To Vega E-Book

Josefin Winther

• Herausgeber: BoD - Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Ratgeber
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Seitenzahl: 95

Beschreibung

To Vega is a book about hope, and the certainty that someone is on their way. In poetic diary form, Josefin Winther writes to the child she is waiting for. The text is written while she is going through the process of having children with the help of IVF. This turns into a journey filled doubt and faith, which raises questions about gender identity, women's health, the fertility industry, karma and the greatest love of all.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

Dear reader,

This is my story. It’s been written step by step as I walked on my life’s journey. What is expressed here, are my reflections, based on how the world appeared to me in that moment—right there. I hope you will feel the constant motion that has been part of the experience. I hope you feel the transformation. Hedvig and Vega are the two people that are closest to me. They have their own versions of this story, their own journeys.

In this text, Hedvig, the person who is with me—is often referred to as “she.” The title of this book is, “To Vega.” This title has a double meaning. The deep connection I feel with Vega has been with me a long time. But this story is more than anything about my path to Vega.

I want to thank Hedvig for all that she’s given me—above all, a daughter. She gave me her blessing to share this story. I have also created music alongside the writing process. This music was released simultaneously with the book—as an EP titled “Til Vega.”

Thank you, Vega, that you were willing to come here—to us.

If you really want to know an author, look for what they don’t write about

10.05.2022

BE WELCOME!

Less than an hour after you had been transferred, we started a fight. We were both off keel because something that should have been a festive occasion, felt more like a clinical assembly line. We spent 15 minutes in total inside the clinic, before we once again were ejected into the street—now bewildered by the idea we might be pregnant. Each of us had her own way of dealing with this, and we launched into a mindless quarrel. There was all that adrenalin rushing through my body, and I lost the handle of myself. Again.

Of course you had no wish to come into something like that. Only a short hour after the transfer into my body, a tidal wave of wickedness came washing over you. Anyone would have turned on their heel at the entrance if they saw something like that.

But you weren’t there. You never were. So, the quarrel was of no consequence. But it felt like I had scared you away. Again.

20.05.2022

DECISION

I was rambling around the forest by our house. A full year of failed attempts had passed, and today another one was over. I was losing my footing and started to feel desperate for something—anything—to hold on to. I realized what I had to do was write. I had to write about what I never wanted to write about. I had to write about you.

YOU WHO CAN SEE EVERYTHING

We have this habit of saying “She’ll come when she’s supposed to come. All things are as they are supposed to be.” And in one way, this brings us comfort. In another way, it makes everything meaningless. Why should I wait, when you know it all? Why should I hope, when your path isn’t bound by this hope? If there’s a meaning behind everything, it all becomes a practice of letting things happen. Later, I will learn what I was supposed to learn.

Because you know what you’re supposed to do. You have always held that knowledge. A person who can see through your eyes, sees everything. You knew you weren’t supposed to come. You may never come. There’s a chance, “you” do not exist. But I have felt a closeness to you since I learned your name. Vega. Wild and wonderful. Dark and warm.

I have crafted an image of you, subconsciously. There’s a resemblance with me, but you’re calmer. You are like me, but without all the scars, the ego and all that spiritual flotsam.

But why should you resemble me? I feel lonely on this earth, I beg you to come to me. If you’re here to comfort me—or even save me, it would be better if you weren’t like me. But all acts of creation are about creating something in your own image. Even creating a human being. Some evenings I walk on the path by our house just to listen to you in the wind. The wind brushes through the leafy tree crowns, producing a low breathing sound. I look up and meet the gaze of the stars. And suddenly, you’re there. I stretch my arms up, and say “Come to me! Please, just come to me now!”

There are times when I daydream about just allowing myself to lie down on the forest floor, below ferns and heath. To be at peace. To be at peace with critters and creepy things that would soon find me. To be at peace with the disintegration. To feel pleasure at being dissolved so that I can return home to you.

TIME IS A HILL PLAYING WITH EVERY WOUND

A year ago, the pain was pure. Almost virginal. An innocent pain, without any shadows. How well I remember the first time you didn’t arrive.

Mid-summer. I was on a train from Bergen to Oslo. And my period arrived. I cried and felt the pain building in me. It was such an innocent pain; it almost dissipated the same moment it appeared. Nothing lumpy, no rot, no story. It was only painful to know you wouldn’t arrive. And I kept going in faith. Next time.

In the resting room after the sixth attempt, I rest with my head in her lap. And right then, there’s an epiphany that you are there, alive inside me. At least for a few minutes. Both of us cry, and the knowledge you may decide to die at any moment in there, is hard. But it is marvelous to think that at any moment you may decide to live. This may be the closest I’ll ever come to being pregnant.

This is the sixth time you didn’t arrive, and the pain has morphed into different shapes. This time I knew before I knew, because I dreaded the pain. I took in the disappointment and self-loathing in advance. Not least, I dreaded getting my period. The loathsome message “just forget about it. This is us, peeling off the lining from the uterine wall. Nothing inside here could survive now.”

During the night, I felt the menstrual pain sneaking up on me. A bodily premonition. I tried to tell myself I was imagining it all. Or maybe this is what it felt like to be pregnant. I’ve had that naive thought a few times now: “Is this something you feel if you’re pregnant perhaps?”

Today I had my blood tests and was informed over the phone that the value was twenty-five something or other—which is a negative number. My period hasn’t arrived yet, but the pain is building.

21.05.2022

WHO NEEDS STATS WHEN THERE’S KARMA?

A year ago, emotions like doubt and self-loathing were foreign to me. If I had read any of the many self-help books, I would have known this was coming. But is there really any help in knowing things in advance? I lived in a state of ignorant bliss back then. Your delivery is timed down to the minute. And everything has been done as correctly as possible to help you come to us. Someone at the clinic quotes statistics to comfort me, but I cannot stop thinking about my five siblings who all have had children. How often do they actually have sex?

But who would choose to come to this earth and be a result of work in a lab? Who would choose to spend their first five days in a small container, only to be frozen for an indefinite time? Who wants to have a father who is just a “straw”—purchased on a kind of dating app for sperm? Have I become one of these women in their late thirties, desperate for a baby? Have I been come intoxicated by the western fixation on self-realization, where a child suddenly is the only solution? Have I turned into some materialistic cowboy who stops at nothing to obtain what I think I want?

I buy a child from an industry where the gynecologist who comforts me one moment, tells me right after, there’s a rebate if I buy bundles of three. After my appointment, they send me a text where they tell me I can pay you off in installments. I understand all the doubts you have, Vega. I would have the same doubts. It is quite a peculiar destiny to choose for oneself.

SHE WHO WAITS FOR SOMETHING GOOD…

How does a person wait? Hope may turn into a demand. Faith may turn into superstition. Trust may turn into resignation. Longing may turn into obsession.

I have waited sincerely, touched my belly regularly. I have thought “now that you’re there, I will try to slow down. You and I, Vega.”

I have treasured the idea that you may have arrived. In the aftermath it hurts to have waited in this way. Because it only means I may have been walking around for ten days without being pregnant, an touched my own belly like a crazy person. One of those who push a doll around in a stroller and believe it is alive.

RAW YOUTH