Silent Miles

On growing life.

Act I

The first few weeks are a blur. I cannot recall who I was before. I cannot recall.

Long nights are encased in darkness. Sleep is like a river rapid, sucking me under. I battle sickness, reflux, anxiety. Defeat is deafening. My heart beats for two now. I am no longer the same. The best I can describe it is this thick fog that ascends from the mountain, cloaking me until I am invisible. Disappeared. I open my mouth to speak, but my friends are far. Severed by life’s currents. They drift further and further away.

While I have a partner that would help me bury a body if I needed to, these are silent miles I have to traverse alone.

Days trespass into weeks. The only thing that allows me to make sense of life - writing - abandons me during this trip. Daydreaming dissolves like ash. I am voiceless, lost to the tides of Instagram’s algorithms as my brain surges with hormones, unable to latch on to knowledge.

They say pregnancy is beautiful. Cathartic. It is. As life grows, I grow. But it’s also lonely.

During this time, Online Reddit threads are my companion. They smooth away anxieties, they name my alienation and panic. Countless other women, continents away, feel the same bite and sting of fear whenever a new symptom arises. They experience the same spirals and spells of insanity when a question unknots a question - what if. I am not alone.

I sludge on until I hear his heartbeat and see his little fingers and toes swim into sight. Hope blossoms in my belly. Nothing else matters but this.

A new me buds. Protective, fierce, unafraid to say no. Selfish with time and energy. I like this self. I like this confidence.

The first trimester ends along with my amnesia. I come back to myself in pieces. And yet, I am not the same.

Act II

I take this soul inside of me now, a brand new friend. I begin to love this small, mighty life with a viciousness I did not know I possessed.

As the weeks crawl forward, I have conversations with my changing body. I feel the first flutter, the first tickle, the first kick. The first pull of hips and achy sinews. There are many firsts; one cannot keep up.

Beyond the physical, the sheer mental challenge of change swallows me whole. It’s a visceral loneliness, a loneliness of change and everything it sheds as I step into my new coat of hair.

There are those who will remain in the rearview mirror, those who do not understand and do not make an effort to understand. I see, with stinging clarity, who is with me and who has departed. And a few depart. They stop reaching out. A simple question that could undo so much never gets asked.

And yet, and yet. Despite the impossible odds of creating life, I grow stronger in my skin. I see everything.

My metamorphosis is incomplete. I am still travelling to my destination. While I am not yet reborn, I am becoming. It’s as confusing as it is beautiful - to live between this pause and the next.