by Sheila Heti
Okay. I know this sounds very weird and silly, but it’s coming into my mind, and I find it’s best to say the things that come into my mind. The man I’m involved with—I find it very strange that he often pees sitting down. I think it’s not very manly. He says, That way I can talk to whoever’s in the room! But it’s very weird that he does that. I don’t know why I’m connecting that to your story, but there’s something about a person whose back is turned … because your boyfriend is wanting to be connected to you—he’s sticking his connection things out, but yours are only going to be present if you’re connected to yourself. So I think the central method of improving your relationship is to connect it to yourself on a very deep level.
Okay …
And … I think I see a pregnant belly again. Why do I keep seeing…? You’ve talked about maybe wanting to have a child. And it seems fine if you do, and it seems fine if you don’t. But this whole reading is about doing the work of stepping over a gigantic wall—and you have to find out what that transformation is for you. I think maybe you’re wanting the transformation to be pregnancy—you’re talking about the happiness of the pregnancy—yet from everything I’ve seen about having a baby, once the baby arrives, it’s not the joyride it looks like.
Now, this card is Death—your first Major Arcana. It is the burning of the phoenix, the burning of the blood. You know, our creativity is connected very deep into our soul, it’s our very deepest, most central energy. I painted and painted, and then I did a portrait commission business, and then one day I fell down on the floor and I couldn’t do it anymore. Because here’s my heart-center, and then I start connecting it to paying my public utilities bill, and then some fucking jerk comes over and says, But that isn’t my son’s nose! Is there any chance that your art form is bleeding you out?
Perhaps?
Well, hon, I think you’re in for a big burning—and you have to let it happen. You need to make a concentrated effort, and really fall into that deep space.
But will it destroy my life?
No, no! It’s not going to destroy your life. Don’t worry. It’s not going to destroy your life at all. Now, this is the Moon card. This shows that it does go back to that painful place of your mom being depressed. The Moon card is about what’s hidden inside—something that’s causing you pain, blocking your relationship, blocking your art, and blocking your own peace. This card is almost asking, Can you look into that corner of your life? Can you say, I’m going to walk into that moon quadrant of me that I don’t know. That whole idea of walking in, looking around, and just letting it be the truth. What is the truth of this single quadrant of me? It’s just one part! The part that no one sees.
And your final outcome card is … Seven of Pentacles! That’s a good final outcome card! It means, I’m starting over with something great and new. Look at what you’re going to produce! Glowing, beautiful pieces of fruit—or whatever those things are. And the light is shining through them. That pink light is gorgeous, just gorgeous! Maybe there can be something beautiful that happens with the bleeding out.
I walked back through the streets and returned to my hotel room, where I went immediately to the washroom, and saw that I had been bleeding on my nice white underwear, as I suspected.
You can become accustomed to anything in this life, but blood coming out of your vagina once a month is nothing. I think, Isn’t it stupid my body did this again? Will it never learn? Will it never take the hint? No, it replies: Will you never take the hint? If I paid more attention to the bleeding, maybe I would. But I don’t: I deal with it, and it goes. Will I miss it one day, once it’s gone for good? Why is my body doing this inside me every month, and how many opportunities could I miss? How stupid am I really? How little I care for what it wants. How neglected and abandoned is this little animal inside me that is doing its work so diligently and well—this tiny uterus, these mushy ovaries, these fallopian tubes and my brain. It has no idea I need nothing from it. It just keeps on working. If only I could speak to it and tell it to stop. Who is it doing all this for, if not for me? And what do I do for it? I mop up its blood. Then I mop it up again. I never feel grateful. I never give a single thought to each expectant egg—hopeful when ovulating, then saddened when I don’t get pregnant and it’s released from my body, confused as a girl who no one calls, who no boy ever asks out, who no one ever invites to a party. Then one day, the school finds out: She’s dead. What? That girl we all ignored? Yes.
Miles once told me that I bleed less on my period than any other woman he’s been with. With other women, whenever they would have sex during her period, the blood would be halfway up his belly and halfway down his thighs. With me, there’s hardly a spot.
I wonder if it means I have a very small uterus, I said, the one time he told me this.
He just shrugged. To him, it didn’t mean anything. Yet for an hour after, I hung suspended between the thought that I must be a truly refined woman to bleed much less, and I must not be much of a woman at all.
Heading home from that village, it felt as though never in my life had I realized how uncomfortable people made me. Every person on the train made me feel inferior, shy and confused—battered and awkward. When an older man smiled at me, it felt important not to look at him. A group of men seemed very interested in two sisters. When one took her hair down, it fell to just above her shoulders, and she was even more beautiful than she had been before. Then she put her hair back up. She was wearing sneakers and a leather jacket and jeans. The sisters were wearing make-up, yet there was something masculine about them, too. Their lips were bright and prettily shaped.
