As I remain.

Its 6 oclock. I shift in the chair. Maybe it was a squirm. I couldn't quite tell. I place a nervous hand on her shoulder, breath surprisingly steady. Be calm, my heart. Something has clicked in me, the excitement, the butterflies, tell me this is exactly where I am supposed to be. I let go. These are the moment that make me feel alive.
I start a conversation, and she keeps it rolling, bless her. Every time the door opens a new face enters, doing something necessary. We laugh about that. We wait, triage 3, and the hours pass. The contractions come every 5 minutes, and she breaths through them like a pro. Its just us in that room, my hand in her hand, the other on her shoulder. I explain the forms, we talk about what ifs, we talk about Africa, we talk about America. We talk about family. In that space, she opens...she says what if it was not for you, what would I do? How would I get here, would I wait for the bus? Would they send me home? She tells me about coming here. About life, and being a refugee. For eighteen years, this woman wore this title like a scarlet A branded across her chest, and it owned her. Forced from her home country, and rejected by another...considered with no more thought than one gives to the dried dirt on the carpet. Without identity. And now...American woman...what does that mean? And who are you, we don't know each other, and you do more than my family ever has. How can I thank you for that? How can this be? It is she who teaches me...We are the same, I tell her. This is how it should always be. A tear slips down her cheek...I will show them, we will take a picture and send it back, they will see what they said could not be done. They will see me. 
Finally, we move to a room, around 9 pm. She tells me to rest. That she'll wake me with a scream. I smile, and tell her to rest. I stay by her side, and watch the drip of the IV, and the antibiotics, and the pit. Nobody tells you that birth in a hospital is like being an unlucky bug, caught in a spiderweb, and ever time you look up, the predator is ever closer, beady eyes bearing down, eight limbs twitching.
We fall into a rhythm, every three minutes our hands meet, we squeeze and breath out the contraction. In between she falls back, eyes closed, and I apply cold cloths to her forehead and chest. How long, Brenda? I cannot know that. Guess, she says. 11. 12. 1. 2. I think two, I say. She hisses, distastefully. I smile, and pray to god I am right. I was being generous.
Every time I look at the clock, it seems an hour has passed. I keep one eye on her face and the other checking the monitor. We are every two and a half minutes apart. Every two minutes apart. The nurse comes in to check. Finally, eight centimeters. Its 1 am. Now is the hardest part, I tell her. Think of your family, you are bringing home a sister. And breathe. Breathe it out. Good breaths, good job. You can do it. I know I can, I know I can, I know I can. She prays to God, she says she is suffering. She looks me in the eyes and tells me that its never been like this before, its never been like this. This hurts. I know I say, breathe it out. We struggle through the next two hours. There is a midwife who comes in, and helps keep her calm. She has a commanding way about her, and I learn so much in those brief visits. She checks again. We are still 8 cm. It is a lot to ask, in that moment, to turn to a woman who is out of her mind, who is in and out, and say, work harder. 2 more centimeters. This thing has lost all meaning, where are we, she says why me?

4am.
The nurses get ready. We push. We breathe. Repeat. They say there might be a shoulder. There might be an odd position. Its a full moon, and the unit is full. These women are in and out, souls are entering this world, safe under their careful watch. I am so grateful for their presence. I cannot feel anything. My experience pales in comparison to hers. I am secondary.
5am.
I know what they're doing. They mess with the tools on the table, and I look away. They teach us to say something here. But I can't. It's a decision I don't regret. This had to happen, and she would have fought it. But I cannot watch. Every so often she opens her eyes to find mine, and says baby? I am here. One hand on her shoulder, and I have been all night. Again I say not yet. So close.
You were born at 5:36 am. Little body, big cone head. Big head. Ten fingers, ten toes. She's perfect, I say, look what you made. But its bad over here. Repairs are tough. She begs. It is hard to be here. I look her in the eyes and say I am here. I am here. It is hard to watch this. So much beauty on my right, so much pain on my left. She surrenders then. She says yes to meds, and slips away before she sees her baby, before she can hold her close and take her to the breast. Before she goes, she looks my way and whispers, I love you.

And then there is me. I sit. I breathe.
There is no plan. There cannot be. You cannot know. Accept that.
For one sweet hour, she slept. I let her have it. And as the sun rose over Georgia, I hold you, because I know your mother would have wanted you to be held...I feed you your first meal, from a bottle, and hold you close to my heart. Look into your eyes and tell you that you are loved. I have no right. I am not your mother...but she would have wanted you to know love in these early hours. Would have wanted you to feel safe. The nurse asks me if I am related to her. I want to say yes. We are sisters. Just as you an I are sisters. But to do so would be presumptuous. So I smile, and shake my head.


