“I bled…bled…bled…bled…“
Giving birth is body horror.
The first time I made a human, they became stuck inside my pelvis. My vagina was stretched around their head. Despite the needle jammed into my spine, I could feel it: the tearing, the pressure. They stayed there for so long. The nurse put a hook into the baby’s skull to track the heartbeat and make sure we weren’t dying. I reached down and touched this hairy bulging thing coming out between my thighs and I kept crying because it wouldn’t come out.
I did bleed.
The second time I made a human, some vessel on the outside of my uterus ruptured. My abdominal cavity flooded with blood. Myself and my baby immediately began to die. They performed full-depth cuts through every layer of my body, ripped me open wide, and yanked the baby out.
He was dead. They woke him up.
I needed a transfusion.
“I was a handful as it weres. Momma always hated me ’cause how I’d come out wrongly when I was borned. Bled her up too much.“
You go through the horror of it because you get a baby at the end.
What a reward for the pain: something so small, so needy, so dependent upon you. They love unconditionally. They know none of your flaws, and they give you purpose.
They don’t stay babies.
Someday, in a time that arrives so quickly, the little ones grow up. You can watch it happening day to day. Sometimes it seems like they take a longer nap than usual, and when they get up, they’re just about an inch taller.
Sometime around nine or ten years old, they’ve lost all the baby parts. All the squishy cute pieces are gone. They’re starting to think for themselves, turning to the world outside, and having lives of their own.
They don’t need you as much.
They start to get long legs.
“I can’t believe it’s gonna be your birthday again so soon.“
Dolls never grow up.
They don’t have needs.
But if you want your child to stay a doll — if you want to keep them from reaching adolescence and adulthood — there’s only one way to really go about it.
You can’t let them grow.
If you accept the state of frozen development, you’re accepting destruction of the child, the baby you made, the sacrifice it took from your body. You’re accepting the annihilation of an entire family.
“You’re not a child because you were allowed to grow up. This is a cruel world. Especially for the little things. Not all of them are allowed to live.“
