I'm starting to notice a pattern in my life concerning the major, life altering events. Apparently, I don't feel appropriately life altered until I have been torn down and left completely vulnerable, naked before the world. Then I build up again and am reborn a bigger, stronger, happier person. At least that is the pattern. And that pattern is about all I have to hold on to at this point.

When I rode the AIDS ride in 1997 I remember that feeling of being raw, bare, exposed. I pushed my body to the absolute limits, to the point of no return. There was little room for emotion other than exhilaration, and I was deep within the bottom of a very deep well of exhilaration. When it finished, that is. I was busy sinking to the bottom of that well in the days and months preceding the AIDS ride. But that last day and those last miles were some of the most beautiful moments of my life. I accomplished something I had set out to do, and I did it well. I never would have gotten to LA had it not been for my friends, but along the way I found myself new and exposed and reborn. When I returned to my happy little home in Berkeley after the ride I felt absolutely victorious. It was amazing.

Months later I was dumped by my boyfriend, and left quivering and wet in the corner of the rainiest street in the universe. That experience was so humiliating (figuratively speaking, of course- the only rainy street was the one I traveled in my mind) so humiliating that I had to rebuild my entire identity anew. It was horrible. I was embarrassed and bereft and so so raw. But then I changed my perspective and decided that the relationship had been my chrysalis and I was a butterfly, ready to emerge. It was an amazing period of my life, and I would never trade it in, despite the heartbreak and humiliation.

And now, here I am. My body, which has always been grumpy but fairly reliable is not mine any longer. I am inhabited by something much larger than me. He has left me completely exposed. The pain and discomfort, the feeling of drowning, the mental instability, the physical changes and accompanying unease, these are all part of the dressing down, the exposure. This is preparation for something entirely new.

I don't know if I have ever felt quite so alone. Even sweets has had enough of this. I sleep on the couch and try to be thankful for these moments, but in truth I just feel very very alone. There is that cliche that you are born alone and you die alone, and now I feel as though I am giving birth alone. No matter how much I love my friends and family and how much I try to involve them in this experience, in the end it is just me and my body, pushing into the start of a new era.

I didn't plan on being such a grump during this pregnancy. I planned on being the woman who is busy white water river rafting and dancing in the streets late at night. Instead I became the cranky harpy who needs to be reassured constantly that she is still a part of the human race and goes t obed at 9:30 sharp. Who knew that the journey through pregnancy would be so much more than a simple nine (ten) months of physical changes. who knew?