Rebirth

I spent 35 years in a womb of my own making. 

I sheltered myself within the thick confines of the labels society pasted on me, gaining heft with each passing year. The heaviness was a sick comfort.

Instead of becoming closer to birth, I became more deeply mired,

entrenched,

burrowed into the darkness;

welcoming the bitter on my tongue,
the heaviness of my limbs,
the hunger of my soul.


Until I could not deny the stirring of labor within me.

I was ill prepared for the pain.

The stripping, burning laborious pain of birthing myself.

Waves of torturous, soul-freeing, teeth clenching, muscle burning, exquisitely bittersweet pain.

Alone in the solitary woods of rebirth, shunned. Smited by those who had pasted me with the labels I was so vicariously tearing off of my sweat drenched flesh with each wave of maddened contraction and expulsion.

No one was there to wipe the sweat off my brow. I was alone in my pain, in my grief, in my delight, in my longing.

Alone,  I birthed my true self.

Mothered her.

Gave her shelter to grow underneath. Until she was a strong and worthy companion.

Ceremoniously, we burned our former shell, dancing around the fire as the constraints  I had before allowed to exist within me curled in the heat as if hell itself was below.

And, we danced.