“What matters one lost vision of the night? Let the dream go! …”

I dream that I’m pregnant.

Full to the brim, almost there, ready to go. Thar she blows. I look down at my hands on my taunt round belly, the belly I never had, or maybe I did, it was just buried underneath all the fat that my genetics and my lifestyle gathers to it. But in this dream it’s the butter perfect uterus, protruding, accusing almost.

We argue my husband and I, about going to the birth, or how I’ll give birth. In the dream something is wrong, certainly wrong about this birth, we’re angry, and sad and oh so sick of it. We’re tired, and in the dream we stare past each other, looking for answers.

 

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I’m not pregnant, unless you count the pregnant pause while I cram another sesame rice cake in my mouth (OMFG! Have you tried these?!?! NOM NOM NOM) I will never be pregnant again, aside from the slim, better chance of winning the lottery and getting run over by a circus train on the same day chance.

But my body gets it now. I get your lusts, your cravings for children, the emptiness in your belly, the want. I never did. Not as a teenager, not as a young woman. I never once felt a twinge in an ovary. I never dreamed of having children, or at least, I never dreamed of having babies. I recognized the sacrifice, and was content to live in my own little world of childfree. I stared dumbfounded at people who tried to get pregnant, on purpose! I scratched my head at people trying round after round of IVF, questioning why adopting was so not an option, wondering why they couldn’t accept that maybe, they weren’t meant to have babies in the first place.

I seize up looking at the prices of baby things, wondering how anyone could do it, why anyone wanted to do it.

But I get it now.

I woke up this morning, my hands rushing to my belly. Squishy, jiggly, not taunt and ready. There is no new life inside of my, no feet kicking me, no little hands pressing up against my side. I am empty, a vessel used and discarded. I will never grow a new life inside of me again.

I mourn this now, the thing I never wanted or appreciated in the first place. What better gift? What better talent than to grow life! How can a woman not feel superior when we create and sustain and deliver new life! But I can’t use it-I can’t even act as another’s womb without chancing my own life. My days as a mother, as a life giver, these are done with. It’s frustrating and sad and unfair that only now do I realize what I had, what I could do, what I did. What magic power I held in me.

I awoke feeling those phantom kicks, those hiccups, those dandelions and butterflies inside of me. I awoke feeling full of life, full of tomorrows and hopes and sunlight.

But the dream burned off, like frost as the day dragged itself across me. And so it goes.