Sometimes being a doula is about relief. Sometimes it's about knowing when to say no, or when to surrender, and say yes. I have found that sometimes, its about bearing witness to the great suffering, the great magic, that are coupled together this way, and the greatness of the people who you are lucky enough to stand beside, if only for a split second in the expanse of the universe...suffering and magic, in birth, as in life. I was not in control, but I saw. I was there. I fought alongside her, into the wee hours of the morning, I counted the minutes. I prayed by her bedside. I felt her frustration. So clear, I learned again that we are not always called to understand, to internalize, to sympathize or alleviate. Just to be present.

So I remained. And I always will.

What it seems.

I don't think I want to have fun anymore.

We are so different. I have a preoccupation with the past and dying

you have a death wish and a habit of living in the moment. " ".

22 didn't look like this yesterday. What it means for me isn't what it means for you.

Its abundantly clear that you don't have my best interests at heart. In the quiet clarity of that morning light, we went back to being us. Life between 3am and 7am doesn't really count. You're a good time, but you're not really mine, and I think I'm over that. I don't want to have fun anymore.

The Big Leagues.

I call you a liar and say get off my front porch. Somehow, two hours later, your kiss lands on my shoulder. This is a language I speak. I am surprised, that of all things, you are a man who keeps promises? you make so few. We were terrible communicators, tight lipped and at the mercy of our own convictions. You're keeping me up, figurative turns to literal. You say all the wrong things, strung out, pieces flailing. Quit coming over here, just to go mad and fall apart. It's disarming. 

I think I'm starting to get it. You're so god damn mean to yourself. We meet some girl on the patio of some bar in some place in the city. You say she's an old friend. I think that means you fucked, albeit a long time ago. She's nice but she calls me a poor little cotton swaddle or something. You laugh, but you look at me to see if I caught it. Her, calling me a baby. I did, but I let it go. I jump on the back of your bike and we go.

Everyone's always so apt to point that out. They say it like it's an insult and tell me it's a compliment. Maybe I am a baby. But like I said, I don't know you. I just know 42.

that "and now what" feeling

Its a gorgeous day but I don't want to get up. Some days I just want to watch tv and hide. Hide from the world, and who I am and my so called problems. Part of me hates me for it. The juxtaposition of the maniac and the recluse, gemini cancer. I could say the stars did it but its in my biology...here's the dirty truth. Sometimes the girls in my family just don't get up. We get low, for a little while, we'll get back up I think, but its not just me.
I've taken to saying out loud my feelings into the emptiness of my apartment...the quietness of my car...Its an effort to start saying them at all. I miss you. The flickering streetlights of this neighborhood at two am know darker secrets than I ever told you. Healing is a funny thing. It's a beautiful word with beautiful connotations but I'm finding the process is almost ugly. Twisted. There is nothing strong about healing, nothing stoic. This slow unwind is uncomfortable, and hardly gratifying at times. I am still many things I believe myself to be. Strong and stoic are qualities I adopted by default. Because somebody had to keep it together. And now I just come off as cold. Icy and unspoken, breath a foggy mist on a single window pane. I start talking and my brain screams, my mouth becomes the vacuum trying desperately to suck back in the words I just let out...trying to rewind. I worry that if you're dead...If I let you be dead...I'll be dead too. Healing is hard because it means letting go, not only of what has happened, or who happened, but who they made you. Who you are because they happened. Who you have been being. 
I'm starting to see myself. 

Gone Fishing

Sometimes you are so reckless. Hey, little wonder. Like a record on repeat, the same song plays over and over, and you keep listening and making the same mistake every time. I'm pretty sure you've got a temper on you...one you never showed me. I never incited it. I'm pretty sure you walk through this life cold, cold skin, cold smile...the heat that keeps you alive comes from inside. And your focus, like a magnifying glass on the unlucky leaf that has caught your attention, keeps that flame burning, fire sign.

Am I too blame? No, not really. But I, like a woman, played with your head. Unintentionally. I am the one that dangled the bait right above your head, and you couldn't take it. You've been caught too many times before.
You knew something you believed I did not. That my honesty, however poignant, however true, was fleeting. You know that the truth morphs in time. You knew I am a butterfly, today something, tomorrow something else. I felt that, when I told you to go and you stayed. You should have gone, you should have run. You knew you would. But for a moment, you stayed, and like always, I knew what you could never say. That the only part left to catch had been caught. It just wasn't enough anymore. Somewhere along the line, you promised never to taste the bait again. And there was nothing I could ever do about it.