I thought about how city life was only one form of life, and how the structures we make are static and not all that complex. They do not shimmer like the dry grasses on the hills or the leaves on the trees. There are not as many examples in the city of the impossibly far and the impossibly close. In the country, there is the closeness of the grass as you lay down on it, and the vast expanse of the sea stretching up to the sky. In the city, everything is of equal significance, from everything being so equally close up. True perspective is pretty much impossible. The buildings do not sway in the wind, so it’s harder for our ideas to sway. You cannot look at a building for several hours, while in nature you can look at anything for several hours, because nature is alive and ever-changing.
FOLLICULAR
Barcelona was governed in the Middle Ages by an oligarchy of nobles, merchants, shopkeepers and artisans, who formed the Council of One Hundred. This council had to answer to the king, but the king did not rule absolutely. He was seen to rule by contract and not by divine right. The leaders of the council swore him this oath: We, who are as good as you, swear to you, who are no better than us, to accept you as our king and sovereign, provided you observe all of our liberties and laws—but if not, not.
From that, R. B. Kitaj took the title of his painting of Auschwitz, If Not, Not. What is this idea of not not?
Are you going to have a child? If I do, I do—and if not, not. I … who am as good as you … will accept you … provided you observe … all of our liberties. And I don’t want ‘not a mother’ to be part of who I am—for my identity to be the negative of someone else’s positive identity. Then maybe instead of being ‘not a mother’ I could be not ‘not a mother.’ I could be not not.
If I am not not, then I am what I am. The negative cancels out the negative and I simply am. I am what I positively am, for the not before the not shields me from being simply not a mother. And to those who would say, You’re not a mother, I would reply, ‘In fact, I am not not a mother.’ By which I mean I am not ‘not a mother.’ Yet someone who is called a mother could also say, ‘In fact, I am not not a mother.’ Which means she is a mother, for the not cancels out the not. To be not not is what the mothers can be, and what the women who are not mothers can be. This is the term we can share. In this way, we can be the same.
*
Tonight, I was reading a story about the Baal Shem Tov�
�one of the holy rabbis of the eighteenth century—and in the story, the Baal Shem Tov’s daughter asks her father to tell her the name of the man she will marry, and to say whether she will ever be a mother. Her father throws a party and at the party her husband is revealed to her. The story ends by saying that she had two boys and one girl, and the names of the boys are given, and what they grew up to be, but the name of the daughter is not given, nor what she grew up to be (presumably a mother). Putting the book down, I realized that throughout most of history, it was enough for men that women existed to give birth to men and raise them. And if a woman gave birth to a girl, well then, with luck the girl would grow up to give birth to a man. It seemed to me like all my worrying about not being a mother came down to this history—this implication that a woman is not an end in herself. She is a means to a man, who will grow up to be an end in himself, and do something in the world. While a woman is a passageway through which a man might come. I have always felt like an end in myself—doesn’t everyone?—but perhaps my doubt that being an end-in-myself is enough comes from this deep lineage of women not being seen as ends, but as passageways through which a man might come. If you refuse to be a passageway, there is something wrong. You must at least try. But I don’t want to be a passageway through which a man might come, then manifest himself in the world however he likes, without anyone doubting his right.
*
There are squirrels in the walls, or mice there. As I write, I can hear them moving, chewing the insides of the walls. I can hear them scratch on the insides of the walls, their little teeth chewing. They are eating the insulation, or wood, or cement, or whatever is in these walls.
*
If I consider raising a child in my own home and say this is what I have chosen not to do, what have I chosen, if anything? Language doesn’t fit around this experience. It is therefore not an experience we can speak of. But I want a word that is utterly independent of the task of childrearing, with which to think about this decision—a word about what is, and not what is not.
But how do you describe the absence of something? If I refuse to play soccer, is my not playing soccer an experience of playing soccer? My lack of the experience of motherhood is not an experience of motherhood. Or is it? Can I call it a motherhood, too?
What is the main activity of a woman’s life, if not motherhood? How can I express the absence of this experience, without making central the lack? Can I say what such a life is an experience of not in relation to motherhood? Can I say what it positively is? Of course, it’s different for every woman. Then can I say what it positively is for me? I cannot. Because I’m still in a place of indecision, not knowing what I want. I haven’t yet birthed the person who by actively choosing not to have children lives in a way that positively affirms non-parental values, nor can I affirm the maternal experience of life.
Maybe if I could somehow figure out what not having a child is an experience of—make it into an active action, rather than the lack of an action—I might know what I was experiencing, and not feel so much like I was waiting to act. I might be able to choose my life, and hold in my hands what I have chosen, and show it to other people, and call it mine.
*
I always felt jealous of the gay men I knew who spoke of having come out. I felt I would like to come out, too—but as what? I could never put my finger on it. I had ghost images of the sort of person I was like, and ghost images of the sort of person I was not like. I wanted to be able to say of myself—I have known this about myself since I was six years old. Some people were very condemning of me, but now I feel much better. I feel so much better since having come out. My life is now truly my own.
