The Self in Rapture;

Or, the self in love; or, the self who has given up all dignity.

I’m reading books about unexpected pregnancies, which seems to be partly a form of self-harm but mostly a way of confirming my suspicions that I have something to say, or that, at the very least, there are others who have wanted to say the same sorts of things. Namely, I’m reading Laura Crossett’s Night Sweats: An Unexpected Pregnancy and Oriana Fallaci’s Letter to a Child Never Born. Crossett’s writing was published first on her blog in the early 2000s, in real time, while Fallaci’s is fictional, written in Italian in the 1970s; the version I’m reading was translated by a man. Both mention the science fictional occupation of Mars, as though the creation of life puts us into relationship with the cosmos, or with alien life. Both concern fathers who aren’t all that interested in the continuation of the writer’s pregnancy, of the cells becoming a child. I’m doing this reading because I am writing a book about god-knows-what, also known as the conflicted question of motherhood.

Mainly, I am struck with great relief that I have never been pregnant. It would have been wrong, terrible even, with any potential father. I haven’t slept with a man whose child would make me happy. Maybe that’s obvious, and it’s ridiculous of me to even note it here, but I want to say it. Maybe I want to say it because I know it’s not entirely true, given then there was a version of myself who yearned for someone’s child, but putting that aside… the conversations these women had to engage in seem too difficult to endure. If we had gotten pregnant, S would have demanded an abortion, that I know. He said it all the time, that it was obvious to him: You’d get an abortion. No attempt at pretending there might be a “we” in that situation. He said “you” like he really meant “I,” like it would be easy for him and therefore for me, too.

Dealing with the reality of that conversation would have destroyed for me any hope of his humanity, his meaning something to my life other than pain. Sometimes I think it’s miraculous we didn’t get pregnant, only using one method of birth control. I took the morning after pill once. The night of broken plastic. I felt sick and bled how I used to bleed, which is to say, violently. I felt in that moment like a real creature. Not a ghost, but something vital that could create. I was a living being that threatened, even promised more life, whether it was wanted or not. But of course there was likely never any cluster of cells for me to worry about. I think if I had gotten pregnant I would have reached out to his mother. She would have helped me raise the baby even if he wanted nothing to do with it. Maybe his family would have stopped accidentally calling me by his ex’s name, if I had had his baby.

When I was writing my novel, I imagined the father of Gemma’s baby would be a stranger… one in a string of hookups when she was looking for a distraction. It seemed simpler to me that there would be no father. Crossett says her mother said the same thing once: when she realized she could raise the baby alone, without the father, she slept well for the first time in ages. Women seem to have reliability built into our DNA. We may not be seen as intelligent nor independent, but surely we can bring flesh into personhood? Surely we can survive on the fiery anger of our betrayals and the community of other women, because without these things none of us would exist at all? It’s an act of defiance to be a bad mother, I sometimes think. There’s a great deal of discourse about “bad mothers” but it all looks a little meaningless when the truth is that we are a great mistake making a good deal of other mistakes, and survival is merely a coincidental outcome.

If I were pregnant alone, not knowing the identity of the father like Gemma, would I actually want to keep it? As I made the thesis of my novel? Or would I just be relieved not to have to deal with the phone calls to a man, to be free to make my decision and keep my secret?

L has gone back to his ex, which I know by looking at his playlists. This is historically my shameful way of knowing a lot of things that I regret finding out. It is funny and hurtful to me that coming to my birthday party on time was too much to ask of him, but a long distance relationship is fair game. The ease of returning to what was once comfortable… I understand it. I yearn for it, even if I don’t know what it would look like for me at this point. It’s not really an option, and yet denying myself makes me feel strong. Gives me a real chip on my shoulder.

Fallaci’s narrator wrote to her baby, “Beware of giving yourself to someone in the name of that future rapture:”—rapture, of course, referring to love—“it only means forgetting yourself, your rights, your dignity, and thus your freedom.”

Do I agree? I see how one could feel that way, and it’s my fear to end up in that sort of relationship again—one where I give in and cease to exist. But is all love rapture, or is there a way to love without being lost, without sacrificing myself? Am I naive for believing in love without domination, without forgetting the self?

I keep talking about this fear I have that I am not capable of love anymore because of how wrongly it went the first time. Every friend I mention it to disregards the fear; they must know something I don’t. What struck me last night, however, is that if I do manage to fall in love again in the future, it will once again catch me

completely.

off.

guard.

Maybe it is the not believing that makes me weak. Maybe if I’m honest, I know that I am just waiting around to be destroyed again, because if I am offered rapture again, I will jump in without thinking.

This writing is part of my senior thesis that is currently in the works, aka the book about god-knows-what. Subscribe if you want to read more!