Perceived

 This pregnancy is long. It is ongoing and continuing in order to spare me its end.

For its end would signal an end I am ill prepared to endure.

The end of me. The end of all that is dear and delicate and valuable to my worth.

Not all those eyes that stare and judge and weigh my worth in success and male succession. Royalty and jewellery, property and gain. For this is meaning I do not aspire to.

I am forever gestating this immense ideal. This idea and this concept that will not escape, for as long as I hold it and warm it.

I was told it was vain, and narrow, and uninspired. Disrespected by centuries.

And yet my breasts swell at the anticipation of more. Milk overflows to feed the hungry. The tides of the moon possess me even now.

For I am fire and water and earth and air. I grow roots and become entangled in the ancient ruins.

My intact nature revealed, my essence established and clear.

This is who I am and who I want to remain.

I will forever cherish the swell that graduates me to the ages.

I will stand up for the pride of my body and the scars of my sacrifice. For it is worthy. It is all that I am and all that I ever wish to be.

A tree, a rock, a mountain.

A power not to be challenged. Only the bravest souls would dare defy my strength of purpose when it comes to my own.

I am wood, but fossil.

I am moon and earth.

I am soil and flower.

I am seed and rain.

I remain in the cycles that take me back to where I belong.

I return to the earth and I revel in its graceful embrace.

For I am free and wild, and old, and new.

I am true. Above all, true.

I am brave and calm, and loud and afraid.

But I am this. I will always be this.

This pregnancy must end.

This journey is finite.

And I end in Rhosgobel, deep within the bounds of mystery. I will build my own, and authentically disappear.

The big wave

 

Grief is like a big wave that takes you by surprise no matter how many times you see it coming or no matter how experienced a surfer you are. You get bowled over every time and it doesn’t diminish in intensity.

Every time. It hurts the same.

Meh, I’ve felt it before, it can’t be that bad. And yet it is.

And the complexity increases because every time you seem to grieve everyone you have grieved before all over again. And you share the grief for others as well. Those who you know are in as much pain as you are.

I know it is the cost of love. And I have agreed to pay it. In the mistaken belief that I will feel less because I have felt it before. Well, that is not how it works.

This time I am even grieving for the pain I will leave behind when I die.

 And the pain I’ll feel when the next one dies. And so on.

I wish I was a bit less complicated.

The truth is, however, that I have felt loved, and cared about, and understood. And that matters. That makes a huge difference.

And the pain is equal no matter who you lose, or how long your relationship was, or how long you knew the person or being. Loss is loss and no amount of intellectualisation seems to alter it in any way.

The wave keeps hitting you over and over  again. Sometimes when you are staring into space, sometimes when you wake in the night and can’t get back to sleep. Sometimes when someone asks if you are OK. Sometimes straight after you finish laughing at a joke.

Seemingly unrelated events spiral into pain and tears. Later replaced by routine and meals. And sometimes out of the blue the lump you swallow all day surfaces as soon as you are alone and you cry again, no end in sight. Wracking sobs that feel never-ending.

Still I regret nothing.

Still I will do it again. Still I will embark on future love that will ensure I will lose again. I am not alone, I am here and I am living,  feeling, enmeshed in the very fabric of being. And that is a good thing. That is powerful and welcome and emotion can never be a bad thing. No matter how ugly it feels at the time.

I also know from experience that it will ease, it will diminish. Every moment spent emptying that tank of pain is a moment less I have to spend feeling it. It extinguishes, and is replaced by soothing moments, experience, love and time.

It does make everything else harder and I am grateful for some time for contemplation, peace and recreation.