach. My longing wasn’t mingled with regret or hopelessness. It was just desire, so strong it took my breath away. I want a son. I want my son. My child. My chest near collapses with the vacuum left in the wake of my crushed breath. My bones creak and stretch with their aborted opening. My belly waits in its muffled silence to be filled with movement and sound. My legs tremble against the instinctive spread. This is my purpose. My destiny. I was meant for this. I am made to bear, and bear again. My skin flushes with need, with perfect purpose. My hands spread of their own accord over nothing, as if to cup tenderly. My children are inside of me, waiting, waiting. They drift in the void of what is not yet seen. They wait for me. They are inside me, and I feel them. I feel the absence of sound they make, the utter stillness of the movements not yet created.

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My time is near. It will be my turn soon. Soon, I croon as in a lullaby. Soon, my loves, soon, my children. Soon all I have worked for and created with my life will be revealed in your tiny warmth, your wrinkled softness. Soon, all I am will finally become crystal-clear in the murky color of your newly-open eyes. Soon, soon, you will be here, and my arms will wait no more. The endless delay will find its end and I will hold you.

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My child, my baby, my soul. Soon, I will bring you forth, and continue my parents’ legacy. Soon, I will meet you and finally know the face I have dreamed of all my life. I will see myself in your eyes, your father in your face. I will bear down in utter pain and feel nothing but utter joy. No fear will be mine – only a fierceness in bringing the unseen into the seen. No woman welcomes labor as I do, no woman is as strong as I am – stronger than taunted bulls, stronger than an ocean current, stronger than a spewing mountain, a leaping wildcat, the deepest grief. I am all strength as I bring you forth. I am strong enough for all my children. I give you strength not pain, joy not terror. I breathe and grunt and cry out and only see you. I want you. I want you. I want you.

Reflections on the "Date" - 11-3-08

My date with Alan has come and gone. He wasn’t the One. And I have to admit to a relief at that. The name for one thing. That was the source, the locus, for all the bad feelings I was struggling with – how could I be destined for an Alan? Every time I would think of his name before the date, I would inwardly cringe and think, “He can’t be the One.” And then I would have to overwrite those thoughts. But I was also relieved when I saw him for the first time. It’s never a good sign when your first thought is, “Well, maybe it’s the light.” But also how he was during the date – all the things I didn’t want: easy-going to the point of laziness, letting several cuss words drop on the first date (hello! first impressions, anyone?), the sense that he didn’t really want to hear what I had to say. We got into a political discussion about the upcoming elections and the state of politics in general, and though he was passionate about it, he was persistently negative, and gradually I got the impression that as my political education wasn’t as thorough as his, he really didn’t value my opinion. And when I did offer devil’s advocate opinions or statements, as I love debate, he seemed less interested in a real discussion or debate than merely an audience for his opinions.

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All in all, it was a date that had all the hallmarks of a bad date. And yet, I was light as a bird on the drive home. If I didn’t get my true wish that my next date be with the One, I got my next dearest wish: I truly saw and understood how simple it all is. Dating is really so simple. Early on in the date, and several times throughout, I had the distinct thought, “I really hope he’s not the One,” which effectively makes him not the One. But that didn’t make me despair or feel awkward or uncomfortable. I was patient until we left, and then we walked out of the restaurant and I smiled up at him and said I’d had a fun conversation with him, and thanked him. I could tell he was taking my signals and he said thanks, too, and then I said, “Take care,” and strode off to my car with head high and tail twitching. And I was able to see dating is really that simple. You go out with someone, commit to a couple of hours of your evening, to get to know them, to see if you’re interested in finding out more about them enough to go on a second date, and if so, you give them you’re number. If not, you smile, thank them, and walk away. So simple. It doesn’t have to traumatize you. It doesn’t have to be a failure. It’s just what you do till you stumble on the one who makes you stay there. So I did get one thing I visualized. I get it now. I get how to date. And I didn’t have to go on a great date to get that. In fact, I think I needed the not-so-good date to really show me that.

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And the absolute greatest thing about the experience was that as I got in my car to drive home, my greatest fear didn’t materialize: that a bad date or just a date with someone who wasn’t for me, didn’t send me into a tailspin of despair. It had absolutely, totally, and completely no bearing on what was still the truth: my perfect mate was out there. Still waiting for me. Still destined for me. We would still meet, and meet soon. As I drove away, still in my date clothes and still with the smell of Bravo’s in my nostrils, this date and this man who was so not for me, was already years and years in the past for me. In fact, by the next morning, barely twelve hours after the date, I had to struggle to remember what his face looked like. And I realized that men I dated would no longer loom in my mind, menacing with the bad memory they inspired. That date, unlike all other dates I’ve ever been on, took its proper place in that two hours of one evening. In the past, a date would have, in my reflection, bloated up far beyond its actual time and would have still been nudging me days later. But no more. I could, by the following morning, look back on the date and see it occupy merely two hours, and then it was over and done with. I love perspective! I love love love it! May I be showered daily with it! Thank God for that perspective. It truly freed me! I can now face more dating with no fear. I did wonder afterwards why this wasn’t the date, after I had used the Secret so well for that very thing. After all, it had seemed to be the thing all those days were leading up to. It had the echo of the questions I had initially about the TowneBank disappointment. Then it immediately occurred to me that this date and the preserved hope and more complete perspective that followed it took away all my years-long fear of dating. I can go into a date now and be free and relaxed. And that is the greatest gift I could have been given with dating, aside from the gift of the date. So yet again, still, the Secret worked out in the best way.

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So let’s see what the next great thing to come to me will be!