There is no hook, no line, no sinker. There is you on that side, and me on mine. You said this was non-negotiable. You said you knew better. But you...somewhere out there...laughing at a bar. Drinking with these people you call friends, sometimes your thoughts rest on me. You drive home at 5 in the morning, fumbling for your keys, wearing this big buffer now that keeps you hazy. You think you need to be hazy for a while. And what do I know anyway. You're just doing what you've always done. How did this happen, how did we end up hurting each other...do what you want. But I know what you're up to.

7:40 is morning not night

These apologies are getting old...I don't understand why you think its easier to say you're sorry than to do the right thing. I keep looking for your eyes, waiting for a flicker of recognition...only when I least expect it does it appear. How do we move forward now, we're both so backward looking...I appreciate the moments when our eyes meet. At the very least our tension is honest.

We Put the Never in Never.

This ain't the end, this is self preservation.
Pretty boy looks. Vain, and cocky. You had your pick in high school. I called you soldier but it was I who fought so hard for you. You want to know what I remember? I wore a turquoise cami with a yellow tank top when we walked around the lake, and I told you I was a republican, just to see your face grimace. Our first kiss. Publix sugar cookies, Jimmy Eat World-Hear You Me, the greenway. You interrupted me while I was talking and kissed me. I was so stunned I went right on with our conversation like nothing happened. Burgundy shirt, alpine in kahuna. Hair so long you said I looked like Eve, as we messed around on empty soccer fields at night, always looking for a rare place alone. The first time we went out you locked your keys inside your car at the movies, and we walked to the convenient store to buy a hangar, and spent a few good hours bending it in the right shape to snag the keyring. The next time we went out, you did the same thing.
I remember our long walks. I remember watching every scrubs episode that summer, and when I gave you that link, it was the first time you ever said you loved me. Not seriously, and not taken so. But the first. The second time, you meant. And I said thank you, like in the movies. It broke you, but it wasn't really fair. It was only a month. You were always leaving me. I learned quickly that the second a man seems most in love, most interested in me, is the second before he leaves.
We spent those next 18 months meeting secretly. Talking all the time. You loved me, you left me. That time on the concrete block next to the cow trough in the fields behind Holy Trinity. The first time you told me you heard voices. Just your name, in an empty hallway. We breathed each other in, felt the energy electrify between us. You stole me a candy bar from the gas station. Dark chocolate milky way.
I kept tabs on you, always. I taught you how to drink. I felt like such a bad ass, teaching boys to shoot whisky in a house that wasn't ours. We found time alone wherever we could. How I regret that now. Isn't it crazy how we introduce people to things we later hate that they do?
You got me high the first time. I fought so hard to stay in reality. We walked around in the woods, hiding in our paranoia. I saw a pterodactyl, hanging from the trees. You sat alone in the empty stands at my high school graduation. I was so sick. I left there so fast there's only one picture of me from that day, stepping off the stage. Just to be with you.
I used to sneak into your window to spend the night. My world collapsed around me, and you offered to be my safety net. My family. That summer we fell in love. Apathy Eulogy-Impetuous Me. Firehouse subs. I was so covered in bruises. Matt and Kim- Daylight. And then we both left. Again. College. The last day of summer, we started a tradition. Bacardi. You grew up, and so did I. But we couldn't be without each other. We were on and off again, and you cried when you had to go home. Owl city-Fireflies You cried when I left you. Kid Cudi-Up up and away. Say Anything- Cemetery. I visited Orlando. And that's when I really saw it. The rest is crystal clear.

I don't think you remember. Runs, barefoot, Waculla Springs, sunburns. That alligator in the park. The time Charlie went missing. The time we made Charlie armor. Fireworks. That horrible cake we made. That awesome Thai food we made. That rainstorm we watched. Walking through the mall in matching outfits. You bought a pretzel. The colony. That abandoned house we walked to. The guy with the camera we talked to. How about that summer we lived together. I never loved anyone so hard. I knew...I knew, I couldn't have you. You made it impossible. But you loved me too. Smoothies. The projector. That time in the hotel where I surprised you, butt naked. The dog park. Every. Single. Day. That field in south Florida, we drove to the lake edge, remember...getting caught?

There are a lot of things left out. A lot of thoughts. Like holding your hand in the hospital. Drawing pictures. Like slipping you medication when you were too messed up to take it. Like hiding from you under the desk. Like the baseball bat. Like South park. Like your graduation night. Like how we'd fight. Things we don't talk about.

I thought maybe you'd react differently this time, but I am coming to see, you're the ant in the amber. Time goes on, I grow older, but you stay the same. It doesn't matter if we're not "friends", C, we never were. You'll never go away, and neither will I. We're just a couple of stupid kids throwing a ball back and forth, just to see who drops it first...