Around the same time I discovered I was pregnant, I had begun reading the novel Eat Pray Love. The movie hadn't been released yet, and I didn't so much read through it as I did devour it and (very much like a cow and it's multiple stomachs) regurgitate it and swallow it again, absorbing the words like a sponge; pouring over the pages numerous times as if they contained recipes or spells of a grimmerie that if I could just memorize them, I would have a written pathway of survival. I would stare at the newly released cover with Julia Roberts' photo on the front enjoying gelato on a park bench in Italy, and it was like looking at the person I had recently found inside myself, except.... I could feel her slipping away, as every day more and more things slipped out of my control. Every day that passed, every chapter I got through I sensed my own recent discovery of myself getting away; and I somehow thought that maybe... Just maybe if I could cling to Elizabeth Gilbert's words and story, I could somehow hold onto my own story as well.... That maybe everything that was tilting backwards and falling out of my control and back into a dark place I didn't recognize would be a nightmare I could pull myself out of... That it was just a dark well I had fallen into, but if I had a hold on a rope leading out, I wouldn't slip any further into the darkness. I finished reading it once through and began to read it again. I actually ear-marked certain passages to be able to find them easily again to look over them.
I had just spent the last year on a journey of my own like Ms. Gilbert's. I had found my eating habits, I had found prayer, and I had found love... The passage where she is in Bali, but refrains from sleeping with Felipe was exactly me. She goes to bed alone, and wakes up in the middle of the night and makes a pound of buttered potatoes and prayers to her body to accept it instead of sex. The potatoes don't satisfy her, but waking up, she is glad she remained absent. Liz punctuates that women now not only must become our own husbands, but we must also be our own fathers: watching out for our own safety and knowing when to send ourselves to bed alone. I had done almost that exact thing for five almost six months: constantly telling myself to go to bed alone: protecting myself from the emotional baggage of everything I didn't need. And suddenly, I was pregnant, and everything I thought I had learned was changing and questioning all I had been through. I couldn't eat normally, I was sick and vomiting on a regular basis. I had had faith in a higher power, and suddenly I was angry at myself, because if I really was following a higher power, how did I end up in this situation.... And love..... I had found it only to realize ..... I don't know. It wasn't unconditional?..... I don't know... Everything I thought I had learned went out the window in the space of a few months. And here I am now. I felt as if my self-discovering journey had passed me by and I had wasted my time.... I felt I hadn't learned anything... I felt like you only get that journey once, and I had screwed it up. Royally.
I went and saw the movie by myself when it was in theaters. It was something I didn't want to share with anyone. I wasn't even sure how I would feel about seeing it... How I would take to it. I didn't want to leave the cinema and have someone ask me how I enjoyed it and tell me what they took away from it. I just wanted to go and experience it for myself. I remember sitting in the relative center of the theater, my pregnant stomach was starting to show, I was just beginning to sit uncomfortably; I had smuggled in a bottle of water in my purse, and I sat with my untouched popcorn, afraid of eating and feeling sick half-way through the movie. I believe I posted on facebook I was at the theater, just as the lights were dimming.
Have you ever seen a movie that makes you feel like you are with someone you are as familiar with as you are with yourself?... It feels like watching a sister or a best friend? Have you ever seen a movie like that? That's how it felt. I wasn't surprised by any of the plot, it was like seeing someone's journal on the big screen. There were moments that certain lines I had read over without comprehension from the novel, stood out as the crowning jewels larger than life in front of me. I sat watching it like sitting with an old friend over the kitchen table, just enjoying the lazy morning. The scene she sits and enjoys her makeshift breakfast on the floor, reminded me of my makeshift meals at home; the moment she says we rise from our ruins, I cried in understanding; the moment her friend from Texas leaves her alone on the roof till she can forgive herself, I felt like I was finally exhaling after holding my breath for so long.
Seeing the movie, I realized there isn't one specific time in your life you go on a journey to discover yourself; life is that constant journey. It is the cycle over and over again. The journey I went on before pregnancy, was just one part: one chapter: one location of my life. Pregnancy was just another journey. After pregnancy I will have a whole other journey to discover food, prayer, and, yes, love once again. I have faith.
Every beginning has an end: and every end has a beginning; life is a progression, not a carousel if you live it right- always spiraling forward, never being afraid to make mistakes. There are no mistakes in this life- there is what you do, and what you don't do.
Well said and spoken like a lady who knows where she wants to go and not where she has been!
ReplyDeleteThank you Val=)That means a lot to me!
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