A Womb, a Woman, and a “No Vacancy” Sign

Running back to where you began is not only useless, it’s the worst thing you can do

Pant, pant, push. Pant, pant, push.

I struggle. I twist. I turn. I rage against the pant, pant, push.

But it continues.

I am losing the battle.

In my watery nest, the amniotic tide turns against me.

I am pulling back, and it is pant, pant, pushing forward.

The pant, pant, pusher wins.

I slither out, still rebelling, slick, screaming, and slippery, covered in blood.

My first impressions?

Cold. Antiseptic. Unwelcoming.

My masked captors poke, prod, and prick, and I pray to the gods to be merciful.

To return me to the darkness, to the soothing lullaby of a heartbeat and the cushiony comfort of the pretty rockin’ crib I’ve leased for nine months.

The gods turn away.

I am born.

And for most of my forty-nine years, I’ve tried to re-enter the uterine utopia from which I was ripped.

And over and over again, God, the Fates, or some other invisible entity has pant, pant, pushed me away from it.

Here is my story.

I am two.

Skinned knees. Half-understood “sentences.” Stranger anxiety.

The breast is gone. The swaddling is gone. The spoon-feeding is gone.

“Don’t leave me, Mama!” “Hold my hand so I can walk.” “Hug me. I’m scared.”

I cling to my mother’s pant legs on wobbly toes.

But there Life is.

Pant, pant, pushing me forward.

I toddle like a college student on a bender, then fall.

But I get up on my own.

My face is a finger painting made of food.

But still, the spoon reaches my mouth.

Mama leaves for work. Tears roll like rivers.

But still, I manage to mingle with strangers who pretend to love me.

Pant, pant, push.

I am born.

I am twelve.

Freckles. Gap-tooth. “Ski Slope” nose. Dollar store dresses.

My innocence is gone. My self-esteem is gone. My rose-colored glasses are gone.

Instead, I’m left with laughs and smirks, taunting and teasing.

The kind that turn a happy human life upside down.

I run to the womb and tell it I’m sick.

Sick to my stomach. Too sick to go to school. Too tired of hiding in the bathrooms at lunch and sitting in the back of the class begging to be invisible.

But there’s a neon sign on the womb that says, “No Vacancy.”

My womb is in cahoots with the Fates.

The string is unraveling. Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos are forcing me forward, and I must follow.

So I do.

I cry at night.

But I get up and face the misery again.

I hear barbed comments echoing off the middle school walls that cut me as easily as butter.

But I walk, step by painful step, to my classes.

I hear the singing of pre-teen swords before I even sit down. I am their target.

But I close them off, carefully tying knots in my heartstrings so they will not unravel.

I stare straight ahead, defiantly.

I am a wizard.

I make myself blind and deaf to everything except the moving handlebar mustache and Civil War words of my history teacher, Mr. Graves.

He’s giving a lesson so boring, he could kick melatonin’s ass into outer space.

But I’m listening to him and not to them. That’s the important thing.

That means just for today, I’ve won.

I’m thinking maybe it’s a start.

Pant, pant, push.

I am born.

I am twenty-two.

Late-stage acne. An action figure pretending to be an adult. Single and scared shitless.

The graduation balloons are gone. The frat parties are gone. The safe pseudo uterus I constructed of books, tests, and teachers is gone.

I am more alone than ever before.

I don’t want my new apartment. I want a wingman if the boogie man shows up.

I don’t want my new teaching job. I want to run back to my university cocoon so I don’t discover after eighty thousand dollars of education, I’m a complete and total failure.

I don’t want this new freedom. I want someone to tell me what to do with this blank book emblazoned with my name: how to fill it, the words to say, the tips and tricks to make it a bestseller.

Did I mention I’m more alone than ever before?

I know before I even lace up my sneakers the journey to the womb is pointless. But fear forces my legs to move.

I knock on its door. I say, “It’s been a long time. I miss you. Let’s hang out.”

No response.

My sugar packets have been used up.

I try violence instead. I batter that heartless womb with bloody hands.

My efforts are wasted.

I’m not surprised.

I knew how this begging and knocking would end. In futility.

And I know what’s coming next.

Pant, pant, push.

I have double locks on the doors to my one-bedroom house of horrors. I turn on every light to numb the fear. At four am, the Sand Man pities me, using his glittery glue to make my eyes close. Not long after, they open, bleary but functioning, under my low-rent roof.

Time passes.

The festival of lights I needed to make me feel safe is slowly being dimmed. They no longer decorate every room. I am still afraid. Sort of.

But I turn each switch off one by one. First, I plunge the kitchen into darkness, then the bathroom, then the bedroom. Then the little nightlight by the side of my bed.

I walk into the classroom. My first day of teaching. Twenty adolescent faces stare at me. They’re not happy to see me. Little do they know, I’m not excited at the thought of them either.

I pick up the chalk with hands that shake like earthquakes. Write my name. Grab the literature book and say, “Go to page 55.” They do.

But the next month, the shaking has calmed. I write the word homework on the board with the steady hands of a master violinist making love to his instrument.

Pant, pant, push.

I am born.

I am thirty-two.

I am a routine. A wife. A new mother whose life is no longer her own.