*
I fear that without children, it doesn’t look like you have made a choice, or that you’re doing anything but just continuing on—drifting. People who don’t have children might be thought not to move forward, or change and grow, or have stories that build on stories, or lives of ever-increasing depth and love and pain. Maybe they seem stalled in one place—a place the parents have left behind.
What is chosen by those who don’t want children often looks no different from what the parents lived—just a continuation of what they lived before. It looks no different from not having procreated yet. It can look like getting ready to choose, or even like you’re trying for a child. Yet there is a positive thing that is being lived and chosen by those who don’t want children. But how can we say what that is, when parents feel they have lived it too, and that they know it well? Yet many of them lived it without choosing it, or lived it while knowing it was going to end.
*
Some people try to imagine what it’s like not to have children—and they imagine themselves without children, instead of picturing a person they might never be. They project their own potential sadness over not having this experience on those who don’t want it at all. A person who can’t understand why someone doesn’t want children only has to locate their feelings for children, and imagine that desire directed somewhere else—to a life that is just as filled with hope, purpose, futurity and care.
Why don’t we understand some people who don’t want children as those with a different, perhaps biologically different, orientation? Wanting not to have children could even be called a sexual orientation, for what is more tied to sex than the desire to procreate or not? I suspect the intensity of this desire lies deep within our cells, and then there is all that culture adds, and that other people add, which skews our innate desires. I can look back at being a tiny child and see that I did not want children then. I remember sitting at the kitchen table with my entire family, and suddenly knowing that I would never be a mother, for I was a daughter—existentially—and I always would be.
*
I know that Jewish women are expected to repopulate from the losses of the Holocaust. If you don’t have children, the Nazis will have won. I have felt this. They wanted to wipe us from the earth, and we must never let them. Then how can I imagine not having children, and selfishly contribute to our dying out? Yet, I don’t really care if the human race dies out.
Rather than repopulating the world, might it not be better to say, We have learned from our history about the farthest reaches of cruelty, sadism and evil. And so, in protest, we will make no more people—no more people for a hundred years!—in retaliation for the crimes that were committed against us. We will make no more aggressors, and no more victims, and in this way, do a good thing with our wombs.
I went out for dinner last night with my high school friend Libby. She recently found out that she was pregnant, and has not had one moment of joy with the idea. Her relationship had not been a serious one, but now it suddenly was. They had started looking for a condo. As she talked, I saw how it would be a trap—how the child could trap her with her new boyfriend, in a new life. Already the architecture was rising around her, like the growth of a city, sped-up. Skyscrapers were flying up; a new boyfriend, a new baby, new in-laws, a new home. The walls are being erected outside her as her baby grows inside her.
*
Every time I hear that a friend is having a baby, I feel like I’m being cornered by a looming force, more trapped still. You know the babies cannot keep coming forever, but for now they are raining down as heavy as night-hail, or whatever hits the earth and makes a crater sized so much bigger than the thing itself that hit it. There are craters, craters, all around, and no home is safe enough not to be pummelled to dust by these blessings, by these bits of stardust, these thousand-pound babies aimed straight at the earth.
I had always thought my friends and I were moving into the same land together, a childless land where we would just do a million things together forever. I thought our minds and souls were all cast the same way, not that they were waiting for the right moment to jump ship, which is how it feels as they abandon me here. I should not think of it as an abandoning, but it would be wrong to say it’s not a loss, or that I’m not startled at being so alone. How had I taken all of us as the sa
me? Is that why I started wondering about having kids—because, one by one, the ice floe on which we were all standing was broken and made smaller, leaving me alone on just the tiniest piece of ice, which I had thought would remain vast, like a very large continent on which we’d all stay? It never occurred to me that I’d be the only one left here. I know I’m not the only one left, yet how can I trust the few who remain, when I’d been so mistaken about the rest? I’m shaken by their wholesale deserting. Did they ever intend to stay on this childless continent, and then they changed their minds? Or had they never intended to stay, and I understood them all wrong?
I resent the spectacle of all this breeding, which I see as a turning away from the living—an insufficient love for the rest of us, we billions of orphans already living. These people turn with open arms to a new life, hoping to make a happiness greater than their own, rather than tending to the already-living. It’s not right, it’s not kind, when everyone you look at is a crying baby, and there my friends go, making more—making another one!—another new light in the world. Certainly I am happy for them, but I am miserable for the rest of us—for that absolute kick in the teeth, that relieved and joyful desertion. When a person has a child, they are turned towards their child. The rest of us are left in the cold.
OVULATING
Returning from the shower in a towel this morning, I found Miles standing in the middle of the bedroom, getting dressed. Then he smiled and danced his fingers and sang the song of the two birds who love me.
Last week, he bought me the most beautiful coat, and these tulips on the nightstand, and he cooks dinner for me, and last month when I was in bed sick he bought me three chocolate bars, and six bottles of sparkling water, and herbal cough medicine, and real cough medicine, and he drew many fat hearts on the wall beside the bed. I can’t help but say it, but I feel I have found my true love.
