I hit a low point in 2005. I was trying all sorts of things to turn my life around, to try another “start again”. I think the following piece of writing was triggered by advice (in one of the many therapy books I was reading at the time) to imagine you are being “born again” into a new life. I wrote it as a poem but is this really prose, a “therapeutic” meditation. I did write it a few months after writing ‘Despair’. I think it helped me get on with life, if nothing else.
That’s me
That’s who she is
I’m in the birth canal – again
forces pushing and pulling my body
twisting my soul
as it struggles towards a new existence.
Sometimes it hurts
Sometimes I’m frightened
Sometimes I do not believe
in me or in my ‘new-to-be’ reality.
Squeezed tight in this close fitting tunnel (head to toe)
moving (or being moved) along the birth canal in the deep red dark
with occasional flashes of bright light through skin to light my way.
In pauses between the pushes I sometimes see my self
reflected in luminescent membrane
smiling back at me and eyes open joyfully, in faith.
Encouraging.
Other times my eyes are closed tight in fear
fear of loss, of loneliness, of failure and of death
of spirit as well as body.
I want to return, to travel back against the gravity
of new life, of birth and rebirth
I forget that the womb of my past was dream as well as reality
with pains, dangers, losses and sorrows as well as joys, love and loving.
But life’s contractions move me forward
Struggling, crying or sliding
In difficulty or in ease
As I am born to my new life
as I become the new me.
Dead or alive at birth?