My identity is gone. My illusions are gone. My fairy tales are gone.

I am not Cinderella.

Cinderella’s nipples don’t bleed. Cinderella’s husband doesn’t leave his holey underwear on the bathroom floor. Cinderella doesn’t need coffee to survive or a two hundred dollar cream to get rid of her fine lines.

I am a sleep-starved, undersexed, over-worked shell of a person.

I lie in bed at night, unable to seduce my husband because all I can think about is my mess of a body with its rolls, stretch marks, and pregnancy pounds.

I lie in bed at night, unable to sleep because I fear the symphony of baby boy breathing will cease.

I lie in bed at night, wondering how long I can do this “marriage thing,” this “mommy thing,” this “a whole person’s life is in your hands” thing.

I want to go back in time. To the days when the womb took care of me instead of me trying to take care of everyone else.

Did I tell you about the “No Vacancy” sign on the womb?

It’s still there.

And the words “Go the hell away” are now written in permanent ink beside it.

I head back to the land of diapers and dishes, where romance goes to die.

Time passes.

My husband reaches for me, and I’m disgusted at the squishing and flopping of my baby fat as I turn to him. I find his eyes in the darkness. I am filled with fear.

But this time, I touch his face and feel his body respond. The squishing and flopping fade, and for the first time in a year, my body is my friend.

I still watch for the rising and falling of my newborn’s chest.

But the addiction lessens. I put a kernel of trust in the universe, and my eyes fold in sleep.

I go to work in breastmilk blouses, pack diaper bags with urine soaked straps, and walk around in my sexiest sweats to “keep the fire alive.”

But I go to work, I pack the bags. I make time between moonlit feedings to meld my body to my husband’s and sink into the sanctuary of sex.

Pant, pant, push.

I am born.

I am forty-two.

Dimpled legs. Cellulite City. Soccer mom.

Four decades are gone. Fertility gone. Energy gone.

Reminders of lost youth assault me on every side.

Friendly greetings in the grocery store from students I taught two decades ago. Music on the radio I can’t sing along to. Old prom photos of a hazel-eyed girl with my DNA, one who I never thought beautiful. Until now.

The clock is ticking, and I can’t make it stop. The ticks and tocks are everywhere. I want to stuff my ears with concrete so I won’t hear them.

This time I text bomb the womb. I’m too tired of walking there.

I’m not astonished to be left on read.

I look at my husband in his work uniform, snoring on the couch.

I want to shake him. Wake him. And when he opens his eyes, I want him to look at me the way he used to.

But instead, I cover him with a blanket. Turn the lamp off so he can sleep. This man’s snores come from back to back twelve-hour shifts taken to support our family.

I want him to whisk me away to Vegas, just the two of us, and walk the strip hand in hand. Where we forget the bills. Where we give the middle finger to “acting our age.” Where we stumble around in the desert heat, tequila racing through our veins and lust racing through our insides.

But instead, I sit with him on the wooden swing on the deck, Jimmy Buffet on the radio, stars in the sky, and I wonder how I could ever have thought Vegas was better than this.

I want it all back. Slumber parties. Period pains. Honeymoon kisses. Contractions. My son’s first day of kindergarten. My daughter’s first day of kindergarten. Disney movies on the couch in the dark. Adult things on the bed in the dark.

But instead, I choose to think about the future instead of longing for the past. Prom photos with my daughter. Graduation photos with my son. Hospital photos with my first grandchild. Vegas photos (we WILL go) of my husband and I renewing our vows in a seedy wedding chapel with a man pitifully unsuccessful at looking like Elvis.

Pant-pant, push.

I am born.

The present

I am almost fifty. Forty-nine, to be exact.

Screw the Womb.

She’s a lost cause.

My phone rings. It’s her, inviting me for coffee. She suggests Starbucks. It’s her favorite.

She pulls her mask down. Takes a sip from her cup. Black. Venti.

“It’s time I explained,” she says.

“I’ll tell you where you can stick your apology,” I reply.

She takes another sip. It’s small. Her coffee must be scalding.

“I’m not here for an apology,” she says. “I’m here for a thank you.”

“You want me to thank you for turning me away, refusing me comfort, denying me entrance to the only place I truly felt safe?”

“Keep waiting,” I say in my most sarcastic voice. “It could be a few minutes. Or a few centuries.”

“Not allowing you to re-enter was an act of love,” she replied. “Each time I pushed you away, you were born again. You re-entered the world stronger, more resilient, more grateful for all the beautiful, terrible beauties of life.”

I stare into my coffee. I think of birthday cake, bridal showers, my husband’s embrace, my child’s eyes, bonfires on the beach, laughing students, smile lines borne of a million moments of joy.

I grab her hands, look her in the eyes, smile, and say, “I get it.”

I leave.

The coffee house door slams behind me. I am not angry. It’s only the wind.

I re-enter the busy street. I open the door to my home. To my future.

I am proud beyond belief of who I am. All because a forty-nine-year love affair with a uterus has ended.

No more darkness. No more lullabies.

The heartbeat I hear is my own, and it’s drumming out in Morse code:

“Don’t ever seek escape again. Run to life. It’s the only thing that matters.”