Gull-Billed Tern
Being alone. Knowing it is just you—just your thoughts, just your mind, just your body, just your nudity, just your words, just your scent. I revel in the scent of myself—soak it in like salt air on the way to open water. Alone feels like nature—immeasurable, mysterious, unrevealed. I cherish alone like I cherish fern gullies and swimming holes, like I cherish the skunk cabbage that emerges from the forest floor in early spring—Symplocarpus Floetidus, like I cherish sitting on the edge of cliffs and watching birds flutter along treetops. There are times when I get home, take off all my clothes, find a place to lay—the bed, the couch, the floor—and stare at the wall or the dresser or the collections of paintings and photographs. I am not bored, I am not depressed, I am not unproductive. I am thinking. Philosophizing alone. Visualizing alone. Basking alone.
I don’t have children. That may or may not change one day but until then I consume the love of mothers like I consume music, books or movies. I’m inspired by them. They help me contemplate and decipher. They empower sentience—an aliveness that infiltrates windows and walkways, falls out of mouths at dinner time, laughs across time zones and airfields. I love my Mamu—that is what I call her. I rarely write about her because I wouldn’t know how to put our love into words. Nothing can carry its eclectic nature, its specificity. I give reverence to motherhood and that is why I must say this— I am a mother too. I feel the love a mother feels when I wake with myself, when I wake with my child—I love my child, the child that is me. I love her with all of my motherly heart. I wake up thinking about her, her pain, her problems, her opportunities, her successes, her people— like a mother wakes thinking about their child’s pain, problems, opportunities, successes and people. I love myself more than a mother loves her child because I actually am myself—there is no attachment theory when it is only me. A mother does not sleep when her child is set up for failure, I do not sleep when I am set up for failure. A mother fights for the rights of her child, I fight for my rights. A mother protects her child from what’s perceived as harmful in this world and I protect myself from what’s perceived as harmful in the world—although sometimes I let myself indulge in harmful behaviors on purpose, I can do that. Now, somewhere along the way society found a word for us mothering ourselves, us loving ourselves as if we are our own child—they refer to it as “selfish”—I hear this all the time from mothers. I even hear some mothers say a woman without children is a narcissist. Then there are the men and the ugly words they spew about the child-less. The message is clear—a woman must love children, love men, love animals, love God and she can love herself too but not more than any of the others. That would be a sin to this society.
Cleaning up after a child is not more difficult than cleaning up after yourself. It may take practice to change a baby's diaper but it also takes practice to insert a tampon, clean the blood from your pores, remove remnants of feces from your own ass. Doing one of those three to another human for a couple years doesn’t mean you understand love more than a human who has loved themselves for decades. All it means is that you have split your love with another now—given away part of it, given up the beauty of being alone so that you no longer have to. You no longer can—not ever. Your mind will never revel in the scents of the body it inhabits again because the other scents will be too strong. You won’t get to stare at the wall any longer, thinking deeply about yourself and the world because the world has nothing to do with you anymore it has all to do with them. This kind of sharing is beautiful and necessary but it should never be confused or defined as the ultimate love. Loving oneself is the ultimate love and in my my most cynical stance I propose that the majority of mothers out there never got a chance to do it. To revel in being alone. To revel in their love for themselves.
I was speaking to a friend the other day who had a baby only a couple of months ago. She told me she was so relieved to not have to think about herself anymore, relieved to have another being to focus on. It was refreshing to her—a weight lifted. To me this means she may not have learned to love herself, she may not have experienced the grandness of her aloneness, they were more of a torment—a constant she was sick of. Another friend of mine with two children told me she wanted to get pregnant again. Have a third child. She said that two did not offer her enough protection. What if they both move away to far off places. What if one decides to travel the world and the other isn’t interested in being with the family? A third helped guarantee that there would at least be someone who was loyal as she grew old. One child might stay around and care for her when she’s dying—if all three stayed she’d be lucky. This was her reason for getting pregnant—to protect herself from being alone in death and dying. To protect herself from a life without people, to ensure she would be occupied and taken care of. In the end, she wanted the love she gave to her children to be given back to her. The love we have for ourselves is not something we have to request back, it’s not something we have to hope for—Once it is embodied, once it is birthed, fed, raised and embraced—it is the most authentic and intimate of loves and it remains even when we don’t.
Creating a family is beautiful—giving birth is a phenomenon all to its own. Helping little beings learn to love themselves is a wonderful way of giving back to this world. But, if you haven’t found the love in being alone and you don’t know what loving alone means. If that confuses you. You have not experienced the truest love of a mother. Remember that. And also remember, you have no right to judge someone who chooses to embark on a lifelong journey of loving and understanding themselves. For some of us understanding self is the purpose in life and it is this journey, and only this journey, that brings us closer to the depths of humanity, the depths of nature, the depths of spirit and the larger connectivity of the universe.
Transmissions 2016
Birds-Eye-View Spotlight Writer
Dallie Ago— To read a review on her book Lesser Journey’s CLICK HERE
If you want more from The Birds — Check out Dallie Ago—Dallie is the author of Theia Mania and editor of Bushwick Nightz. Her work has appeared in PANK, Luna Luna Magazine, At Large Magazine, Bushwick Daily, BUST, xoJane, and more. Her writing and art have been profiled in Bedford+Bowery, Gothamist, and Hyperallergic, among others. She currently lives in London.
