The Gate
by lorin vincent
i forsaw this moment in my life.
it was years ago during the big conjunction in taurus. visions of my own death...nothing particularly gory, just me, dead, at the end of a rope.
at the time i was self-medicating a guilt so great and slowly, unconsciously trying to kill myself. yet what i wanted to do most consciously, was to truly live.
i did not understand at the time that i did not have to experience my death physically. what was necessary was a metaphysical death of a part of me that i hated. sounds simple, but my ego could not distinguish the two types of death, so i fought the necessary and inevitable passing as if my life depended on it. as with inevitability, my ego lost the fight and i can only feel blessed by the thing that i feared so much. on the other side i found i had no need for that dead part of me.
i am glad i had that vision and that training three years ago, for now iam experiencing the process of metaphysical death in an painfully excruciating manner.
my life as i once knew it is being killed in the nine month process called pregnancy.
ironic how something so essential for life brings that sinking feeling of life's opposite to my mind and heart. sad it is that in our culture, it is somewhat guilt inducing to acknowledge this feeling that is so at odds with the party line of excitement about the new life growing inside me.
i feel more alone right now that i ever have.
those who do not have children seem to perceive me as if i am in a glass box - near them - but not in a space to truly connect. as if i am at the funeral home being viewed before i am dumped in my six foot hole.
those that have become parents are already on the other side. while they do not have the intention, they treat me in a patronizing way, for they have experience i do not... they see me on my edge but can only give me so much reassurance.
then there is the one childfree friend who has completely cut me off, as if i am already dead, as if i am a rotting corpse, putrefying the area.
all of these reactions and experiences were at first a jolt to me. no one really prepares you for this element of the gestation process. i thought it was just my hormones making me sensitive but i must insist that deep down i am same person i always was. i am just going through my biggest transition ever. people's reactions to me have to do with theirown issues, and i have had to realize that it is my way of dealing with them that matters.
i see so much more now. i see more than i care to sometimes. i see the attitudes that some have, attitudes that they do not even realize they have. this insight allows me more compassion, but it also forces me to be very specific about who and what i choose to invest my energy in. gone is my concern for what people think of me. gone is my formerly misplaced concern for the hang-ups that others attempt to project on to me. does motherhood come with the undiscussed bonus of having x-ray emotional vision? is this some hint of what my life after this death will be like?
i can handle and even welcome a keener sense of energy investment. what i find harder is having to accept the inherent changes in my dependency levels. the fiercely independent me, who does what she wants when she wants, is dying. i cannot move furniture without the help of someone else, who might not feel like doing it when i get that urge. this feels like the most demeaning torture to me. my Capricorn nature would prefer to do it all myself, and loathes having to ask for help.
There is no choice. or rather, i made my choice. i always did take the hard road, and i don’t mean any of this to sound like I am complaining. i am learning more now than at any other time in my life, and am thankful for the lessons.
i am learning that i have only myself to depend on, yet i must depend on others to make it. soon, someone very important, a whole new human with a very malleable mind, will be ultimately dependent on me. Pretty freaky considering that i still feel twelve years old in many ways, completely ignorant as to whether i am doing the right thing most of the time.
i am learning that i know so very little, and that my ego is wasting its time trying to hold on to the old me.
i am learning that if i surrender into this death, that it might be a more exhilarating ride than if i fight it tooth and nail.
of course, i still must hold a space for the mourning i am feeling. i am beginning to see that is it a bittersweet thing, not just a sadness. it is more akin to the beautiful old tree that has died and must be cut down, but there is one small sprig of growth that can beplanted.
that sprig is my new life, shared with the life of my child. it has been planted and is about to bloom. that bloom gets to see each wonder of life as if for the first time, and death will seem not to be the fearful thing once imagined, but a gate into a new world.++
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