Since getting my IUD, I'm experiencing intense hormonal changes for the first time in years. I'm having nights where I don't sleep at all, or days where I can't express my sudden, extreme anger or overwhelming loneliness in words. It's strange and unsettling. Overall, though, I'm trying to recognize it as a temporary change in my body and embrace it as a new way of living.
Today I crave love. Not romantic love or movie love, but the deep, earthy swaying love of mothers and babies, or the faithful and their God. The quiet understanding of long-time friends. No complications, no expectations.
For a long time I've been missing the feeling of the Unitarian conferences I frequented as a teenager. I miss the discussions and rituals and cooking, but most of all I miss the nights. I still dream about the nights. A sea of strangers entwined, breathing as one-- an ocean of sleeping bags and limbs heavy with the scent of sleep. You'd wake up halfway through the night with someone's head resting on your stomach, or cradling another person's foot. You'd move in and out of consciousness to the sensation of someone --you didn't even care whom-- stroking your hair. A crowd as a single unit. Kinship between strangers.
Especially now, it's occurred to me that I need to keep myself firmly in the company of women for the next few days. Women seem to possess a capability to cloak themselves and each other in this same sort of kinship without question or hesitation. The instinct leaps up to band together for survival. I am usually more comfortable in the company of men; the blunt, frank nature of them appeals to my more impatient side.
But now, with my hormones all out of whack, I want nothing more than to retreat into the world of mothers and daughters and sisters and friends, and talk, and not talk, and glut on the enormity of that love. I want to wrap my arms around someone soft and cry, and then sleep forever.
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