Portland: The First Trimester

I have been in my new home for three months now.
Three incredibly hard months full of tears and letting go.
I had a woman come into the coffee shop yesterday in her first trimester of pregnancy talking about how terrible she felt; how uncomfortable and nauseated she was all the time. Talking about how the miracle of life is cool and all, but getting there had been a nightmare.
Today I reached the last day of my first trimester in Portland.
I think I believed that driving through the trees, Mount Hood on the horizon, greeting me to this new city, was my rebirth. This morning I realized that was the moment my pregnancy began. The incubation period taking its first steps; about to fling me into three months of pain,
of digestive issues,
of aches,
of tears,
of overwhelm.
Yesterday that woman, the new mom to be, came into the shop for a latte and a cookie. But in turn, she gave me a reminder of why I have been in so much pain for the last three months.
Perhaps we always look for patterns and signs when nothing is making sense.
Perhaps those patterns mean something.
they only mean to make us aware of our search for answers.
The pattern I am seeing is proof that my birth is coming.
That I am gestating.
That I am becoming.
When I was twenty-three, I was pregnant. For nine weeks.
I do not regret my abortion or the life I was able to both lead and leave because of it. But I often think of how miserably sick I was those nine weeks. It took me two months to decipher why I was so ill and emotional. It took me a split second to decide what to do about it.
After the procedure, I began to yearn for a child. To wonder if it would ever happen for me.
The fetus I aborted was unviable, malformed, the nurses informed me. They assumed it would bring me peace to know that had I not ended the pregnancy myself, I would have miscarried somewhere down the line. That the child was never meant for me. Instead, it made me wonder if I was even capable of building a whole being.
I wondered if it would ever happen for me; or if I was somehow broken. I told people that I couldn't have a baby, never citing that part of that was because of the medication I was on for my bipolar; never citing that the other half of the equation was my strong and constant belief that I could never be of sound enough mind or finances to support a child.
But part of me always wanted one. Always wanted to see if I could do it
Wanted to feel the love of something that was all me. Wanted to be unconditionally loved by something, by someone, for once. That the greatest show of love is carrying someone, creating them, birthing them, and then spending a lifetime of caring for them.
Today I realized that my journey was never to bring a separate soul into this world, that instead, I am to bring my own soul into this world, every piece of it.
That I was intended to give birth to me, in my filth and glory.
I was intended to love me unconditionally. To carry me, to create me, to birth me, and spend the rest of my lifetime caring for me in a way I haven't for the past thirty-two years.
Today is the last day of my first trimester of my new pregnancy. In six months I will give birth to myself.
A Pisces.
where my north node and source of sits.
An emotional water baby, mercurial and without structure. A version of me that goes with the flow and creates tidal waves when needed. A way to douse the Aries fire I have used to burn through my life.
And that baby will be so astoundingly beautiful.
But for now, I am all aches and pains.
I am all nausea.
I am all tears and cravings.
am excitement and terror.
For now, I am still incubating.
Still getting nutrients from the umbilical cord to my old life.
For now, I am still floating.
But in six months, I can't wait to take my first breath.