There’s something about nausea that seems to me far more spiritual than a headache. As a frequenter of the migraine realm, there’s a nastiness to a headache in the way it peppers any and all activities with bright raging colours that roll around your skull like a noisy neighbour. But as someone far less prone to bouts of queasiness, I’ve noticed there’s something about the element of fear that quietly demands your attention, like a gun to your head rather than a shaking fist, inviting you to contemplate all of your life choices, recent or otherwise. To pay attention, and possibly say a little prayer even if you’re not the praying type. Please, God, I’ll do what you want, straighten myself up. Eat better. Do better. Change my wanton ways if you just let this pass without ripping my guts out.
It’s both loud and quiet as I step onto the bridge where I walk alone, still on the outskirts of urbanity. Sunday drivers speed back and forth, imitating the rushing sounds of an ocean shore. The sun still hangs high, its bedtime getting later as it matures into May evenings. I look up at wide trees against a massive blue sky and I convince myself it’s just a matter of time until the view cures me completely as I set off on the long walk. My friend has just invited me to see a movie, and I’m a whore for spontaneity so I can’t help saying yes despite already feeling the sickness announce itself in my expanding throat. I tell myself the long walk will do me good as I reflect on what could have induced my advanced state of nausea in the first place. It could have been the greasy onion rings. I just wanted to try them, but they were swimming in a pool of oil by the time I got back to my boyfriend’s studio. I ate them anyway, hoping the liquid they were doused in primarily consisted of the vinegar I poured over them as an antidote. The idea of impending movie popcorn was definitely not helping. Nausea in a vacuum could really be anything, I tell myself. As I begin my long pilgrimage towards a settled stomach, I’m afraid to think about the possibility that it might be the latest symptom of a bigger condition.
A few hours earlier I’d told him about the slightest chance of it. He responded slightly better than I’d expected, only because it confirmed that we were pretty much on the same page. “Oh noooo not that having a baby with you wouldn’t be beautiful but noooo,” the words raced in a long string out of his mouth like a joke, his eyes squinted in a panic that said he wasn’t really joking. I told him about the soreness that seemed to be building a permanent house in my nipples, and that the only reason I was telling him was because all I wanted to do in that moment was cry when I didn’t really have reason to. If it wasn’t growing in my belly, it was growing in my mind, into a spaceship hovering just above my head and whistling like the soft whir of a Tesla. I didn’t tell him about my strange new superpower. The day before, I searched around my apartment for the source of a persistent mineral scent that was driving me insane until I realized I was smelling my own earrings dangling at either side of my face. I could smell the brass zipper on my rugby sweater from a mile away. I couldn’t say for sure that an acute sense for metal was a symptom, only that it was out of the ordinary, like many things had been in the last eight days. I also didn’t tell him that eight days ago, I wanted him to get me pregnant. The desire bubbled and hissed in my mind like a yearning that screamed louder than want, accidentally slipping out of me like a curse word. I felt like a lying Jezebel with a secret plan. Only I had no plan. Just the strange quiet command of a woman somewhere deep inside of me.
Listening to some sweet rock-bottom ballad on repeat through the earphones I’m grateful I packed, I surrender to the gun against my head. The wind blows stronger here, unobstructed and running wild as it seems to lick my wounds, baptizing me, urging scary thoughts out of their hiding places. I think about money and how little of it I have. I think of success and how little of it I’ve gained. I think about the world and how little of it I’ve seen. I think of what I have to offer and decide it isn’t enough. I think about time and how I always want more. I think about the plan I don’t have and never wanted. I think about how I feel like a 33-year-old child still waiting for her life to start, or at least stop starting all over again and again and again. I think about the possibility of a brand-new pulse encased in the mutant body of a half little girl/ half aging woman.
My phone feels heavy in my purse as it rhythmically taps against my outer thigh with each step down the wide structure that slices the city into East and West. I’ve always hated the idea of staying still. I pitied my teachers so hard when I was a young kid, horrified at the thought of being trapped in perpetuity, watching children arrive, outgrow you then move on. Years bleeding into each other until your life gets chewed up into a solid gray paste of repetition. I remind myself that different folks like different strokes, but the truth is a baby is not just a baby. It takes your brains, your breasts, your food, your sex and passes them around like bread to feed the doctors examining you, the community supporting you, the husband who gets a say, the mother showing you how it’s done and the forums telling you how it isn’t. An umbilical cord is only the beginning of a thousand tendrils as strong as vines that tie you down to narrow tracks that determine the rest of your life before it’s even happened with no surprises, no alternatives. Taking away your freedom to run; not away, but towards. Why are women designed to have babies when we’re still children ourselves? Why do we need to sacrifice our own lonely adventures and widen ourselves into beacons of someone else’s sedentariness?
The strong breeze presses up against all sides of me, carrying the smell of hibernated earth along with shavings of dead cherry blossoms that never seem to live long enough. The small rusted petals cling to my hair and tap against my face like raindrops and I hope the wind will blow the sickness right out of me. I want the bridge to go on and on for miles longer, suspending me in air and time so I can keep thinking. I decide to stretch time and stop for a moment, leaning my small body against the thick cement barrier between me and the sea of tree tops. My vision seems to sharpen incrementally… the blue sky, the shapes of distant buildings, the newborn leaves dancing in the wind become even more saturated, the outlines of my environment looking crisp and defined. I breathed in the forceful air to quell the feeling, stifling another selfish wish too sinful to say out loud.
I wish I could mother like a man.
Mother like a father, and only give the good parts of myself. That to venture out into the world would be expected of me and not a betrayal of my role. To provide for rather than give suck to. Freedom to come and go. Freedom to do this and… You stay here, baby. Mommy will be back after she’s scoured the earth for some of the hard answers. Mommy will tell you all about the enemies and angels that walk among us and will be back after the beasts have seen her. Quiet, sweetheart, Mommy needs to be alone for a while and sit with who she used to be. Mommy was still a child’s heart in a woman’s body when you came along. She needs to get braver. She needs to grow stronger on her own so she can look you in the eye one day and say I know what life is. Mommy’s going to keep chasing her own dreams outside of you so you can also be free. Mommy wants to be able to hold you without hiding her own fears once she’s made peace with them. Playtime is over. You stay at home with Daddy. And mommy will be back with more life to feed you.
The nausea hasn’t disappeared or even lessened its grip, but it’s murmuring at a low volume for now. My prayer half answered as of yet, and slowly morphing into a different one. One that might be resting just below my stomach, unformed and uncertain. I measure the distance to the end of the bridge, relishing the movement and isolation I have left before I’m engulfed by the overpopulated southern part. I feel myself shift between different versions of myself with each thought, with each doubt, with each suppressed need. One step, a child again. The next one, an ancient soul. One step, I feel as small as the width of my shoe, the next I feel as though I’m hovering above the ground. I know I could mother like no man. Because if it’s really in there it already needs all of me, feeding off my body, my sore nipples, my brain, my greasy onion rings, and smelling metal and doubt and fear and selfishness and unknowing. Somewhere beneath the fear is a good feeling, like the smile of that strange quiet commanding woman who sometimes lives there. I feel something opening up, making some room to share as I keep moving, keep changing, keep on stretching time until it feels like the right time.
I walk off that bridge, letting the wind absorb the scary thoughts like lost balloons as I step on firm ground towards an uncertain future. Uncertain of whether I’ll puke by the end of the day, or whether I’ll be holding a baby in my arms by the end of the year. I relish the moans and stretches of an awakening Spring as I carry a secret wish inside of me, and hope in whispers.
***
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Gorgeous. I wanted to keep walking with you–over the bridge, in your thoughts.